OpenAI wants your bank-account data; can you trust them with it?

AI and trust
One of the underappreciated things that made Cosimo de' Medici such a successful banker is that the man knew the value of trust. The Medici had myriad powerful clients, including several popes, for whom discretion was key. Even in a social media-less age such as the Renaissance, the pope's finances were a delicate matter not to be shared publicly. Cosimo and his heirs kept two sets of books. One set were the official books used to assess the business for taxes and such matters, and the other – the libri segreti – were the books used to manage the real accounts of the bank and its clients. Only Cosimo's inner circle knew the bank's true finances. You can imagine the popes and others appreciated that.

The Medici's clients trusted them not only with their money but with their data. Sure it was written in long, cursive Latin rather than entered in a spreadsheet, but it was data all the same. One of the things that gave the Medici a competitive advantage in Renaissance Europe is that the rich and powerful who used them knew their data was safe. Because Cosimo understood the value of trust. And every banker needs a competitive advantage.

I was thinking about Cosimo and data when I read Melinda Huspen's story about the partnership between Plaid and OpenAI that will allow ChatGPT Pro users to upload their financial data, directly from the users' bank account. I can understand why Plaid would want to do this. It's in the data business. And I can certainly understand why OpenAI wants the data. No data, no AI. But I'm not so sure I understand why any regular person would want to feed their bank information into ChatGPT.

I mean, I can kind of sort of understand why somebody would want to feed their most sensitive financial data into the app. I guess it'll allow you to do more with the app. But do you really trust OpenAI with your most sensitive financial information? Do you think they'll protect it as well as Cosimo protected his clients' information? The libri segreti were so segreti that they weren't discovered until 1950. That is how you maintain trust. I'm not so sure OpenAI or any other AI has yet proven themselves that trustworthy. And even if they were earnestly trying to protect your data, given the degree and sophistication of hackers these days, is it smart to be sharing your bank data with anybody other than your banker?

(Full disclosure, I'm probably going to end up getting some money from Anthropic in its settlement of the copyright case – I was one of the numerous authors whose copyrights were violated. So maybe I'm a bit more distrustful of these companies than most.)

Mamdani and Trump both target payments
There are a few targets that politicians from across the spectrum both like to attack. Inflation. China. Those kinds of things. It seems you can add payments companies to the list.

New York's new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, came out publicly against Western Union's proposed acquisition of its much smaller rival, Intermex, our John Adams reported. Hizzoner argued that Western Union is just trying to take a rival off the board so it can then charge higher fees. The mayor himself doesn't have the power to block the deal, but he's imploring the powerful state Department of Financial Services to block the deal. This comes just a week after the Department of Justice extracted a $30 million settlement form PayPal over a program designed for minorities that ran afoul of the Trump administration's anti-diversity efforts.

Sure, the two politicians are attacking the same industry for very different reasons. But they are still both going after the same target. Is the payments industry becoming a safe political pinata?