Via.
The tech world is reeling from revelations that Builder.ai, once hailed as a $1.5 billion (£1.11 billion), ‘AI’ powerhouse, now faces scrutiny as its highly promoted artificial intelligence facade crumbles, revealing a human-powered operation behind the cutting-edge AI automation.
Builder.ai, the British no-code AI startup that once garnered acclaim for its strategic partnership with Microsoft and secured a $250 million (£184.64 million) investment led by the Qatar Investment Authority, declared Tuesday that it is initiating bankruptcy protection.
As reported by Bloomberg, the company’s dramatic decline occurred after a key lender, Viola Credit, withdrew $37 million (£27.33 million) from its accounts, leaving a mere $5 million (£3.69 million) in restricted funds and effectively paralysing operations in five nations. […]
Adding to the troubles, Linas Beliūnas, Director of the financial company Zero Hash, recently exposed that Builder.ai lacked true AI, instead utilising a group of Indian developers who were merely pretending to be bots writing code.
‘It turns out the company had no AI and instead was just a group of Indian developers pretending to write code as AI,’ he wrote in a LinkedIn post. Beliūnas also highlights that Duggal reportedly presented false revenue figures to investors. Remarkably, the company managed to sustain this deception for eight years.
Wasn’t there some other big company recently that was found to be running a surprisingly human “AI” service? I forget who, and perhaps I misremember something, but I’m fairly sure this mob haven’t been the first to get caught doing this shit… whatever, full marks to whoever came up with the headline, beautiful thing that it is.
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