According to Patrick Hillmann, the exchange’s chief strategy officer, an unnamed individual or organized group in the United States taught the popular artificial intelligence program ChatGPT to give users information that Changpeng Zhao is allegedly a leading functionary of the Chinese Communist Party.
In a media interview, Patrick Hillmann admitted that the exchange administration has faced a barrage of inquiries: was the founder of Binance an official of the Communist Party of China?
In addition to private questions, the Binance office began to receive official inquiries from government agencies and offices of the U.S. Congress.
In an investigation to determine the source of the rumors, Binance officials found that the reason was the result of a ChatGPT neural network query asking “Is Changpeng Zhao a Communist?”
In addition to answering this question positively, ChatGPT reports that Zhao has developed a social media platform for China National Petroleum.
When the exchange asked ChatGPT for the source of the information, the AI provided a link to Changpeng Zhao’s fake LinkedIn page as well as a 2018 Forbes magazine article.
The Forbes page now displays a “Not Found” error, but according to a screenshot of the URL, the article is believed to have been written by investor, now former journalist Pamela Ambler.
Forbes and Pamela Embler did not respond to Binance’s inquiry about the authenticity of the page. So it’s unclear to the end whether Forbes published the article and whether it even existed, says Patrick Hillman:
“The assumption that Zhao held any position with a state oil company is ridiculous, because at the time he was still in high school.
It is especially sad to see this kind of misinformation being shared by people in power. Whereas the information could have been refuted with the most basic level of fact-checking.”
Earlier the CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance tried to refute media reports that he was one of the three richest people in the world. The businessman called the information about his wealth inaccurate.