If she wanted to do this she’d change her name and disavow her inheritence.
Stephen King’s child at least doesn’t write under the name “King” to avoid nepotism. I can’t read the actual paid article because just going off headlines is apparently OK here, but it doesn’t seem like she’s trying.
Her chip on her shoulder is a tiny one she blows out of proportion, like so many “problems” of the uber-wealthy.
Joe Hill is quite good.
The first time I had a friend reccomend him, I gave them a funny look, thinking they were talking about Joe Hill the musician and labor organizer XD
Edit: I’m sick of people mentioning musicians without songs; here’s Preacher and the Slave, from which we get the term “Pie in the Sky”.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RHyGpFncovU
Performed by the late Utah Phillips, as Joe Hill was executed a good 110 years ago.
There’s a great ballad of Joe Hill by Phil Ochs.
well, there’s a website I’m never going back to. that layout is just offensive. and this is after after dismissing the cookies popup
Homie do you rawdog the internet without an adblocker??
“Wow, what does your startup do?”
“It synthesizes mining crypto by capturing efforts from Microsoft users trying to uninstall bloatware in Windows 11”
Phoebe Gates cofounded Phia, an AI shopping assistant, with her Stanford University roommate Sophia Kianni. The shopping assistant plugs into browsers like Chrome and Safari to compare prices and surface deals across tens of thousands of retail and resale sites in real time. It essentially serves as your own personal deal finder: say you’re looking at a $200 dress from Anthropologie, Phia can find and compare prices at second-hand sellers to help customers find a better price.
That’s actually a neat premise. Fashion isn’t my cup of tea, but otherwise that sounds useful (albeit not very unique; shopping assistants are a dime a dozen).
Shareholders will expect their 185 million to turn into more. Someone will have to pay for this “more.” The business model will therefore boil down to either selling user data or companies paying to be given preferential treatment by the system. Probably both.
Furthermore, such services do not create any added value for the economy because, like advertising, they merely ensure that money is spent at B instead of at A. They are not productive and can be used much more efficiently by the bigger players.
Guaranteed it’s going down the route of:
“Want your store at the top. We can make that happen” nudge, nudge
But it feels so damned blatant for the grift that it is. The “It’s not about my name” is very blinkered view to take.
Oh, I 100% agree. I test installed the app, and it seems to be some of both (behavior tracking with a Safari extension, and store sponsorship).
That being said, I hate store monocultures even more, like how Amazon/Walmart can bully their suppliers through sheer critical mass and shoppers don’t even look anywhere else. That’s economic inefficiency. Price aggregators are a good thing.
That’s not right economically. If you were going to spend $200 at store B and now spend $150 at store A, that’s an efficiency of $50. You’re saying that looking for deals isn’t a market benefit, and it absolutely is. Now, their cut of it is of no benefit, and fuck AI. But the service is productive.
But then the seller is missing out on those $50, which they can’t spend anywhere else. From an macroeconomic perspective, the effect is zero. Like advertising, it only serves to allocate resources, not to create value. What’s more, it’s mainly large companies that benefit from something like this. Firstly, because of scale effects, and secondly, because they can sustain price dumping for longer than smaller companies.
The same applies to deals. You only benefit from them because someone else is disadvantaged. Unless, of course, you assume that companies have something to give away out of kindness. And, of course, you yourself have been someone who has given someone else an advantage at your own disadvantage. You paid more so that someone else could pay less. The macroeconomic effect was zero because no value was created.
We already know how things like that can be monetized - just look at the Honey scandal. You rip off both users and business customers… But this time with AI.
What a novel idea, Phoebe. Such Innovation, much wow!
Honey didn’t just rip off business customers. It ripped off unrelated businesses too.
Where does the AI come into the picture though?
Well if AI doesn’t have to be artificial intelligence, I guess it doesn’t matter
So it’s a price checker extension. That scrapes other websites for better deals.
I feel like this is just a plug piece to spotlight her product tbh.
There are a million of these out there. Most of them suck. Many are, at best, ethically gray. Even the better ones spy on you in a hundred different ways.
I’d love something that actually didn’t suck, but “185 million dollar AI startup” doesn’t sound promising to me.
The big problem with the concept is that there’s money to be made by gaming the system and nobody is good at that cat and mouse game. AI could theoretically help, but let’s be real: it’s just going to scrape the same 100 identical Amazon referral listicles you’d get in a Google search, with an extra sprinkling of ads.
What’s crazier is people thinking it’s a good enough idea to get $185,000,000 in funding for someone who just graduated college…
Like, it already exists, there’s a bunch of those already.
She slapped “AI” on the front of it but because her name is Gates people won’t stop throwing money at it. If she doesn’t understand her name is why she’s getting funding, that just means she’s both ignorant and naive and this is an even worse investment and product than it seems on the surface.
I’m sure the Gates named helped, but AI anything has venture capitalists punching the Fry meme. It feels very similar to the dot com era bubble in a macro sense, except without a large number jobs being created.
If a random 23 year old can just take any type of plugin that’s been around 20+ years, slap AI in front of it…
And raises $185,000,000…
Why exactly do you think they’re not all doing it?
Thats a rhetorical question by the way, the rest of them aren’t doing it because their last name isn’t Gates so it wouldn’t work
They just slap the word AI on it so investors pp’s become the big pp.
My little brother works for a supply company, and one of the companies they supply has a new ‘AI’ tool where folks type in the thing they want and it pulls from other companies to find the lowest price, then color codes it and shit. The supply companies have to put their prices in a database for the ‘AI’. All I could think hearing about it is that some C level got absolutely fucking bamboozled.
some C level got absolutely fucking bamboozled.
That’s all they’re for. The last time I heard any executive actually make a good decision - or even anything in the neighborhood of a good decision - was . . . Ummmm. Well, I’m sure it was sometime this century. ? Maybe.
Yup. Price comparison extensions have been around for decades already.
Ah yes, I remember a browser extension about finding coupon codes for the sites you’re on that absolutely didn’t end up being disgusting shit. 🤣
Stanford
The forever accurate red flag!
ah yes stanford, along with other well known UNIVERSITIES, that produces elitists graduates, she says she doesnt want to be "Associated with having a famous parents that paid for everything, including her AI company.
Anyone here old enough to remember froogle?
Ehhhh. Bah! I’m gonna take a nap.
So, I was thinking about the Russian aristocracy today…
Careful. You’re about to get called a Tankie
Gates isn’t the only one with a chip on their shoulder, people generally don’t get called “Tankies” just for criticizing crony capitalism
Baby, I’m an anarchist.
This is fucking worse than monarchy.
Wonder how much of her funding came from people who rape kids with her dad…
If she thinks she’s doing anything that her name doesn’t benefit, she’s fucking stupider than most AI ceos and that’s saying a lot.
Maybe even stupid enough to not know the reason her dad’s company took off is her grandparents worked for Xerox and just gave him a bunch of IP including the first computer mouse and a shit ton of money.
The Gates family is a nepo family, they’re just all too stupid to understand and legitimately think they have the same opportunities as anyone else.
Think of how stupid the average AI CEO is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
Please no. My crushing despair at the state of the world meds for ignore at least one thing
If you ever listen to Behind the Bastards, then you’ll notice a pattern of emotional stunting in the growth of billionaires. The kids that have the money straight away, not the ones that really do make it themselves wherever they are.
Exemplar: Elon.
Though the imagery that sticks out in my mind is one of Zuckerberg playing mall ninja in his original office space, as the boss, walking around with a samurai sword and fake swiping at employees with it.
None of them make it themselves…
But they act like spoiled kids because that’s how everyone treats them, because at that level of wealth the only people you’re around will say whatever gets you to give them money.
It doesn’t take long before they forget how to be a normal human
People who talk to you like an AI bot. Maybe that’s why the AI talks that way. It’s all they know.
Never thought of that, but yeah…
Especially for Elon, it’s not just people in person, he bought twitter just to have his own echo chamber
When grok constantly glazes him, that’s what he thinks a normal person acts like. If it acts like a human would, Elmo can’t recognize it.
With what money did she start the business then? Get the F out of here with that crap. Also, so original, going into AI like everyone else.
And the “connections” which is just fancy-speak for “rich friends.”
Same way daddy did it
Is this the same entitled bitch who got a $1,000,000 ranch as a present?
Maybe pay some fucking taxes, Phoebe.
To quote Pearl Jam:
Born on third,
Thinks (s)he got a triple.
Phoebe Cates>>>>>Phoebe Gates
Yep. That’s exactly who I thought. Then I saw the picture and thought, “wow she hasn’t aged a bit!”
The shopping assistant plugs into browsers like Chrome and Safari to compare prices and surface deals across tens of thousands of retail and resale sites in real time. It essentially serves as your own personal deal finder: Say you’re looking at a $200 dress from Anthropologie, Phia can find and compare prices at secondhand sellers to help customers find a better price.
Gates and Kianni first brainstormed startup ideas in their Stanford dorm room, cycling through concepts before landing on a consumer tool that included Gates’ interest in women’s empowerment (likely modeled after her own mother) and Kianni’s sustainability focus.
I don’t think a coupon tool that wastes excessive resources is either empowering or sustainable.
I’d be surprised if there’s actual AI behind it. That functionality already exists and works just fine.
it’s a small indian man named Al.
I’d be surprised if a human were behind it. This is exactly the kind of thing that can be vibe coded pretty fast and is mostly just reselling fancy Google searches through an LLM. I did a quick skim of the website and it’s just a bunch of items scraped from big brands with lots of similar looking images of other products. There’s too many sites for me to really believe they’ve made integrations with all of them.
The insane valuation is because of her name not because the tech is good. The only way to make money on this is the customer data. The margin on that is going to be fucking minuscule especially once LLM costs start going up so they can make money. This adds nothing of value on top so it will go away almost immediately.
Oh, I didn’t say a human, I just meant a standard non-AI algorithm
I’d be concerned about monied motives driving suggestions. Even if it starts out neutral, how can we as consumers be sure it won’t become corrupted? Enshittification is par for the course these days, I’d be extremely wary about relying on an app to tell me real, unbiased price info unless its mechanisms and sources are (and remain) completely transparent.
Reading this, I was reminded of how Nicolas Cage is part of the Coppola family but changed his name, I was told, so that he could “make it on his own.”
I looked that up and it turns out to be a complete lie. He actually changed his name to conceal the fact that he was not making it on his own.
EDIT to clarify if this was confusing: he was given roles by his uncle Francis Ford Coppola. This is nepotism aka “not making it on his own,” but with special help from family. To conceal the nepotism, his name was changed.
From Wikipedia:
At age 15, he tried to convince his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, to give him a screen test, telling him “I’ll show you acting.” His outburst was met with “silence in the car.”[20] By this stage of his career, Coppola had already directed Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman and Robert De Niro. Although early in his career Cage appeared in some of his uncle’s films, he changed his name to Nicolas Cage to avoid the appearance of nepotism as Coppola’s nephew. His choice of name was inspired by the Marvel Comicssuperhero Luke Cage and composer John Cage.[21][22]
I miss when actors used to be some random boxer a director met in a Cuban bar or the drunk tank, instead of the executive producer’s nibling or some fucking baronet.
I mean nepotism is hardly a new problem :)
True lol, it’s never not been, it’s hardwired into humans, but it was nice when certain industries were new and there wasn’t so much buildup for the enthrenchment
Yes I think when an industry is new is about the only time that existing power structures don’t dominate, albeit briefly. I saw this up close with the advent of the WWW. In the early days, coding HTML was like working magic, and there were no established players who had a lock on how to do it better than what any enterprising young person could teach themselves through tinkering.
But his latter movies are awesome and I love him, so I’ll let it slide.
Yeah I like him too. The only asterisk on that is that I guess I might like some other actor better who didn’t have a family “in”
how does changing his famous last name conceal that he was not making it on his own? what?
He was given roles in his uncles film because he was his nephew. The name change just swept this under the rug. He wanted to get the roles but not let anyone know he got them through favoritism.
this comment makes sense, but your original comment said something else that was genuinely confusing.
I guess it could be interpreted ways other than I intended, but since I know how it was intended, it’s kind of hard for my brain to successfully see how.
somehow it seemed like you were saying that he was trying to hide that he was failing at making it on his own, which is confusing in a couple directions. anwyay sorry for taking up your time. i meant well and wish you the best. :)
“To avoid the appearance of nepotism” sounds exactly like making it his own. You seem to have misunderstood. Are you an LLM?
You have misunderstood. He was in fact the beneficiary of nepotism: staring in his uncle’s films. But to keep this a secret, he changed his name. He was hiding the nepotism, not trying to avoid nepotism.
Walk a little more softly. You came off as confidently wrong there.
ive seen quite a few actors recently try to do this or trying to downplay thier nepotism.
The appearance of nepotism.
Nicholas Coppola got cast by his uncle, when any random 15 year old aspiring actor would never stand a chance.
He then changes his name so that other people in Hollywood will (hopefully) not say “oh he got that part because he’s Coppola’s nephew,” even if he absolutely got that job because he’s Coppola’s nephew.
I’m not disputing that he got his first few roles due to his connections, but changing his name absolutely would have distanced him from his relatives in other directors’ eyes.
No it wouldn’t/didn’t, but it would/did to the masses.
absolutely would have distanced him from his relatives in other directors’ eyes.
Nah, everyone in the industry would know about this. But random people on the street wouldn’t. And that’s what it’s about when you want to be famous.
She just wants to be treated like any other totally unqualified person whose mom gave her commencement speed and got handed 100 million dollars to start up a made up company.
That then told everyone about her company, that she doesn’t want any privilege in promoting, to her many followers.
