It must be the hallmark of Silicon Valley giants to want to leave their mark on the history of mankind, to believe in a messianic calling. Sam Altman is no exception to this rule. Co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, he heads the company that created ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot capable of generating human-like text.

Despite being popular with students, who use it to write their essays, and developers, who use it to streamline their work, ChatGPT raises concerns. Given its efficiency and accuracy, it threatens to replace many jobs.

And now, 38-year-old Altman, a native of Chicago who briefly studied at Stanford University in California, is presenting himself as a bulwark against the dangers of artificial intelligence with another project (called Worldcoin) whose main purpose is hard to fathom. The aim is both to launch a new cryptocurrency and, ultimately, to create a universal basic income to mitigate the impact of new technologies.

The very nature of the company is itself convoluted: one part of it is a not-for-profit, another aims to generate sales. But that's not the most problematic aspect: Worldcoin has a product, the Orb, the size and shape of a bowling ball, designed to capture the iris of anyone wishing to subscribe to the company's services. It verifies the identity of holders of this new cryptocurrency. A kind of digital passport.

The culmination of three years of work, the company officially launched its activity on Monday, July 24, but is already making headlines. In Kenya, thousands of people turned up to have their irises scanned, after being offered €45 to sign up to Worldcoin. The government put a stop to the operation on Wednesday, August 2, pending its ability to establish "the legality of [Worldcoin's] activities, the security and protection of the data collected, as well as how the people collecting it intend to use the data."

Other supervisory authorities are also looking into Worldcoin's activities. France's National Commission on Informatics and Liberty, for example, has joined forces with its Bavarian counterparts, who had already started to investigate. The Information Commissioner's Office in the UK is doing likewise. In the United States, Worldcoin is simply not authorized to offer its cryptocurrency.

Nonetheless, the company has carried out iris captures in 34 countries and already has more than 2.2 million users, more than 10% of which have been acquired in the past week. The company has particularly targeted developing countries, where its financial compensations have proved particularly attractive.

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