David Bridges
The United States Department of Justice has formally indicted Albert Sangier for engaging in fraudulent activities by misleading investors regarding his Nate financial technology platform. Established by Sangier in 2018, Nate purported to provide consumers with a universal checkout application powered by artificial intelligence. However, the allegations indicate that the so-called AI-driven transactions within Nate were not conducted by advanced technology but were instead executed by human contractors located in the Philippines and Romania, or through automated bots. Throughout this process, Sangier successfully raised over $40 million from unsuspecting investors who believed in the platform’s claims.
This indictment follows investigative reporting by in 2022 that illuminated Nate’s reliance on human labor rather than true AI capabilities. Sources revealed that during 2021, the proportion of transactions processed by Nate manually, as opposed to automatically, fluctuated between 60 percent and an astonishing 100 percent.
Throughout history, many ambitious entrepreneurs with questionable ethics have sought to amass wealth by presenting the results of human actions as if they were the products of mechanical or technological innovations. This trend of falsely attributing outcomes to AI is merely the latest manifestation of a long-standing practice that has evolved in the digital age.
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Daniel Mercer
