EDIT - glad to hear this did NOT happen at Character.ai, at least per a comment below
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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. Owners got life changing wealth, employees got a down payment for a home.
It’s sad that this doesn’t seem to be the norm. Screwing employees on acquisition seems like a severe breach of social contract.
What are you talking about? I was an employee in 2024 and I was not “screwed”. My options were converted into cash at the same valuation that Google paid (vesting schedule remained intact though). Noam did right by his employees.
I had the same thing happen. Twice, actually - after the non-competes expired for the first acquisition, of course I accepted a position working for the same guy at the next company. Another successful exit there. These were small time, meat and potatoes type startup companies. Nothing fancy. The one thing I did post about here on HN, which I think was one 1) ahead of its time, 2) lacked investor connections, 3) we went with Oakland instead of SF DID flame out spectacularly. My part was the money from the first acquisition plus about 40% of my savings. Ah well. Gotta try it a few times. (still looking for the next opportunity)
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).
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.
I don't know if this is exactly the scenario you are thinking of, but the sections on Covid and Australia show real treatment or insurance decisions being made based on genetics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_discrimination
> 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.
I agree it sucks but isn't that life? Jim makes you a promise, Jim dies, his kids don't have to keep Jim's promise, nor anyone else.
My original mortgage lender has a very functioning web portal to set up autopay and check my account.
They sold my mortgage to a big bank whose web portal and app are pure garbage. Constantly crashing, the autopay frequently just doesn’t autopay, and getting a statement history requires delving through a bunch of random menus.
It’s really obnoxious that I just get no say unless I refinance.
Imagine buying a bond that you are not allowed to sell, and just have to wait for maturity. You'd pay less than for a normal bond, right? Same goes for a mortgage lender. They would risk less and you'd be paying a lot more for such a loan, if you can find one.
> 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 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.
It reads like they didn't go under yet, they just expected to with the way the legal challenges were going. As part of that, Disney seems to hope to be taking a good portion (all?) of the employees in the sale. Without keeping staffing up, the sale might not have been viable. If they didn't have such an exit plan involving the employees still being around then it might have made more sense to freeze hiring and ride it out until the end or whatever option would make sense in that story.
Seems fine so long as they are really transitioning those roles to Disney as part of the Chapter 11. Not sure if they are or aren't for each of those listings - if you are that'd be interesting to hear.
I've been at a company that went through Chapter 11 and still work with (at the new place) a few folks hired during that time.
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.
It's a roleplay app, an AI version of the old RP forums, or RP private chats. Anyone sane and slightly mature understands they're not being encouraged to do anything IRL. The main problem I see here is a lack of parenting.
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.
A valuable company wasn't created in the end, but all kinds of value spewed 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.
accrete means grow or make larger/greater; this is the opposite were a bunch of value moved around, some was lost (from an efficiency / opportunity cost perspective) and a bunch was concentrated into the hands of a few. That's not value growth.
True, I meant to say value was ejected from this i.e. there were some peripheral winners. I had a totally wrong definition in my mind of the word "accrete" (I was linking it to accretion discs around black holes).
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
I heard about various lawsuits, including one where apparently Pennsylvania alleges that a literal AI character has claimed to be a licensed psychiatrist inside of a chat, after the user asked.
This service is the ground zero of AI psychosis and children talking to chatbots as if it's their friends/lovers.
I'm surprised Disney wants anything to do with it, then again, they wanted to integrate Sora into their streaming offering. Oh, how the mighty have fallen
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.
Crypto always has been backed by the natural demand of drug consumers, drug dealers and drug sellers. Now with marijuana being somewhat legalized in more and more parts of the world and everyone being able to see that the war on cocaine is all but lost... I think the demand for crypto will not recover any more.
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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. Owners got life changing wealth, employees got a down payment for a home.
It’s sad that this doesn’t seem to be the norm. Screwing employees on acquisition seems like a severe breach of social contract.
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 agree it sucks but isn't that life? Jim makes you a promise, Jim dies, his kids don't have to keep Jim's promise, nor anyone else.
They sold my mortgage to a big bank whose web portal and app are pure garbage. Constantly crashing, the autopay frequently just doesn’t autopay, and getting a statement history requires delving through a bunch of random menus.
It’s really obnoxious that I just get no say unless I refinance.
https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/character/
Keeping jobs up after filing for chapter 11 seems irresponsible though.
I've been at a company that went through Chapter 11 and still work with (at the new place) a few folks hired during that time.
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.
It sounds ridiculous to me.
So the problem is your customers don’t pay for anything and your content is unlicensed
Character.AI chatbots encouraged users to cut and starve themselves, Kentucky alleges
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/characterai-chatbot...
I'm surprised Disney wants anything to do with it, then again, they wanted to integrate Sora into their streaming offering. Oh, how the mighty have fallen
(well, except investment money I guess)
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.
They knew it was going to $0, so the now the employees at this "employee owned" Character.ai got themselves scammed.
...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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1873
Will c.ai be the pets.com of this bubble?