Crypto Founder Ken DiCross on How He Uses AI: 'I Don’t Trust AI,' but 'I Use It for Everything'

Ken DiCross is building the infrastructure to connect blockchains, and he’s doing it with AI. The founder of Wire Network, a blockchain interoperability company, DiCross says he uses AI for everything from pitching investors to stress-testing white papers. In this week’s edition of How Do You Use AI?, he explains how it saves him hours every day, why he doesn’t trust it blindly, and why decentralized AI could be the next big revolution. No TED Talk nonsense, just real life.

Episode 2: Ken DiCross—Crypto Believer.

Gizmodo: How do you use AI right now?

DiCross: I use AI for everything I possibly can; from helping with my schedule to categorizing and helping with email responses. I definitely use it for search. I can’t tell you the last time I went to Google. I think that is just atrocious. I use it for business plans, for pitch decks. I use it to compare other interoperability or blockchain or AI companies.

Gizmodo: How does that work?

DiCross: I go to their website, grab their white paper, and download it into the LLM. Then I start asking a series of questions until I can find the issue. It’s always centralization. Rather than solving it properly in a decentralized way, they just add a fix that creates some kind of risk—security, cost, or time. I create my list and send it off to my team or investors to show we still have a moat. That would take an enormous amount of time if I did it manually. AI helps me get it done in five minutes.

Gizmodo: What was the last thing AI helped you do?

DiCross: I created a contract. We’re starting to bring on advisors, ambassadors, and consultants. I took all the requirements for what we want these people to do and asked the AI to categorize them—what belongs in each role—and generate a base contract. I still send it to legal, but it saves me an hour-long call or a lengthy email. I just feed it in real time and it gets me 80% there.

Gizmodo: Are there tasks you’ve completely handed over to AI?

DiCross: Yes, especially presentations. I don’t create slides from scratch anymore. I just prompt it with the bullet points, and it fills out the rest. The LLM already knows Wire; we feed it everything. The output is fast and on point. It’s the same for my devs. My top-tier engineers use it so efficiently that they’re basically two or three people in one. We don’t need junior-level devs anymore.

Gizmodo: Do you trust AI completely?

DiCross: No. It still hallucinates. I gave it a math problem the other day, and it botched it; something a six-year-old could do. I had to walk it through the right answer. So when people do “vibe coding” with AI, it can be dangerous. If you don’t understand the code, you won’t know if the AI’s output is secure. You still need experts in the loop.

Gizmodo: Do you use it in your personal life?

DiCross: Definitely. I use it for search all the time. I don’t use Yelp or Google anymore. If I’m traveling, I ask for the best restaurants nearby, their hours, anything. I pick up 5 or 10 minutes here and there and end up with a few extra hours in my day.

Gizmodo: Has AI ever surprised you?

DiCross: It’s not the answers that surprise me. It’s when it won’t answer something. You hit a wall and don’t always know why. It’s frustrating. That’s why we need decentralized AI: so people can get the information they need without worrying that it’s being filtered or censored.

Gizmodo: What do you say to people who are scared AI knows too much?

DiCross: That’s exactly why it has to be decentralized. I agree with them. Every time I use ChatGPT, I sigh. I know it’s building a profile on me. You want your data encrypted and private. Right now, if you type in something like a medical concern, that data can be sold. Your insurance could go up in minutes. That’s dystopian. We need decentralized, encrypted AI that works for us, not for Microsoft.

Gizmodo: Do you feel uneasy using it?

DiCross: Yes, because I know my data is getting hoovered up. But I also feel optimistic. Decentralized AI is coming. Just like Linux became the backbone of every server, we’ll have open-source AI that anyone can use without fear. That’s where the future is heading.