Ripple’s CTO has responded to a conspiracy theory fabricated by someone using OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The theory claims that Ripple secretly controls the XRP Ledger (XRPL).
On Dec 3, a Twitter thread from Stefan Huber states that when asked a series of questions about the decentralization of Ripple’s XRP Ledger, the ChatGPT bot said that although people can participate in the governance of Ripple’s blockchain, Ripple holds the “ultimate control” over XRPL.
When asked how it was possible, the AI stated that Ripple might have “abilities not fully disclosed in public source code.”
The AI stated that XRPL’s ultimate decision-making power “still lies with Ripple labs” and that the company could make modifications “even if they do not have support from the supermajority” of participants. It also compared the XRPL to Bitcoin, stating that the former was “truly decentralized.”
David Schwartz, Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer, has questioned the bot’s logic, arguing that Ripple could secretly govern the Bitcoin network using that logic since it cannot be determined from the source code.
The bot stated that “a distributed ledger such as the [XRPL]” is used to facilitate secure and efficient transactions without the necessity of a central authority, which is contrary to its assertion that the XRPL has been centrally managed.
Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, also commented on the AI chatbot in an Oct 4 tweet. He said that the idea that AI would be “free from human biases” had probably died the hardest.
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