Welcome, humans.

This is one of the coolest interviews we’ve ever done.

And not in the “wow, this founder said some futuristic stuff” way. In the very practical, very immediate, “oh wait, this solves an actual problem I already have” way.

Because the internet has a human problem now.

Bots can solve CAPTCHAs. AI can generate selfies and passports. Deepfakes can show up on video calls. Fake accounts can swarm social platforms, dating apps, ticketing systems, games, banks, and basically every place online where being a real person still matters.

So Corey sat down with Tiago Sada, Chief Product Officer at Tools for Humanity, the company building the technology behind World and World ID, to ask the obvious question: How do you prove there is a real human on the other side of the screen?

Tiago’s answer is weird, ambitious, and surprisingly practical: create something like a human passport for the internet, but design it so the passport lives on your phone, apps do not learn who you are, and World does not store the personal images used to verify you.

“It's very hard for me to imagine a world where AI advances as much as I think it will over the next 10 years and the internet doesn't completely break without something like this.”

That’s a pretty spicy sentence to casually drop before explaining an eyeball-scanning orb. Very normal internet stuff. Very chill.

Well, in our latest podcast episode, Corey and Tiago get into proof of human, agentic delegation, bot traffic, ticket scalping, Tinder verification, Zoom deepfake checks, enterprise fraud, gaming bots, and why Tiago thinks the internet may break without something like this.

This video breaks down exactly how that works, including the privacy behind it, and the key early use-cases for developers who want to create apps built on this technology.

Here's our favorite parts:

• (3:24) Why CAPTCHAs are cooked: Tiago explains why the old bot filters fail when AI can solve puzzles, generate selfies, and fake documents.

• (5:03) The Ticketmaster thought experiment: If every person gets four Taylor Swift tickets, the internet needs a digital version of the ticket counter and hand stamp.

• (11:12) Good agents vs. abusive bots: Tiago says World is not anti-bot. The future internet needs to know when a bot is acting on behalf of a real person.

• (14:18) Digital power of attorney: Tiago explains “agentic delegation,” where your AI agent can show up to a website and prove it is acting for you.

• (16:57) AI detection becomes an arms race: Using AI to detect AI only catches the previous model. The next one trains against your detector.

• (19:54) World ID, explained simply: Tiago calls it a “blue check mark for the internet that actually works.”

• (27:35) The free concert stress test: World ran a human-only concert in San Francisco and says hundreds of thousands of bots tried to get in.

• (33:10) The privacy objection, head-on: Corey asks what World actually stores, and Tiago says the obvious creepy version would be sending photos to a server and keeping them. TL;DR: that’s not what this does.

• (35:16) The shredded-image privacy model: Tiago explains anonymized multi-party computation with an analogy that actually makes the cryptography understandable.

• (39:02) Disposable IDs for every app: World ID uses zero-knowledge proofs so apps can verify you without seeing the same identity token everywhere.

• (41:16) Identify “Corey” vs. “a unique human”: Tiago explains that World ID does not prove your legal identity by default. It proves that a real, unique human completed verification.

• (45:38) The credential rails idea: Tiago explains how governments, employers, and universities could eventually issue separate credentials on the same privacy-preserving standard.

Why watch this? Because the “prove you’re human” debate is about to show up everywhere: dating apps, games, concert tickets, video calls, financial accounts, Shopify stores, and AI agents that need to make decisions on our behalf.

At some point in the not so distant future, your agents will probably need to be registered to you to keep going wherever you want them to go and doing things for you online. We’re going to not just need, but WANT a solution like this when that day comes.

Watch and/or Listen now: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

P.S: We were inspired by how important this conversation is that we wrote up a whole deep dive on the topic. Click here for more on why this matters and how it works!

P.P.S. The most useful agent idea in the episode might be Tiago’s “digital power of attorney” framing at (14:18). If agents are going to shop, book, deploy, or pay on our behalf, websites need a way to know which bots are allowed to act on YOUR behalf.

Keep scrolling for more about a mystery model expected to be GPT 5.6, updates from our recent livestream with coding educator Scott Hanselman, and more…

Special shout out to Guru who sponsored this video! More on them below.

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🔴 LIVE TOMORROW: GPT 5.6 WEN?? Lets talk Mercury-Alpha rumors (5.6 in a trench coat??), Codex for work, and Hermes Desktop

Tomorrow on The Neuron LIVE, we’re talking through the rumor mill around Mercury-alpha, the mystery model many people now assume is GPT-5.6.

We’ll break down what people think is coming, what actually changes if OpenAI does ship it this week (Andrew Curran seems to think so), and how it fits into the bigger agent ecosystem alongside Codex and our new favorite personal agent tool, Hermes Desktop, plus the larger wave of coding and desktop agents.

Come hang with us live, bring questions, and help us figure out whether Mercury-alpha is the next big model jump or another round of extremely online model-name archaeology.

Choose your favorite platform to watch live: Watch on YouTube | Join on LinkedIn

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🎙️ In Case You Missed It…

Four recent interviews you’ll definitely want to check out (pick whatever looks interesting to you and dive in!):

1. Want to build useful software with AI? Watch: Scott Hanselman Showcases Engineering with AI LIVE from Microsoft Build 2026

Live from Microsoft Build, Corey sat down with Scott Hanselman for one of our most useful beginner-friendly demos yet.

Scott is one of the best technical explainers in software: a longtime Microsoft and GitHub developer, teacher, speaker, author, blogger, and podcaster who has helped millions of people understand new tech without making them feel like they missed a prerequisite course in 2007.

TL;DW: Corey and Scott walked through what AI-augmented software development looks like beyond “vibe coding,” including GitHub Copilot, practical prototyping, small tools, and how to turn everyday ideas into working software. Scott also showed his own vibe-coded projects, including Baby Smash and Tiny Tool Town.

Why you should watch: The coolest demo was Scott taking an open-source tool and turning it into a personal blood sugar tracking app for his own diabetes management. If that does not get your idea blood flowing for what you can build with AI, we do not know what will.

P.S: We just turned this livestream into a blog recapping what Corey and Scott discussed, trying to make sense of it for beginners. Read it here to follow along.

• YouTube: Watch Here

2. Wondering what comes after GPUs? Watch: What Comes After GPUs? Great Sky’s Bet on Brain-Like AI

TL;DW: Corey talked with Jeff Shainline, co-founder and CEO of Great Sky, about superconducting optoelectronic networks, brain-like AI hardware, and why future AI systems may need machines built around memory, light, and analog values instead of today’s GPU-heavy stack.

Why you should watch: This is the hardware version of the post-transformer debate. If AI progress depends on which architectures our machines can cheaply test, Great Sky’s bet could make weirder model ideas much more practical.

• YouTube: Watch Here

• Spotify: Listen Here

• Apple Podcasts: Listen Here

3. Want to build real-time voice agents? Watch: Building AI Voice Agents with LiveKit’s Ben Cherry

TL;DW: Corey went live with Ben Cherry from LiveKit to break down real-time AI agents that can listen, respond, handle interruptions, use tools, and feel fast enough for actual humans.

Why you should watch: Voice agents sound easy until latency, interruptions, audio quality, and turn-taking show up. This one is useful if you want to understand what separates a neat demo from something people can actually use.

• YouTube: Watch Here

4. Curious whether AI can prove its work? Watch: Can AI Solve Math’s Biggest Mystery?

TL;DW: Corey talks with Tudor Achim, co-founder and CEO of Harmonic, the company behind Aristotle, about formal reasoning, machine-checkable proofs, and why math may be the cleanest test case for AI you can verify.

Why you should watch: This episode gets at one of the most important trust questions in AI: how do we move from “the model says so” to “the answer can be checked”?

• YouTube: Watch Here

• Spotify: Listen Here

• Apple Podcasts: Listen Here

One more before you go:

We’ve been doing a run of beginner-friendly livestreams lately. Here’s our rec: start with A Total Beginner’s Guide to AI Agents & Automation if you want the plain-English version of agents, automation, APIs, webhooks, JSON, and MCP. We’ve got a written guide to accompany it here as well.

Last thing: And if you haven’t subscribed yet, please do! Click the image below to go to our channel and hit “subscribe” to get notified right when new videos go live.

We just crossed 20K subscribers, which is awesome. Now we’re trying to hit 50K by the end of the year.

We’re actually at 20.5K right now… But wouldn’t it be cool if you helped us go from 20.5K… to 25K?!

Well, you can! If you like learning about AI, trust, agents, and what all this means for normal humans trying to keep up, do us a favor and click here to subscribe.

Stay curious,

The Neuron Team

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