AI News and Information
- Thread starter GURPS
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Prepare for the first major AI setback. Sort of. The ridiculous story appeared yesterday in tech rag Dexerto, right below the howler of a headline, “AI company files for bankruptcy after being exposed as 700 Indian engineers.” It would be funnier had the fake AI firm not received almost $500 million dollars in venture capital.
Today’s new vocabulary term is “AI washing.” AI washing is a close cousin of “greenwashing,” another recently coined term describing weak companies that exaggerate their eco-friendliness in order to attract dimwitted ESG investors who care less about strong financial performance and prefer inexpensive virtue signaling. (Also see, e.g., “rainbow washing.”)
London-based AI startup Builder.AI filed for bankruptcy last week, after its “Natasha” AI character —which allegedly helped customers ‘build’ software— actually turned out to be 700 sweaty Indian programmers in a Mumbai data center-slash-curry takeout counter. The company, recently valued at $1.5 billion, has now become the highest-profile AI startup to collapse since ChatGPT launched the global investment frenzy.
A slew of articles described how the Indian fraudsters duped both Microsoft and several Middle Eastern oil sheiks out of a cool half-billion. AI is an unprecedented, revolutionary technology; but fraud is not new. It is as old as prostitutes and lawyers. (Present company excepted, of course.) But for every fraudster there must be an equal and opposite sucker.
At least two articles describing the disgraceful fake-AI meltdown reminded readers about the 2015 Theranos disaster. In that torrid affair, weird female-wunderkind Elizabeth Holmes (coincidentally, ‘married’ to an older Indian gentleman) “invented” a fake blood-testing skin chip that later morphed into a fake blood-testing robot and raised a whole lot of money (over $700 million). Anyway, Liz suckered in international politicians, top investors, and several other VIPs who should’ve known better, including Henry Kissinger and George Schultz.
These same VIP suckers, who tossed in plenty of their own money, and talked their rolodexes into also investing, made some of the most important decisions in human history in their official capacities. It makes you think.
Back in 2007, as a fresh young lawyer, my very first assignment was for a big bank client, Bank of America. The bank had lent $10 million dollars to Ponzi schemer Lou Perlman. Perlman fronted the Back Street Boys and had a fake airline. Whenever inspectors came around, he’d rent a 747 and stick temporary corporate logo decals on the sides. (That’s when I first learned you could lease 747s.)
I also quickly learned the bank lent all that money based only on Perlman’s signature. No collateral. You’d think bankers would know better, but it turns out they get ripped off just like everyone else. He gave the bankers free rides on his fake airplanes, and they shoveled the money toward him faster than you can get to Paris for lunch.
Ironically, Elizabeth Holmes’s father was a vice-president at Enron, which imploded in its own fraudulent accounting scandal. I guess creative finance runs in the family. Even more ironically, after her freshman year at Stanford in 2002, Liz landed a summer job in a Singapore biolab, where she performed tests for, I am not making this up, SARS-CoV-1. We truly live in the strangest timeline.
Anyway, you would think that the massive Theranos “fake-invention” scandal would have smartened investors up, at least for this generation of moneyed people, yet here we are again. The old saw about something being “too good to be true” remains good, and true. The truth is, no matter what the Indians say, consumer A.I. still cannot build apps by itself, and it’s possible we will never be allowed to have that tech. (Military A.I. skills may be a different ballgame, but that’s for a different post.)
Don’t worry— Elizabeth Holmes is currently serving a ten-year prison sentence. AI is safe for now. I understand she has a new, inmate-based multilevel marketing company in the works, and you can still get in on the ground cell block.
Bottom line: Be cautious about investing in AI.* (* Not investment advice.)
www.coffeeandcovid.com
lol ... never Indian Tech Companies
Today’s new vocabulary term is “AI washing.” AI washing is a close cousin of “greenwashing,” another recently coined term describing weak companies that exaggerate their eco-friendliness in order to attract dimwitted ESG investors who care less about strong financial performance and prefer inexpensive virtue signaling. (Also see, e.g., “rainbow washing.”)
London-based AI startup Builder.AI filed for bankruptcy last week, after its “Natasha” AI character —which allegedly helped customers ‘build’ software— actually turned out to be 700 sweaty Indian programmers in a Mumbai data center-slash-curry takeout counter. The company, recently valued at $1.5 billion, has now become the highest-profile AI startup to collapse since ChatGPT launched the global investment frenzy.
A slew of articles described how the Indian fraudsters duped both Microsoft and several Middle Eastern oil sheiks out of a cool half-billion. AI is an unprecedented, revolutionary technology; but fraud is not new. It is as old as prostitutes and lawyers. (Present company excepted, of course.) But for every fraudster there must be an equal and opposite sucker.
At least two articles describing the disgraceful fake-AI meltdown reminded readers about the 2015 Theranos disaster. In that torrid affair, weird female-wunderkind Elizabeth Holmes (coincidentally, ‘married’ to an older Indian gentleman) “invented” a fake blood-testing skin chip that later morphed into a fake blood-testing robot and raised a whole lot of money (over $700 million). Anyway, Liz suckered in international politicians, top investors, and several other VIPs who should’ve known better, including Henry Kissinger and George Schultz.
These same VIP suckers, who tossed in plenty of their own money, and talked their rolodexes into also investing, made some of the most important decisions in human history in their official capacities. It makes you think.
Back in 2007, as a fresh young lawyer, my very first assignment was for a big bank client, Bank of America. The bank had lent $10 million dollars to Ponzi schemer Lou Perlman. Perlman fronted the Back Street Boys and had a fake airline. Whenever inspectors came around, he’d rent a 747 and stick temporary corporate logo decals on the sides. (That’s when I first learned you could lease 747s.)
I also quickly learned the bank lent all that money based only on Perlman’s signature. No collateral. You’d think bankers would know better, but it turns out they get ripped off just like everyone else. He gave the bankers free rides on his fake airplanes, and they shoveled the money toward him faster than you can get to Paris for lunch.
Ironically, Elizabeth Holmes’s father was a vice-president at Enron, which imploded in its own fraudulent accounting scandal. I guess creative finance runs in the family. Even more ironically, after her freshman year at Stanford in 2002, Liz landed a summer job in a Singapore biolab, where she performed tests for, I am not making this up, SARS-CoV-1. We truly live in the strangest timeline.
Anyway, you would think that the massive Theranos “fake-invention” scandal would have smartened investors up, at least for this generation of moneyed people, yet here we are again. The old saw about something being “too good to be true” remains good, and true. The truth is, no matter what the Indians say, consumer A.I. still cannot build apps by itself, and it’s possible we will never be allowed to have that tech. (Military A.I. skills may be a different ballgame, but that’s for a different post.)
Don’t worry— Elizabeth Holmes is currently serving a ten-year prison sentence. AI is safe for now. I understand she has a new, inmate-based multilevel marketing company in the works, and you can still get in on the ground cell block.
Bottom line: Be cautious about investing in AI.* (* Not investment advice.)
☕️ PROHIBITIONS ☙ Tuesday, June 3, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠
Rogue AI firm implodes as humans pop out; Ukraine war narrative fractures; FBI’s secret files scandal breaks wide; Dems bleeding young men as brand crisis deepens with no end in sight; more.
www.coffeeandcovid.com
lol ... never Indian Tech Companies