Crypto’s Next Craze? Orbs That Scan Your Eyeballs.

One evening last month, a crowd of cryptocurrency enthusiasts gathered at an art gallery in downtown Manhattan. They were greeted by a scene from science fiction.

At one end of the room was an open bar. Across from it stood a loose array of gray pedestals, arranged like a futuristic Stonehenge, each displaying a metal sphere about the size of a bowling ball.

The event was a launch party for Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency project created by Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, and the crypto company he co-founded, Tools for Humanity. As music thrummed in the background, guests congregated around the shiny orbs, which looked like a cross between a giant eight ball and HAL 9000, the rogue computer in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

The gathering was a small step in what Tools for Humanity claims will be a world-changing project: to scan the eyeballs of all eight billion humans, and then use that one-time ID to offer small allotments of cryptocurrency to support them in a world upended by artificial intelligence.

Every Worldcoin orb contains a camera designed to record images of a person’s irises. The orbs convert those scans into bits of numerical code, which are supposed to serve as a new type of digital ID. In the short term, Tools for Humanity plans to generate revenue by offering its iris-based system as an alternative to security technologies like CAPTCHA, the photographic test that is used to sort humans from spam accounts.

Ultimately, Worldcoin’s backers envision a grander plan to protect people from A.I. advances that they claim will eliminate millions of jobs. They are promoting the orbs as a possible foundation for universal basic income, a welfare system in which everyone receives guaranteed payments, and argue that iris IDs will help distinguish real people from robots.

To skeptics, the prospect of a privately owned crypto company’s handling the biometric data from billions of people sounds like a recipe for dystopia, with echoes of the 2002 Tom Cruise film “Minority Report.” But Tools for Humanity has raised $115 million this year from venture capital investors, even as funding for crypto has dried up during a downturn in the industry.

Tools for Humanity is part of a growing array of crypto firms trying to latch on to the hype around A.I. to propel digital currencies back to relevance after a miserable 18 months of market crashes and bankruptcies. Its project also shows how powerful figures like Mr. Altman are seeking to profit in a tumultuous period, creating moneymaking ventures to mitigate the negative effects of A.I., even as they aggressively develop the technology.