This startup told investors it used AI but they hired workers

It reminds me of the blood-testing startup which got busted at the start of this year.

That promotion was never going to work if people could open an endless number of accounts, but how do you prevent people from creating multiple accounts on a free platform to benefit from a joiner's discount?

Intentional deception for gain is called fraud.

Wizard of Oz as a tactic is fine, but lying about how your company works is not.

I think this is fine for testing and idea validation as long as the long term intention is to move it to an AI. I'm sure hiring workers like that isn't sustainable in the end.

If you showcase with the "Wizard of Oz" strategy that there's interest and can then indicate progress and ability to deliver on the AI I think it's fine

I really like the "behind the curtain" approach as its the absolution of "do things that dont scale". That was one of the most valuable things i learned from the essays of Paul Graham.

This is common. See the "Pretotyping" book, many startups pretended to have software do the job when in fact it was people in the background.

I've heard this pattern described as "Rooms full of people". Usually people say they are doing RFOP as a lead up to the actual model that does the work, but if you don't communicate that... lol

AI is just bunch of if/else though...

All jokes aside, while he lied, maybe he's taking the test-driven approach of getting expected answers (from people) and writing an algorithm to emulate people.

another thing is maybe something was working with AI, but corner cases needed people. I read somewhere Alexa is was still validated by people sometimes...

reminds me of this tweet: https://twitter.com/naval/status/1225674500882100226

How are they supporting this volume of sign-ups with people?! I don't understand how it's even possible https://startupsavant.com/news/nate-fintech