this post was submitted on 21 May 2025
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TechTakes

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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

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We also use facial recognition to check that the developer working on your code is the same one Natasha picked.

Truly AI technology is enabling new frontiers... in abusive work environments.

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 31 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

> gets half a million invested in them by microsoft
> gets a friend to do audits
> gets one proper audit
> fucking dies

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 9 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

If I were a half-a-billion-dollar scam I would simply not have audits taps forehead

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 11 hours ago

Cryptocurrencyexecs after reading this : "we have a code red, a code red, the public has figured it out, abort abort!"

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago

i love awful systems so much

[–] HedyL@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Of course, it has long been known that some private investors would buy shares in any company just because its name contains letters like “.com” or “blockchain”. However, if a company invests half a billion in an ".ai" company, shouldn't it make sure that the business model is actually AI-based?

Maybe, if we really wanted to replace something with AI, we should start with the VC investors themselves. In this case, we might not actually see any changes for the worse.

Edit: Of course, investors only bear part of the blame if fraud was involved. But the company apparently received a large part of its funding in 2023, following reports of similar lies in as early as 2019. I find it hard to imagine that tech-savvy investors really wouldn't have had a chance to spot the problems earlier.

Edit No. 2: Of course, it is also conceivable that the investors didn't care at all because they were only interested in the baseless hype, which they themselves fueled. But with such large sums of money at stake, I still find it hard to imagine that there was apparently so little due diligence.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 9 points 1 day ago

The Register said in its Builder.AI obit that the company is really into making its devs use AI coding. lol.