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> This is fake news. Builder.ai, like any other dev shop, had clients and was building apps using developers in India, pretty much like Infosys or any other Ind

> This is fake news. Builder.ai, like any other dev shop, had clients and was building apps using developers in India, pretty much like Infosys or any other Indian dev shop. Nothing wrong with that. Yeeeah... that's a fairly disingenuous take. The difference between every other offshore dev shop backed by developers in India and Builder.ai is that - and I say this as someone who thinks Infosys is a shit company - Infosys and all those other dev shops are at least up front about how their business works and where and who will be building your app. Whereas Builder.ai spent quite a long time pretending like they had AI doing the work when actually it was a lot of devs in India. That is deliberately misleading and it is not OK. It's fraudulent. It's literally what Theranos did with their Edison machines that never worked so whereas they claimed they had this wondrous new blood testing technology they were actually running tests with Siemens machines, diluting blood samples, etc. The consequences of Theranos's actions were much more serious (misdiagnoses and, indeed missed diagnoses of thousands of patients), rather than just apps built by humans rather than AI, but lying and fraud is lying and fraud.

pyman 1y ago
I don't agree. Even Infosys markets AI as part of their offering, just look at their "AI for Infrastructure" pitch: https://www.infosys.com/services/cloud-cobalt/offerings/ai-infrastructure.html https://www.infosys.com/services/cloud-cobalt/offerings/ai-i... Every big dev shop does this. Overselling tech happens all the time in this space. The line between marketing and misleading isn't always so clear. The difference is Builder.ai pushed the AI angle harder, but that doesn't make it Theranos-level fraud.
- mistercheph 1y ago
  Arguably, Theranos was also somewhere in a gray area between marketing and fraud. Everyone in the industry incentivizes and participates in this behavior, but once in a while, let's grab a few stand-out individuals to scapegoat once in a while for all the harm caused by/to the entire group with this behavior. Make sure you pick someone big/ugly enough to be credibly dangerous to the whole group, but who isn't too dangerous and well connected so that you can be sure that when the card flips on them everyone around them scatters. It's the same reason groups of individual humans do it: Scapegoating is a much lower resistance path to follow than the horrifying alternative (self-consciousness, reflection, love)
  - pyman 1y ago
    Theranos was dealing with people's health. Misdiagnoses, delayed treatments, etc, that's real harm. Imo, comparing that to building web apps isn't the same.
    - Retric 1y ago
      Theranos was using the same testing equipment and techniques as any other lab for most of their diagnostic services. Which is how they avoided being instantly exposed when their results ended up being meaningless. “In October 2015, John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal reported that Theranos was using traditional blood testing machines instead of the company's Edison devices to run its tests, and that the company's Edison machines might provide inaccurate results.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theranos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theranos They did plenty of shady shit including producing poor results, but that’s largely incompetence independent of fraud vs intentionally putting people’s lives on the line. IMO, the fraud kind of hides the equally important story where incompetent 19 year old collage dropout shockingly doesn’t know how to effectively setup and manage complex systems.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - aprilthird2021 1y ago
      The actual crime Theranos founder went to jail for was not misdiagnosing people. It was defrauding investors because they made them believe their machines were doing the tests when really they were sending them out to separate labs
      - pyman 1y ago
        Completely different story. With Theranos the investors sued the founders, with Builder AI they didn't. This suggests they knew what was really going on, so it wasn't fraud in their eyes.
- aprilthird2021 1y ago
  > Overselling tech happens all the time in this space. Overselling is fraud and is a crime at a certain point, which they clearly passed otherwise they wouldn't have had their lenders pull back money and leave them bankrupt
  - pyman 1y ago
    Just to play the devil's advocate: if a software company tells you your data is secure and then someone hacks their server and steals your photos and personal data, did their CEO and marketing department oversell their level of security? Is this fraud as well?
    - aprilthird2021 1y ago
      "Your data is secure" is known to never be 100%. But what assessments and technology they say they use for security needs to be followed. And if it's found out that those are lies, then it's fraud. Kind of like how these guys lied about the volume of sales they had. Textbook fraud. They aren't in trouble for saying "AI is going to be great"
      - pyman 1y ago
        I agree. But using the "your data is secure" analogy, BuilderAI never actually told customers that development was done using AI, that's something people made up. If you look at their website (builder.ai) they explain that their virtual assistant "Natasha" assigns a developer (I assume from India). That part doesn’t sound like fraud to me, and it's the part everyone seems to be focusing on. The company went into insolvency because the CEO and CFO were misleading investors by significantly inflating sales figures through questionable financial practices. According to the Financial Times, the Indian founders and accountants reportedly engaged in round-tripping with VerSe Innovation. That raised red flags for investors, regulators, and prosecutors, and led to bankruptcy proceedings.
- aylmao 1y ago
  > The line between marketing and misleading isn't always so clear. In the general I kind of disagree with this. I am not a lawyer, so I don't know all the details, but if you look for it, you should be able to find the line since it's generally illegal to mislead customers. There's also a whole set of contractural and perhaps even legal obligations when it comes to investors. For contracts and the law to be enforceable, they need draw lines as clearly as possible. There's always some amount of details that are up to interpretation, but companies make sure to pay legal counsel to make sure they don't cross these lines. Now, specifically in this case, I do agree with you. This case doesn't seem to be a legal matter of customer or investor misleadings (thus far). Viola Credit did seize $37 million, so IMO there clearly was a violation of contract in all this, but it seems like that had nothing to do with the whole AI overselling.
osigurdson 1y ago
It doesn't matter for customers but investors would be interested if AI is being used or a bunch of devs due to the scaling potential differences.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

pyman 1y ago

I don't agree. Even Infosys markets AI as part of their offering, just look at their "AI for Infrastructure" pitch: https://www.infosys.com/services/cloud-cobalt/offerings/ai-infrastructure.html https://www.infosys.com/services/cloud-cobalt/offerings/ai-i... Every big dev shop does this. Overselling tech happens all the time in this space. The line between marketing and misleading isn't always so clear. The difference is Builder.ai pushed the AI angle harder, but that doesn't make it Theranos-level fraud.

mistercheph 1y ago
Arguably, Theranos was also somewhere in a gray area between marketing and fraud. Everyone in the industry incentivizes and participates in this behavior, but once in a while, let's grab a few stand-out individuals to scapegoat once in a while for all the harm caused by/to the entire group with this behavior. Make sure you pick someone big/ugly enough to be credibly dangerous to the whole group, but who isn't too dangerous and well connected so that you can be sure that when the card flips on them everyone around them scatters. It's the same reason groups of individual humans do it: Scapegoating is a much lower resistance path to follow than the horrifying alternative (self-consciousness, reflection, love)
- pyman 1y ago
  Theranos was dealing with people's health. Misdiagnoses, delayed treatments, etc, that's real harm. Imo, comparing that to building web apps isn't the same.
  - Retric 1y ago
    Theranos was using the same testing equipment and techniques as any other lab for most of their diagnostic services. Which is how they avoided being instantly exposed when their results ended up being meaningless. “In October 2015, John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal reported that Theranos was using traditional blood testing machines instead of the company's Edison devices to run its tests, and that the company's Edison machines might provide inaccurate results.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theranos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theranos They did plenty of shady shit including producing poor results, but that’s largely incompetence independent of fraud vs intentionally putting people’s lives on the line. IMO, the fraud kind of hides the equally important story where incompetent 19 year old collage dropout shockingly doesn’t know how to effectively setup and manage complex systems.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - aprilthird2021 1y ago
    The actual crime Theranos founder went to jail for was not misdiagnosing people. It was defrauding investors because they made them believe their machines were doing the tests when really they were sending them out to separate labs
    - pyman 1y ago
      Completely different story. With Theranos the investors sued the founders, with Builder AI they didn't. This suggests they knew what was really going on, so it wasn't fraud in their eyes.
aprilthird2021 1y ago
> Overselling tech happens all the time in this space. Overselling is fraud and is a crime at a certain point, which they clearly passed otherwise they wouldn't have had their lenders pull back money and leave them bankrupt
- pyman 1y ago
  Just to play the devil's advocate: if a software company tells you your data is secure and then someone hacks their server and steals your photos and personal data, did their CEO and marketing department oversell their level of security? Is this fraud as well?
  - aprilthird2021 1y ago
    "Your data is secure" is known to never be 100%. But what assessments and technology they say they use for security needs to be followed. And if it's found out that those are lies, then it's fraud. Kind of like how these guys lied about the volume of sales they had. Textbook fraud. They aren't in trouble for saying "AI is going to be great"
    - pyman 1y ago
      I agree. But using the "your data is secure" analogy, BuilderAI never actually told customers that development was done using AI, that's something people made up. If you look at their website (builder.ai) they explain that their virtual assistant "Natasha" assigns a developer (I assume from India). That part doesn’t sound like fraud to me, and it's the part everyone seems to be focusing on. The company went into insolvency because the CEO and CFO were misleading investors by significantly inflating sales figures through questionable financial practices. According to the Financial Times, the Indian founders and accountants reportedly engaged in round-tripping with VerSe Innovation. That raised red flags for investors, regulators, and prosecutors, and led to bankruptcy proceedings.
aylmao 1y ago
> The line between marketing and misleading isn't always so clear. In the general I kind of disagree with this. I am not a lawyer, so I don't know all the details, but if you look for it, you should be able to find the line since it's generally illegal to mislead customers. There's also a whole set of contractural and perhaps even legal obligations when it comes to investors. For contracts and the law to be enforceable, they need draw lines as clearly as possible. There's always some amount of details that are up to interpretation, but companies make sure to pay legal counsel to make sure they don't cross these lines. Now, specifically in this case, I do agree with you. This case doesn't seem to be a legal matter of customer or investor misleadings (thus far). Viola Credit did seize $37 million, so IMO there clearly was a violation of contract in all this, but it seems like that had nothing to do with the whole AI overselling.

osigurdson 1y ago

It doesn't matter for customers but investors would be interested if AI is being used or a bunch of devs due to the scaling potential differences.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]