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Fintech founder charged with fraud after 'AI' shopping app found to be powered by humans in the Philippines (techcrunch.com)

submitted 1 day ago by merdaverse@lemmy.world to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world

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Nate said its app’s users could buy from any e-commerce site with a single click, thanks to AI. In reality, however, Nate relied heavily on hundreds of human contractors in a call center in the Philippines to manually complete those purchases, the DOJ’s Southern District of New York alleges.

Saniger raised millions in venture funding by claiming that Nate was able to transact online “without human intervention,” except for edge cases where the AI failed to complete a transaction. But despite Nate acquiring some AI technology and hiring data scientists, its app’s actual automation rate was effectively 0%, the DOJ claims.

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[–] whatwhatwhatwhat@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Idk man, I’m just happy this fake “AI” crap has consequences.

My boss (a C-level) was just telling me about how “AI agents” are so amazing and we should build one to replace our procurement department. Things like this (where they claim “AI” but it’s really humans offshores) make him think AI is a lot more capable than it really is, and this makes it harder for me to keep him from imploding all of our jobs.

[–] Tiger@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago

Yeah I agree with that, faked AI helping sell more AI is definitely bad. It’s just ironic this thing, can’t put my finger on it. Like he could have sold a mash up of AI and human involvement and still have had a good selling angle. (I do that at my company, I include the human element as a positive feature, because I think people should be skeptical of AI just let loose on its own.)