The CTO of Ripple debunks ChatGPT's XRP conspiracy theory

The CTO of the company dismissed an AI chatbot's claim that Ripple can secretly control its blockchain through an undiscovered backdoor in the network's code.

The chief technology officer of Ripple has responded to a conspiracy theory created by the Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool ChatGPT, which claims Ripple secretly controls the XRP Ledger (XRPL).

According to a Dec. 3 Twitter thread by user Stefan Huber, when asked a series of questions about the decentralization of Ripple's XRP Ledger, the ChatGPT bot suggested that while individuals could participate in the governance of the blockchain, Ripple has "ultimate control" over XRPL.

When asked how this is feasible without the consensus of participants and its publicly known code, the artificial intelligence suggested that Ripple may have "capabilities that are not completely published in the public source code."

At one point, the AI stated that "the ultimate decision-making power" for XRPL "remains with Ripple Labs" and that the company could make changes "even if those changes lack the support of the network's supermajority of participants."

Furthermore, it contrasted the XRPL with Bitcoin, stating that Bitcoin was "really decentralized."

However, David Schwartz, CTO of Ripple, has questioned the reasoning of the bot, suggesting that Ripple might secretly manage the Bitcoin network using this logic, which cannot be discerned from the code.

The bot was also proven to contradict itself during the encounter, stating that "a distributed ledger like the [XRPL] enables secure and efficient transactions without the need for a central authority," which contradicts its declaration that the XRPL is centrally administered.

OpenAI's ChatGPT is a chatbot tool designed to communicate "in a conversational manner" and respond to nearly any inquiry a user may pose. It can also perform activities such as generating and evaluating smart contracts.

According to OpenAI, the AI was trained using "huge volumes of material from the internet authored by humans, including conversations." As a result, some of the bot's responses may be "inaccurate, untrue, or otherwise deceptive."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated upon its release on November 30 that it is "very much a research release" and "an early demo." Altman tweeted on December 5 that the tool has already attracted over one million users.

Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, weighed in on the AI chatbot on December 4, tweeting that the notion that AI "would be free of human prejudices has arguably died the hardest."