If you look up into the night sky (at night, of course) in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus, you won’t see the nearest (as of this date) black hole called Gaia BH1 (aka Gaia DR3 4373465352415301632), which is a mere 1560 light years away (i.e., practically in our backyard). If you get to within 17 kms from it (please don’t try this at home), no power in the universe can save you from its clutches. This point of no return is called the Scwharzschild radius. From our human perspective, that’s nothing to worry about.
Now, look up 38.8987° N latitude, 77.0056° West longitude on the third rock from the sun in the Milky Way galaxy. There, you will find another black hole called the SEC (Securities Exchange Commission). Its physical Schwarzschild radius is not really a “radius”, but its physical event horizon (another name for the S radius) is the U.S.A, while its virtual event horizon is the planet Earth (i.e., there’s no escape!). From our private capital markets perspective, this is definitely something to worry about.
Public blockchains in the financial markets today have one leg within the SEC’s event horizon while, with the other leg, they are trying very hard to escape its clutches. Any guesses who is going to win this tug of war? The SEC has far more resources and staying power than the advocates of the public blockchains. The SEC’s event horizon is the JOBS Act and securities regulation in general.
Now, imagine a bright blue luminous star. Stars don’t have the equivalent of a “clutching” boundary like a black hole does (you can thank Newton for that). But, there is a boundary beyond which there isn’t enough energy or influence to sustain life. Think of it as an “entropic boundary”. Beyond that boundary, there are no laws, no order, no life, just a frigid waste. Inside the entropic boundary and way closer to the star is the hot crucible of innovative hype that can destroy wealth, demolish dreams, and diminish hope.
It is only at or close to the entropic boundary that responsible and game-changing innovation is to be found. The public blockchains were spawned far outside the entropic boundary of investor-centric responsible innovation, out in the dark, frigid, lawless, and wild space, wandering dangerously close to the SEC’s event horizon.
At KoreChain, we believe in the power of a distributed ledger and subscribe to the benefits of decentralized data and processing. But, we stop far short of decentralizing intelligence and common sense. Unconditional freedom is the hunting ground of crooks and free-loaders.
Surprisingly, artificial intelligence (AI) has had a much more responsible evolutionary path. For decades, AI could only be found in the halls of academia. With increasing computational power and availability of massive amounts of transactional data, AI found another home in the corporate world. Because the corporate world values monetization over privacy and ownership of data, it was inevitable that AI stepped over the entropic boundary. With the dramatic Cambrian explosion of large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and hundreds of other AI tools (numbering at the present time to over 100 and rapidly growing), AI clearly broke free of the protective fence of the entropic boundary.
On the other side of the entropic boundary there are dangerous black holes lying in wait for the unwary users of AI (let’s call these the ‘dark’ holes to distinguish them from the blameless astronomical black holes). Some of these dark holes are independent criminal organizations and terrorists, others are state-sponsored hackers, yet others are the misanthropes and misfits whose motives are death, desolation, and destruction. Like black holes, you can’t spot them easily.
The difference between these dark holes and the SEC is that the dark holes are out to catch the good guys while the SEC tries to catch the bad guys. Unfortunately for us, there is no equivalent of the SEC in the AI world. I doubt there will ever be one. Putting any guardrails around AI at this point in time is like smoking a cigar outside in a hurricane and trying to stuff the cigar smoke back into the cigar. Any bets on how this will play out?
At KoreChain, we focus exclusively on using AI for good within the strictly defined universe of the global private markets. We use AI to help, to protect, and to guide. The KoreChain empowers the convergence of AI and blockchain around the right side of the entropic boundary.