'700 Indian engineers posed as AI': The London startup that took Microsoft for a ride - BusinessToday
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The unraveling began when creditor Viola Credit, which lent Builder.ai $50 million in 2023, seized $37 million from its accounts after the company defaulted.

  • Rentlar
    24·
    25 days ago

    “Customer requests were sent to the Indian office, where 700 Indians wrote code instead of AI,” Engelbrecht noted, adding that the resulting apps were often buggy, dysfunctional, and riddled with unreadable code. “Everything was like real artificial intelligence,” he wrote — except that none of it was.

    Oh my god… this really goes to show that companies are currently aiming to do with AI what they used to aim to do with completely offshoring their technical expertise, because in this case they appeared indistinguishable.

    • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      81·
      25 days ago

      To be fair, I’ve worked with some Indian developers who we offshored work to, and they did decent work.

      • Rentlar
        1·
        25 days ago

        I guess there’s more emphasis due on “completely”.

    • venusaur@lemmy.world
      4·
      25 days ago

      I’m surprised that this is surprising to you. Companies want to spend the least amount of money possible. We’ve been replacing people with tech since forever.