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OpenAI is connecting ChatGPT to bank accounts via Plaid
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- pesus 5mo agoLovely! It's probably inevitable this will fuck over people eventually. Sam may as well prepare his next blog post ahead of time.
- andy_ppp 5mo agoIt’s like we are trying to run as fast as possible towards an AI controlled disaster by connecting absolutely everything we can to the AI… even in the worst sci-fi the robots need to steal codes to get access to systems and we are just leaving the door wide open.
- lenerdenator 5mo agoWe're not trying to run as fast as possible towards anything. It's a bunch of investors trying to run as fast as possible towards the AI controlled disaster, or as they see it, an AI controlled unlocking of value.
- micromacrofoot 5mo agodon't worry, we'll have plenty of human controlled disasters from this before we even get to agi
- xiaoyu2006 5mo agoI read about a post that in dn42 community where a dude set up an AI agent with access to his Amazon API, which eventually deployed servers generating a bill of $6000.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- ernsheong 5mo agoWhat could go wrong
- steveharing1 5mo agoIt won't go wrong if you don't wanna use this feature but if you do then its upto you that you''re trusting a for profit company that much that you provide them with your confidential data.
- righthand 5mo ago“Let the bodies hit the floor!”
- hyperionultra 5mo agoDo we still have a choice to not use?
- steveharing1 5mo agoYou absolutely do not have to use the new financial feature. Its optional
- reaperducer 5mo agoUntil every web site and bank requires you to use it because their CTO saw an ad in an airport that said it was a good idea and makes line go up. "Leadership" today is monkey-see, monkey-do. See also: Sign in with Google on every web site, even if you don't have a Google account; and Cloudflare interrupting your web surfing every six minutes to make sure you haven't be absorbed by the Borg.
- parliament32 5mo agoLittle doubt the true motivation behind this is the advertising angle. What better way to advertise to consumers than seeing exactly what they're spending money on, historically and in near-realtime?
- carlos-menezes 5mo agoI feel like every single day OpenAI and Anthropic are entrenching their slopware in everyday products and workplaces with little to no way to opt-out. This is getting dystopian.
- frb 5mo agoWas thinking the same recently. It feels like an arms race on who’s gonna become the Microsoft of the 90s, trying to own and provide everything. I think it will play out in the same way
- BoneShard 5mo agoI now think AI is a virus, which infects whatever it touches. Not just software, but the books (there're already slopbooks printed, and I'm not talking about fiction books, but rather real textbooks, history, music, art, etc...). In XX years what can you even trust? We will adapt and get around it, but I'm not yet sure how.
- Zenst 5mo agoAll set for a perfect storm with a single exploit down the line. Which could take out so much and OpenAI with it. What a way to burst the bubble, not an if, more a when as so many eggs in that basket and they have yet to invent a solid lid. Reminds me of the underpant gnomes in many ways Collect underpants ???AI??? Profit
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> Which could take out so much and OpenAI with it I guess I’m not seeing the systemic failure mode with a Plaid hook-up? The worst case is it sends a bunch of peoples’ money into the aether. That sucks for them and for OpenAI. But I’m not seeing it e.g. collapsing a bank.
- warkdarrior 5mo agoA meme prompt with a prompt injection in it would easily reach millions of ChatGPT users.
- simianwords 5mo agocan you give an example of how it can work?
- cyanydeez 5mo agojust takes a single corrupt prompt and a class action lawsuit is easily primed. But yeah, can't have a systemic failure in the grift economy.
- dude250711 5mo agoThe only better idea would be a Robinhood integration.
- frangonf 5mo agoAnd Sports Bets and casino integrations.
- ReptileMan 5mo agoPolymarket.
- forinti 5mo agoPeople will pay for OpenAI to have access to their financial data??
- mcphage 5mo agoI wonder if I could pay someone to run me over with a bus.
- nonethewiser 5mo agoSure. But it's going to be expensive. It actually costs me a lot of money to provide a "running you over with a bus" service.
- rprenger 5mo agoDidn't Matt Levine tell a story about Masayoshi Son doing that? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21427688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21427688
- lacy_tinpot 5mo agoWhat do you think plaid is doing? OpenAI is just a new-ish player.
- ianm218 5mo agoMost people don't care at all about their privacy. Apps like Venmo by default will share basically who you are spending time with and what your doing, Strava basically exposes where you live and your sleep/ workout schedule by default. I wouldn't want to share my financial data with OpenAI but for the average consumer the ship has sailed.
- frb 5mo agoI’m generally positive towards AI and LLMs.. BUT there’s just things that nobody should be doing ever, like give it access to your production system or bank account.
- cyanydeez 5mo agoPeople have been electing a clear grifter in multiple countries to do the same, so, you know, people gonna people.
- carlos-menezes 5mo agoI feel like we're now at a point where that's a hot take.
- NotAFurry2 5mo ago[dead]
- rvz 5mo agoBut LLMs are like humans! Nothing wrong about with giving them access to your bank or savings accounts /s
- lxgr 5mo agoHonestly, given that your bank most likely is processing your data using AI/LLMs anyway (after all, credit scores were one of the first applications of "big data" and "machine intelligence", back when that was mostly logistic regression over a handful of data points), why should I not also reap the benefits of that? I think until proven otherwise, it's fair to consider financial data public information at this point. If we want to change that, I think it'll take way more than just not granting ChatGPT access to your bank account (although it'll definitely include it).
- freehorse 5mo agoCannot you feed your financial info to an LLM rather than give it full access to your account? The point of not giving it full access is also a matter of security of your account, more than about privacy.
- binarymax 5mo agoI’ve been asked to sign up to plaid by clients three times. Each time I’ve said no. I’m not giving a 3rd party access to my bank account. I don’t understand how people enable this total loss of friction for direct account egress. There needs to be friction.
- chao- 5mo agoRefinancing a loan I passed on the lowest possible rate I could get, for a slightly higher one, specifically because they used Plaid. I'm not the most privacy-focused individual, not nearly as paranoid as I could be, but Plaid's model is an OBVIOUS step too far.
- njovin 5mo agoDepending on the rate difference, I'd be tempted to setup a 'burner' checking account at a separate financial institution and just auto-transfer the loan amount from my primary bank to the burner every month.
- lazide 5mo agoThat generally wouldn’t pass underwriting. They want the account the money is coming from to be the account with history and money in it already.
- el_benhameen 5mo agoReally? Both times I got a loan they wanted bank statements from all of my main accounts and verifiable income history, but they didn’t care that I was paying from an account that I had just opened for the specific purpose of paying the loan.
- volkk 5mo agosame. maybe it just depends on the bank, but i can't imagine why that would matter at all. they have the whole picture of your financial history, generally. what does it matter whether that one bank account has only enough in it to pay off the loan every month.
- superkuh 5mo agoWhile openai's use of Plaid's spying on bank accounts is framed as a service it's real use case will be identification. Very few people if any will sign up to use this voluntarily. But it is a way to get users used to Plaid's spying and start slowly boiling the frog. The endgame I see is that it will be illegal to communicate on the internet without having a proven bank account. At least in the USA where all ID verification is settling on banks (ie, Plaid). And the banks will tolerate 10,000 false positive denials of service to avoid a single false negative and be happy about it. Plaid even more so. Human beings will have no recourse as they are private companies. This really should be a service that the states of the federal government provide. It's a dark future we're speeding towards.
- ReptileMan 5mo agoToday's edition of "What could possibly go wrong" presents ...
- tendollarbot 5mo ago[flagged]
- drcode 5mo agoIt seems like every three years or so I need to use a tool with a plaid link feature, I try it, it gives some internal plaid error, then I find some other way of solving the issue.
- Marsymars 5mo agoPlaid is glitchy enough that whenever I hit a workflow that has no alternative, I just call the customer support line and tell them I get an error when trying to link my account via plaid, and they invariably have a manual way to do the thing on their end.
- cbg0 5mo ago> OpenAI did this with your health data in January. Now it wants your financial data too. This is far more valuable, they can see what political affiliation you have based on your campaign donations, predict things like cheating on your wife & the impending divorce, what vices you have and they can also build shadow profiles of all the people you give and receive money from even if they don't use the product.
- fontain 5mo agoit is far more valuable to know the type of boring things boring people buy in their boring daily lives
- gruez 5mo ago>they can see what political affiliation you have based on your campaign donations You can get a pretty good estimate just by looking at other demographic factors like age, education level, income, and zip code. Moreover, how many people actually donate to campaigns? >predict things like cheating on your wife & the impending divorce, what vices you have and they can also build shadow profiles of all of the people you give and receive money from even if they don't use the product. Google has all this capability for at least a decade. What concrete harms have actually materialized?
- kridsdale1 5mo agoOpenAI is now run by former Meta executives.
- gruez 5mo agoOkay, what concrete harms has Meta done with this information? At best you have some creeps using it to stalk their exes, which is bad, but a far cry from the AI takeover scenario implied by OP.
- cbg0 5mo agoI haven't implied an AI takeover, this data will be repackaged into a product for military/intelligence, political applications, insurance companies that can charge you more because they know you're willing to pay, and many more. These things already exist and happen, it's about the data getting better and not having to build tools to query it and make projections, since you can just type a query into a box even if you're not a data scientist.
- drcode 5mo agoThe comments here do seem to ignore that rocketmoney exists, and that many people use it
- dfee 5mo agoWhat's the local version of this? What's the best way to pull in my finance data locally, without clicking through to each portal? (USA)
- yencabulator 5mo agoGenerally banks and credit card companies let you download the statements in a machine-readable form. CSV, OFX, and so on. You're pretty much "clicking" "each portal" to download them, or paying an evil company for their services (and again letting 3rd parties snoop on your finances).
- delis-thumbs-7e 5mo agoWhy don’t you just ask for my blood? I can bottle it and send it over for Sama to drink for breakfast. This exactly the same shit Zuck did with Facebook. Hell with them all.
- hirvi74 5mo agoDo not worry, that's coming next.
- pizzafeelsright 5mo agoThis was done with 23 and me. Data was hacked and sold
- a-kgeorge 5mo ago[dead]
- cdrnsf 5mo agoOnly if it helps me buy more stock in GameStop
- rfrey 5mo agoMan, I remember when the common wisdom was that there would NEVER be enough people willing to put their credit card into a web browser to support a business. I never expected to be nostalgic for those days.
- xandrius 5mo agoTo be fair most frequently people online use debit cards which can be frozen if something goes wrong.
- lazide 5mo agoUh, debit cards are the worse as they (technically) don’t allow you to dispute charges like in a credit card. Money comes right out of your account first, and then you have to try to get it back. Don’t use debit cards online.
- lxgr 5mo ago> debit cards are the worse as they (technically) don’t allow you to dispute charges like in a credit card. That's a commonly propagated falsehood. Both legally (Regulation E) and practically (all large card networks require issuers to extend a zero-liability policy to debit cards), consumer protections are very similar. The big difference is that, as you say, with a debit card you're potentially out the money for a few days, which can be unpleasant if it makes the direct debit or check for your rent bounce.
- lazide 5mo agoI once had an issue where they drained the account (transactions weren’t blocked by the bank until the account didn’t have sufficient funds), and it took the bank a full month to investigate and refund. It’s not a trivial difference.
- lxgr 5mo agoThat's unfortunate, and almost certainly a Regulation E violation on their side. They're supposed to provide a provisional credit within 10 business days.
- TheChaplain 5mo agoStupid question, but what if you just open an account at a credit union, then have that one connected to plaid? If it needs to see transactions, just have your salary deposited there, then an automatic transfer the same day to your real account?
- phoenixy1 5mo agoYou totally could, but the purpose of the OpenAI/Plaid integration is to help you analyze your spending and finances with OpenAI (using it as a budgeting/financial planning app), so if your spending isn't actually in the account you connected, it's not going to give you any value.
- bubblegumcrisis 5mo agoI'm not sure if Plaid still is- but when they first came out they were pretty evil. They would go into your accounts and download all activity. I spent many hours e-mailing them, trying to get a clear answer of what data they collect- and they never said no to anything. Whenever I've been forced to use Plaid, I use a throw away "free-checking" bank account that has $1 in it. I guess birds of a feather flock together.
- quinncom 5mo agoPlaid is criticized because it’s a public-facing mechanism for third-party access into your finances, but many companies already have access without you knowing. In the US, many banks share nonpublic info such as transactions with retailers, marketers, government agencies, and others. They’re allowed to do so under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Report from the GOA: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-36 https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-36
- wilg 5mo agoSounds great! Everyone in these comments seems to be so out of touch with what people want out of computing.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- tintor 5mo agoThis extends the attack surface area for ChatGPT. A single web search through LLM can now pull malicious instructions from the web into LLM context, and instruct it to exfiltrate financial information. This has been done already with LLM email integrations.
- era_context 5mo ago[flagged]
- mdavid626 5mo agoWhat’s the worst can happpen?
- pizzafeelsright 5mo agoI wonder about this. Bad actor at plaid gets access to X accounts. Then sells data? Does unauthorized transfers? Create political or religious dossier on every account? I assume my balance would be returned if someone hacked but what if they wrote checks with signatures which is fraud and that's different. My understanding is no. Fraud doesn't return the balance. I have my money in 3 accounts. Most I lose is 33% of my total wealth. The alternative that illegals in the area use are gold and cash and those ladies get mugged and robbed constantly because others know they stash their valuables on their neck and under their bed. Without a bank the options are limited. Everything is online. Swiss accounts are toast. Crypto has similar problems as gold. Storage and protection is complicated. I'm inclined to build an LLC type asset and insure the liquidity or something. All my info can be purchased or captured through my phone or mail and that is enough info to write a check or take out a loan of $50k in my name. I am not sure the laws and banks protect me in the event someone successfully claims to be me. I wouldn't mind mandatory in person wet signatures for anything over $1k-5k or >5% of my account
- gaiagraphia 5mo agoThis tread's been incredibly insightful. I'm speechless as to the dystopian things which are happening throughout the world, which seemingly receive no friction whatsoever :/
- greatgib 5mo agoUnrelated to Plaid, openai use stripe for payment and it is a real pain in the ass. For example, when you travel in Asia and needs to use your card to pay for your account, that is European, the transaction will go on to be accepted by the bank and Stripe reject it in the last step if you don't use a local credit card.
- dnnddidiej 5mo agoKim Jong-il approves!
- arjie 5mo agoThat feels like the natural choice. I’m sure they could claim they’re more advanced by building their own integrations but I prefer that they use Plaid since I know it as a trusted entity. I used to use copilot.money which was a nice app. Nowadays though using a GUI is fairly tedious so I’d rather use an assistant but I want mostly personal cash flow and net worth visualization, and transaction review and this isn’t going to do it I think.
- The_President 5mo agoIn a few years Plaid will not be a thing. "Local" banks are already permitting their outsourced online banking systems to sell information on each line item. Soon it will be assumed that your transaction history will be easier to obtain than your credit.
- altcognito 5mo agoDo you have an article/source on this?
- The_President 5mo agoSearch for various online banking privacy policies and read through them yourself.
- yencabulator 5mo agoThe actual title is "ChatGPT Wants Access to Your Bank Account"
- afinlayson 5mo agoWhat do you get out of it that a csv or access to another service that allows you to do readonly access does this give you that you’d trust. What happens when they hallucinate a payment with an extra digit in it. This will be seen as another example of tech companies acting out of touch.
- Kondrick 5mo ago[flagged]
- Kondrick 4mo ago[flagged]