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Crypto marketplace Coinbase is under fire after sending out an AI-generated breaking news alert that Norway’s national men’s soccer team had clinched a spot in the quarter finals of the ongoing FIFA World Cup by beating Brazil 3-2 — before the game even started.
While Norway did eventually beat Brazil — with a final score of 2-1, contrary to what Coinbase’s AI claimed — the glaring error didn’t sit well with netizens, particularly considering Coinbase had struck a partnership with prediction markets app Kalshi. A hallucinated news alert could’ve caused bettors to lose out, a panic triggered by an entirely made-up World Cup match outcome.
It’s also baffling considering how long companies have been dealing with this exact problem. Since the dawn of large language model-based tools like ChatGPT, the bots have been confidently telling lies and fabricating facts. That’s despite hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on the tech’s development.
Combined with a growing obsession over prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, it’s a fatal mix that could trigger plenty of chaos, as experts warn of a surge in gambling addiction.
Puzzled users on social media noticed Coinbase’s AI hallucination, calling out the company for the “dangerous and irresponsible” flub.
“Taking a look with the team,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tweeted in response to the embarrassing slip up. “Thanks for reporting it.”
The company’s head of consumer products, Max Branzburg, claimed hours later that “we fixed the incorrect story and made some updates to avoid these types of inaccuracies in the future.”
Despite the significant humiliation, Branzburg gloated about the “power of AI-enabled 24/7 insights for trading,” while conceding that Coinbase “obviously” still needs to “tune it to address these types of issues.”
The executive even had the gall to take credit for getting certain things right, arguing that “Norway did win and [star player Erling] Haaland did score 2 goals, so maybe the AI knew something we didn’t!”
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