Little 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?
All 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.
It’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.
I 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.
I’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.
While I understand the risk of sharing sensitive information (e.g. bank login) with a 3rd party. But the current situation is such that your bank currently monopolize your bank information to improve your loan offer, to give you better service at better rate based on their understanding of your bank transaction history.
Currently, there is no aligned format for sharing your bank transaction history with other financial institution of your choice. Your current bank is the one who purposely makes it hard (only allowing you to share it through the same bank login) so that you are more locked-in in their eco system.
I used to work with Plaid as a provider, and you will notice certain banks who really do not like their customers using Plaid in sharing their bank transaction history with competitors will often have unscheduled maintenance that Plaid wouldn’t work so that you as a user would find friction using someone else and stay with only using products within their ecosystem.
I think the real question is less about why are we using Plaid to share our transaction information. If we are to have an open format to share our banking transaction history, what should be that format and what would be the lock and key for it?
While 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.
It 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.
> 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.
Generally 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).
Man, 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.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 60.2 ms ] threadReminds me of the underpant gnomes in many ways
Collect underpants ???AI??? Profit
BUT there’s just things that nobody should be doing ever, like give it access to your production system or bank account.
Currently, there is no aligned format for sharing your bank transaction history with other financial institution of your choice. Your current bank is the one who purposely makes it hard (only allowing you to share it through the same bank login) so that you are more locked-in in their eco system.
I used to work with Plaid as a provider, and you will notice certain banks who really do not like their customers using Plaid in sharing their bank transaction history with competitors will often have unscheduled maintenance that Plaid wouldn’t work so that you as a user would find friction using someone else and stay with only using products within their ecosystem.
I think the real question is less about why are we using Plaid to share our transaction information. If we are to have an open format to share our banking transaction history, what should be that format and what would be the lock and key for it?
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.
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.
This exactly the same shit Zuck did with Facebook. Hell with them all.
I never expected to be nostalgic for those days.
If it needs to see transactions, just have your salary deposited there, then an automatic transfer the same day to your real account?