Might be what'll happen. We could've been reaping the benefits of and/or living the dystopia of that
today, or even 10 years ago, were the decision made to actually barcode everyone. But we didn't, and what's likely to happen is we'll push the biometrics recognition technologies to such high level, the machines will no longer need the barcodes. Then the dystopia will happen anyway.
Note the irony here: what people don't want is the dystopia, but what's stopping it now is that they find barcoding people creepy. They won't notice the AI tech until it's too late.
On a broader note, this pattern of rounding a square peg to fit if we can't square the round hole - it's what we do. All the time, everywhere. For instance, designing a reliable all-terrain vehicle is something that technologically escapes now even to this day, but thousands of years ago our ancestors figured out that if they flatten and pave the terrain, then a simple wheel would do.
