Ah great, we have finally arrived at the public shaming phase of the “AI revolution”. And let me just say, as far as opening lines go, this recent headline from TechCrunch is absolute poetry:
Fintech founder charged with fraud after ‘AI’ shopping app found to be powered by humans in the Philippines.
Nice one Charles from TechCrunch, seriously, those quotation marks around “AI”? Pure fcukin’ art.
But hold your pitchforks for a second, yeah?
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I’m not here to shit all over some fintech douchebag who outsourced his “cutting-edge AI” to some guy named Roberto in Quezon City. Nah, that’s too easy, even for me. I’m here to tell ya why, actually, this wasn’t as stupid as it sounds, minus the obvious minor detail of committing $50 million worth of fraud.
You know, tiny oversight there.
Lemme explain what happened. . .
So basically “some dude” started an AI company that promised super-smart AI-software to hunt your crap online at the best given price, but the joke was all on us. There wasn’t any real AI, but just a bunch of hoomans in them Philippines clicking away behind the scenes, shopping like mad for the fuzzy pink sweaters you like to wear. The purp got busted, investors lost millions, and now everyone is acting shocked that fancy schmart tech was really just old-school human sweat.
Lesson here learned here: Next time your AI acts a little too human, it’s probably because, well, . . . it is human, named Roberto, working overtime in Manila for way less than the cost of your stupid sweater.
By the way, venture capitalists, please, for the love of god, DM me next time before you dump money into obvious scams. I’ll even do ya a deal.
Idiots.
This fiasco isn’t exactly fresh news either, so you could-a known.
Well now, back in ‘22, “The Information*” did an exposé on this exact bullshit “AI” app called Nate. But now, even the DOJ is stepping up and dropping the revelation that Nate’s automation was exactly 0%. None.
Nada.
Zilch.
Noppes.
Niente.
Instead, a bunch of dudes in Manila were feverishly scrolling websites to track down your stupid sweaters.
Not exactly the worst job, I guess, but still, imagine those poor bastards tryna pretend they’re AI, typing like robots so customers wouldn’t catch on.
Like “Hello valued customer I have located 4 fuzzy purple sweaters ranging in price from 19.99 to HAIRY UNICORN SPACE MONKEY. Would you like to purchase in size Medium and ship to your stupid Nebraska address?”.
A bit of hallucination never hurt anyone, though? Here’s your invoice for $38 mil. You’re welcome.
And let’s face it, this ain’t exactly an isolated incident.
Ze Philippines is quickly becoming the Silicon Valley of fake AI.
Back in ‘23, some other shitshow got caught using humans for 70% of AI-driven, drive-thru orders at Del Taco and Carl’s Jr. (Really? Carl’s Jr? Who the hell even eats there?), and wven further back, some “AI-coded apps” were revealed to be human-coded apps.
Well, turns out after all that AI is just some guy with bad posture, too much caffeine, and questionable pay, furiously clicking away.
Revolutionary!
Nah.
Now, why would ya think that this happens?
Simple answer: Cash, duh.
Humans cost way less than real AI shit, at least until you reach a certain scale.
See, unless you’re Amazon or Walmart-sized, investing in AI to handle your shitty shopping cart full of discounted sweaters probably doesn’t add up.
The ROI looks like a death spiral.
You need customers for money, you need money to build AI, you need AI to attract customers, rinse and repeat until your bank account screams mercy. Catch-22? Nah, more like a Catch-33, and that’s way gnarlier, trust me.
When I was with “a company” way back when, we hired people in the Philippines to handle boring-as-hell overnight customer support stuff, and guess what. . it totally made sense.
Reliable people, not dirt cheap but cheaper than Silicon Valley latte sipping schmucks, and definitely cheaper than any half-assed chatbot we could come up with at the time. Humans really are better solutions than AI, until they ain’t, or at least, until you realize that your investors actually expect real robots behind the curtain, and not Jeff from Manila.
But here’s this other little secret nobody wants to admit, and that is that AI is still freaking stupid, or at least it’s really young and naïve.
Way back in 2010, we were automating boring-ass data articles. But we actually hand-wrote tons of examples first to teach our dumb, baby AI. Even after we coded everything perfectly, our customers accused us of secretly using an army of typewriting monkeys.
I mean, 13 million articles in three hours, yeah, sure, monkeys, totally logical.
So here’s the truth to y’all. . . AI could actually be magic.
It might get there someday.
But right now it’s still just some code running really fast, and sometimes badly. And here’s what scares me, just like them crypto bruvs screaming “diamond hands!” or NFT dipshats claiming pixels are priceless, we keep pretending that AI is already magic.
This means more scams, more fraud, and eventually, public trust goes down the shitter entirely.
Look, NFTs were bullshit JPEGs pretending to have value.
Crypto wasn’t replacing dollars and euros anytime soon, just burning investor money faster than a farkin’ bonfire. And hahaaa, Theranos, that fake blood-testing unicorn. . . LoL, we know how that turned out.
But AI still has a chance, that is, if we stop lying about what it is.
So yeah, start small, use real humans if you have to, and then very carefully figure out what you can automate. Be honest, keep your promises modest, and stop pretending every pile of shitty Python code is revolutionary. Otherwise, enjoy your short-lived pyramid scheme. Just don’t be surprised when Roberto from Manila finally outsources your AI to his cousin Vinny in Jersey.
But hey, what the fcuk do I know? You’re probably reading this on some AI-driven app that’s secretly being run by your neighbor’s kid for weed money.
Welcome to the goddamn future.
Go build something real or fcuk off already.
Sorry for the lingo, but it’s a hot day in the swamp called “the Nether-lands”.
Signing off from whatever I need signing off from, ‘cause I’m heading for the sack.
Ciao!
Marco
* Some techzine for deeeep journalizm
Signing off.
Marco
I build AI by day and warn about it by night. I call it job security. Let’s keep smashing delusions with truth. We are the chaos. We are the firewall. We are Big Tech’s PR nightmare.
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