Builder.ai let you build a website or an app without coding — but with AI! Allegedly. Builder was the great hope of Artificial Intelligence for the UK. It scored $450 million in venture funding — m…
  • HedyL@awful.systemsEnglish
    5·
    8 hours ago

    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.