Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, has raised concerns about the risks associated with AI censorship following the recent acquisition of an AI-powered investment advice platform called Pluto by the crypto exchange Robinhood.
According to Bloomberg, the acquisition is intended to enhance Robinhood’s offerings by providing tailored investment strategies and analytics to its retail brokerage users. Hoskinson’s apprehensions shed light on the potential drawbacks of centralized control over AI algorithms.
Robinhood’s Strategic Acquisition
Robinhood’s acquisition of Pluto Capital, established by Jacob Sansbury, signifies a strategic move to strengthen the platform’s capabilities. Pluto is known for its AI-driven personalized investment advice and real-time analytics, services that were traditionally exclusive to wealthier investors.
Mayank Agarwal, Robinhood’s Vice President of Engineering, commended Pluto’s platform and expertise in artificial intelligence, emphasizing their joint goal of democratizing finance. The integration of Pluto’s AI tools is expected to enhance Robinhood’s service to its customer base, particularly retail traders, by offering up-to-date market information and personalized investment recommendations based on individual portfolios.
Despite these developments, Hoskinson continues to express concerns about AI censorship and its broader implications through a recent social media post.
Support for Cardano Founder’s Worries
Hoskinson highlighted the potential drawbacks of artificial intelligence models undergoing “alignment” training, where certain knowledge is restricted from future generations based on the perspectives of a select group of individuals beyond public accountability. Backing Hoskinson’s concerns, the research team behind “Cardano GPT” affirmed the issue, pointing out that centralized control over a model’s training data can lead to biased or censored information.
The team suggests that decentralization of language models (LLMs) could be a solution to this problem, but challenges such as limited computing power hinder widespread adoption, currently accounting for less than 1% usage.
Proposed hybrid models aim to strike a balance between centralized training data and decentralized LLMs, addressing concerns about censorship while enabling broader access to advanced language models.
As Robinhood’s acquisition of Pluto advances AI capabilities in retail investment, the concerns raised by Cardano’s Hoskinson and the proposed hybrid model underline the importance of transparency and democratization in the development and deployment of AI technologies.
At the current time, Cardano’s native token, ADA, was priced at $0.401, showing positive price movements with a 4% increase in the past 24 hours and a 6% increase over the past week.
Image source: DALL-E, chart source: TradingView.com