Could Eye-Scanning Crypto Orbs Save Us From a Bot Apocalypse?

Spend enough time in San Francisco, peering into the cyberpunk future, and you may find that weird things start seeming normal.Fleets of self-driving cars? Yawn.

A start-up trying to resurrect the woolly mammoth? Sure, why not.Summoning a godlike artificial intelligence that could wipe out humanity? Ho-hum.You may even find yourself, as I did on Wednesday night, standing in a crowded room in the Marina district, gazing into a glowing white sphere known as the Orb, having your eyeballs scanned in exchange for cryptocurrency and something called a World ID.The event was hosted by World, a San Francisco start-up co-founded by Sam Altman of OpenAI that has come up with one of the more ambitious (or creepy, depending on your view) tech projects in recent memory.The company’s basic pitch is this: The internet is about to be overrun with swarms of realistic A.I.

bots that will make it nearly impossible to tell whether we’re interacting with real humans on social networks, dating sites, gaming platforms and other online spaces.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....