The Fight for Democratized AI: Tech CEO Calls out Big Tech Tactics
Interview
Terence Zimwara
The Fight for Democratized AI: Tech CEO Calls out Big Tech Tactics
Travis Good, co-founder and CEO of Ambient, warns about the dangers of closed-source artificial intelligence, emphasizing its lack of transparency and auditability as a threat to independent information sources and user autonomy.
The Fight for Democratized AI: Tech CEO Calls out Big Tech Tactics
Closed-Source AI Threatens Independent Content Creators
In a stark warning about the future of information access, Travis Good, co-founder and CEO of Ambient, raises significant concerns about the rise of closed-source artificial intelligence (AI). Good argues that the lack of transparency and auditability in these systems poses a severe threat to independent information sources and user autonomy.
“Closed-source AI is AI that is produced behind corporate firewalls and operated without transparency or auditability,” Good explains. “It is a major problem because AI is an incredibly centralizing force.”
Good points to the massive usage of platforms like ChatGPT, where hundreds of millions of people rely on AI-generated responses instead of traditional websites. This trend, he argues, puts independent content creators at risk.
“What happens to the world when there are just two or three chokepoints through which all information can be controlled in the finest-grained way imaginable? No entity can be trusted with that kind of power,” he states.
Good’s concerns stem from observed practices within the closed-source AI sector. He cites so-called algorithmic bias, which involves training AI models to lie in order to be politically correct, as one example of concerning practices. The Ambient CEO also identifies performance manipulation and competitive cannibalization as other concerning things about the rise of closed-source AI.
Big Tech Tactics Pose Threat to Democratized AI
Good’s background, which includes a strong academic foundation from Harvard University—where he graduated magna cum laude—and a Ph.D. in IT from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, lends weight to his warnings. His professional experience, including significant roles at Union Pacific Railroad, gives him a broad understanding of large-scale digital architecture and its inherent dangers.
“Do we want to effectively give huge swaths of decision-making power to entities that have historically treated us like the product instead of the customer?” Good asks.
The Ambient CEO also addresses the hurdles preventing artificial intelligence from becoming a public good, as many experts desire. In his views shared with Bitcoin.com News, Good highlights how the promise of democratized AI is overshadowed by established big-tech tactics. He identifies one method tech giants could use to perpetuate this control.
“We have seen the big-tech playbook. It looks like regulatory capture and the subsidization of unprofitable services until competition is extinguished,” Good states.
The CEO believes such tactics, which proved successful in reshaping the social media landscape, could still be thwarted, but much still needs to be done to make this possible.
Meanwhile, Good briefly discusses how verifiable AI inference creates trust without requiring faith in the provider and why this is needed in an increasingly AI-reliant world.
“It’s similar to how Bitcoin lets you verify transactions without trusting a bank—Ambient lets you verify AI outputs without trusting the AI provider. This protection becomes essential as more of our economy relies on AI-powered decisions.”
Still, Good expresses concern that only a few L1 blockchains have the required transactions per second (TPS) to handle verifiable AI inference on their roadmaps. The CEO argues that verified inference must be cost-competitive with unverified inference to drive demand. Meanwhile, miners performing verified inference require fair compensation for their work, Good states. He concludes:
“The only economic design that maximally rewards miners (as opposed to capital holders) and gives them an ownership stake in a network is proof of work. Essentially, there are no low-overhead, verified-inference proof-of-work blockchains featuring incredibly high TPS, which is where Ambient comes in.”
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