Proof of Humanity in the McDonald's Drive-Thru

While researching Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) I learned about the proof of humanity. A ZKP that proves you are a real flesh-and-blood human and not an AI replicant by assigning a unique personal identifier that is verified through a zero-knowledge ceremony on the public blockchain.

I imagined a future where instead of door-to-door salesmen, we get armed Ethereum guards knocking on our doors so our unique human characteristics can be scanned by the privately-funded government oracle for upload and hash into the local Merkle tree.

This kind of dystopian absurdity is the kind of thing you'd see in a Neal Stephenson novel - so I asked Chat-GPT to write a short story. The result is too good not to share.

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The Day the Drive-Thru Went Offline

In the style of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash

At first, Proof of Humanity was supposed to dignify the species. But once it reached critical mass, the real test of civilization came when the McDonald's app refused service.

Some guy -- mid-commute, mid-existential crisis -- tries to redeem his McRib points and gets hit with a red pop-up:

ERROR: Unverified consciousness. Please register your iris on the World ID blockchain.

He blinks at it like it's a joke. It isn't. The drive-thru scanner blinks back -- a small, chrome hemisphere mounted beside the card reader, humming with moral authority. The teenager at the window shrugs; her training module didn't cover ontological verification.

"You can't prove you're a person, sir," she says, in the bored tone of someone quoting company policy.

He looks around at the other cars -- a line of commuters, all holding up their phones like penitents before a digital relic. The Orbs whirr, confirm, and the golden arches bestow their blessings: "Transaction verified: Human. Fries added to cart."

That's how the singularity actually arrived -- not with AI overthrowing mankind, but with mankind begging an algorithm to recognize its soul before breakfast.