I worked at a company in 2000s that was acquired. I had no stock but the owner still gave a generous spot bonus and a years salary bonus retention package to employees. It’s sad that this doesn’t seem to be the norm? Screwing employees on acquisition seems like a severe breach of social contract.
That shouldn't have been a problem given that AI can fully replace talent. The whole company should in theory only have needed a dream and an Anthropic subscription.
Well one of those two names was a core contributor to the Attention paper, arguably the top contributor, before leaving Google to make Character Ai, no wonder the re-hired him back (before he left again).
> Google’s purchase doesn’t include personal data and privileged materials like Spirit’s 97.5 million passenger profiles or an estimated 50.2 million records related to the Free Spirit loyalty program data, according to court records.
It's unbelievable to me that this is legal. You put your trust into a corporate entity with your data. The entity goes away, so does the guarantee? Oh, OK.
That's why I've never done a DNA test, it's not worth your literal biological data being sold off to god knows where to discriminate against you. I thought everyone realized this but didn't realize it was a niche opinion.
It's the FUD spread by the AdTech industry (including here on HN by people who's salaries are dependent on invading our privacy) that is holding back sensible data protection laws in the USA.
Have you peeked at how the (very complicated) financial markets work?
Lot's of people staring at computers moving money and ious around complicated networks within complicated rules making money making money making money.
You're using amazing technology funded through those financial processes to complain that those financial processes aren't progressing humanity forward lol. Modern AI is the perfect example of how financial systems are important for technological progression.
Thinking complex financial systems aren't contributing to humanity's progress because you don't recognize how it is used to fundamentally support the work that progresses humanity is like thinking taxes are a scam because you don't recognize how much you actually benefit from taxes everyday.
This seems reductive. Character.ai has > 20 million monthly active users, and a lot of company valuation happens on the basis of user count (which is legitimate, that's not vaporware)
Why don't they just not count token costs at all (or any other cost-per-user) and only look at profits, like what Anthropic is doing to figure out if they're profitable?
I disagree that it's reductive. If each user costs more in API tokens then your company isn't valuable. That's what everyone's been screaming from the rooftops about there being a bubble. We certainly use tons of AI at the company I work for, if we were paying full API prices then I would bet we'd be barely using it.
There's always enterprise wheeling and dealing to keep something discounted, but enterprises are absolutely paying API prices for tokens. For AI coding a least, the issue is more about attributing tokens to a real backlog (no leeching tokens for side projects) and keeping things from running away, both of which all the major AI coding platforms offer solutions for.
I'm seeing this repeated a lot, but I'm rarely seeing the evidence to back it up. Presumably you're not speaking about Yandex's search engine crawlers here, right?
In an internet full of metrics and graphs, it's odd that nobody's bringing anything to the table and is just repeating the meme. A bit bottish in itself, tbh.
If it turned out "usercount was vapourware" due to 3 Russian data centres getting btfo, I think there'd have been a global financial crisis underway as we speak.
A valuable company wasn't created in the end, but all kinds of value accreted out of this endeavor. The co-founders almost certainly walked away filthy rich. A few hundred people got 6-figure paychecks. A few early investors probably made a profit selling to greater fools.
It is rumored that their last round valued them at $6B.
the rich in society (corps, individuals) are so absurdly rich that they can keep throwing money till something sticks with almost 0 risk. If you believe AI is something civilizationally transformational which it is resonable to believe, then why not throw some money at it.
The US just has a lot of venture capital money running around. It's common for biotech companies to raise about as much as Character.ai (although typically at lower valuations) and then never end up launching a successful product. From a societal perspective, it's valuable to be able to search the space of long shots; from a funder's perspective, the rewards of a good investment are high enough to pay for a lot of bad ones.
I think it's unfortunate that this is the case and that the service has been treated unfairly in many regards, but c.ai has faced specific problems that other businesses in the space don't, and the basic service isn't going to be marketed towards the more revenue-generating segments like enterprise without making something different out of it.
What were those specific problems they faced? I haven't paid any attention the market for cloud-based AI services by all these non-frontier companies, but I know it's a big market
Sometimes talent decides to just make money and scam people into thinking talking with AI versions of celebrities as something worthwhile and positive for the world.
I had a conversation with someone some time in 2024 about Character Ai, wondering how something so obviously exploitative could exist, one data point to consider.
I don't think I know of anyone who denies the value of AI. I think 95% of the people who use it know that it is a tool and are angry / dismayed / confused about companies that are parading it around like a drop in replacement for anything.
Photoshop is a tool, vs code is a tool, git is a tool, excel is a tool. No one expected these to autonomously generate money.
People will be happy that the 5% who are delusional are going to be forced to reckon with the lies they've told themselves.
As an aside, I believe there will be a huge surge in crypto hype again once these sorts of get rich quick with AI schemes dry up.
https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/character/
I learned that the hard way with 23&Me.
That's why I've never done a DNA test, it's not worth your literal biological data being sold off to god knows where to discriminate against you. I thought everyone realized this but didn't realize it was a niche opinion.
I wonder how any of this makes sense.
Lot's of people staring at computers moving money and ious around complicated networks within complicated rules making money making money making money.
Really progressing humanity forward :/
You're using amazing technology funded through those financial processes to complain that those financial processes aren't progressing humanity forward lol. Modern AI is the perfect example of how financial systems are important for technological progression.
Thinking complex financial systems aren't contributing to humanity's progress because you don't recognize how it is used to fundamentally support the work that progresses humanity is like thinking taxes are a scam because you don't recognize how much you actually benefit from taxes everyday.
Obviously the company failed to convert its MAU into paying users, despite the fact the token costs greatly declined over the last years.
In an internet full of metrics and graphs, it's odd that nobody's bringing anything to the table and is just repeating the meme. A bit bottish in itself, tbh.
If it turned out "usercount was vapourware" due to 3 Russian data centres getting btfo, I think there'd have been a global financial crisis underway as we speak.
It is rumored that their last round valued them at $6B.
Character.AI chatbots encouraged users to cut and starve themselves, Kentucky alleges
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/characterai-chatbot...
So the problem is your customers don’t pay for anything and your content is unlicensed
(well, except investment money I guess)
They knew it was going to $0, so the now the employees at this "employee owned" Character.ai got themselves scammed.
I'm gonna go, grab some popcorn and cry a few tears... tears of joy.
AI won't go away, it will just end up being a monopoly.
Photoshop is a tool, vs code is a tool, git is a tool, excel is a tool. No one expected these to autonomously generate money.
People will be happy that the 5% who are delusional are going to be forced to reckon with the lies they've told themselves.
As an aside, I believe there will be a huge surge in crypto hype again once these sorts of get rich quick with AI schemes dry up.
...that you can be a shit company with a shit product and a shit business model and still make a shit ton of money and get hired by Google?
Most pebbles don't start landslides, but almost all landslides started with a pebble.
Remember that almost all the "value" in AI companies right now is based on perception, not reported profits.
Will c.ai be the pets.com of this bubble?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1873