Chip Capitalism and Ocular Accumulation

Researcher: Wei-I Lee

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence driven by advances in chip technology, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and a leading advocate of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), founded the tech company Tools for Humanity (TFH) in 2019. The company promotes the need to authenticate real human identities in an era when AI blurs the boundaries of digital identity. This led to the launch of a series of global financial network projects under the name “World”, executed by the World Foundation, which was established with the support of TFH.

Their project includes the deployment of the spherical device “Orb” around the world—designed to scan the iris, a unique biometric feature, in exchange for issuing a “World ID” that verifies a user as a real human being. Participants who complete iris verification and obtain “World ID” are rewarded with a cryptocurrency called “Worldcoin”, issued by the World organization. By accumulating a massive number of verified human participants, the project aims to build an industry ecosystem known as “World Chain”, ultimately leading to the creation of a digital financial system governed by the “World Network.”

This framework, envisioned as a new blueprint of techno-capitalism grounded on the critical supply foundations of chips (primarily supported by NVIDIA) and the human eye, raises pressing questions: How does it intersect with the current objectives of the global “chip war”? What role does Taiwan play within its industrial division of labor? And what new implications might arise from the convergence of visual machines, capital machines, and war machines? These questions will guide the central concerns and directions of this research.