That is at present the larger setting, everyone wants investors and they all tend to promise the calf with golden horns. As I see it, investing in gold mining, Oil mining and a few others are near dead certain return on investments. The larger group that will seemingly want to invest in AI, the new hype word. Still, considering that Builder.ai went from a billion plus to zilch is a nice example what Microsoft backed solutions tend to give. You see, the larger picture that everyone is ignoring is that it was baked by Microsoft. Now, this might be OK, because Microsoft is a tech company. But consider that Builder.ai (previous known as Engineer.ai) was supposed to be all ‘good’, yet the media now reports ‘Builder.ai Collapsed After Finding Sales ‘Inflated By 300 Percent’’ This leads me to believe that there was larger problem with this DML/LLM solution. Another source gives us ‘Builder.ai’s Collapse Exposes Deceptive AI Claims, Shocking Major Investors’ and another source gives us ‘Builder.ai collapse exposes dangers of ‘FOMO investing’ in AI’ yet that is nothing compared to what I said on November 16th 2024 in ‘Is it a public service’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2024/11/16/is-it-a-public-service/) where I stated ““a US strategy to prevent a Chinese military tech grab in the Gulf region” and it is my insight that this is a clicking clock. One tick, one tock leading to one mishap and Microsoft pretty much gives the store to China. And with that Aramco laughingly watches from the sidelines. There is no if in question. This becomes a mere shifting timeline and with every day that timeline becomes a lot more worrying.” With the added “But several sources state “There are several reasons why General AI is not yet a reality. However, there are various theories as to what why: The required processing power doesn’t exist yet. As soon as we have more powerful machines (or quantum computing), our current algorithms will help us create a General AI” or to some extent. Marketing the spin of AI does not make it so.” You see, the entire DML/LLM is not AI, as we can see from the builder.ai setting (a little presumptuous) of me, but the setting that we get inflated sales and then the Register ended their article with “The fact that it wasn’t able to convince enough customers to pay it enough money to stay solvent should give pause to those who see generative AI as a replacement for junior developers. As the experience of the unfortunate Microsoft staffers having to deal with the GitHub Copilot Agent shows, the technology still has some way to go. One day it might surpass a mediocre intern able to work a search engine, but that day is not today.” Is perhaps merely part of the problem the “the technology still has some way to go” is astute and to the point, but it is not the larger problem. It reminded me of the old market research setting, take a bucket of data and let MANOVA sort it out. The idea that a layman can sort it out is hilarious. I have met over the last half a century less than a dozen people who know that they were doing. These people are extremely rare. So whenever I hear a student tell me that they had a good solution with MANOVA, my eyes were tearing with howls of deriving laughter. And now we see a similar setting. But the larger setting is not merely the coded setting of DML and LLM. It is the stage where data is either not verified or verified in the most shallow of situations. And now consider that stage with a 500 billion solution. Data is everything there and verification is one part of that key, a key too many are seeing aside because it is not sexy enough.
And now we get to the investors who are in “Fear Of Missing Out”, for them I have a consolation price. You see, RigZone gave me (at https://www.rigzone.com/news/adnoc_suppliers_pledge_817mm_investment_for_uae_manufacturing-27-may-2025-180646-article/) hours ago ‘ADNOC Suppliers Pledge $817MM Investment for UAE Manufacturing’, and as I see it Oil is a near certainty of achieving ROI, and as everyone is chasing the AI dream (which of course does not exist yet) those greedy hungry money people are looking away from the certainty piggybank (as I personally see it) and that kind of investment for manufacturing will bring products, sellable products and in the petrochemical industry that is like butter with the fish. A near certainty on investment. I prefer the expression ‘near certainty’ as there is always some risk, yet as I see it, ARAMCO and ADNOC are setting the bar of achievement high enough to get that done and as I see it “ADNOC said the facilities are situated throughout the Industrial City of Abu Dhabi (ICAD), Khalifa Economic Zones Abu Dhabi (KEZAD), Dubai Industrial Park, Jebel Ali Free Zone (JAFZA), Sharjah Airport International Free Zone (SAIF Zone), and Umm Al Quwain. They will generate over 3,500 high-skilled jobs in the private sector and produce a diverse array of industrial goods such as pressure vessels, pipe coatings, and fasteners.” As such the only danger is that ADNOC will not be able to fill the positions and that is at present the easiest score to settle.
So as we see the call for investors coming from the sound of a dozen bugles, remember that the old premise that getting the call from a setting that works beats the golden horns that some promise and the investors will need another setting (or so I figure). And in the end, the larger question is why builder.ai was backed inn the first place. Microsoft has a setting with OpenAI and as one source gives me “Microsoft and OpenAI have a significant partnership, where Microsoft is a major investor and supports OpenAI’s advancements, and OpenAI provides access to powerful language models through Microsoft’s Azure platform. This partnership enables Azure OpenAI Service, which provides access to OpenAI’s models for businesses, and it also includes a revenue-sharing agreement.” I cannot vouch for the source, but the idea is when this is going on, why go to it with builder.ai? And was builder.ai vetted? The entire setting is raising more questions than I normally would have (sellers have their own agenda and including Microsoft in this is ‘to them’ a normal setting) I do not oppose that, but when we see this interaction, I wonder how dangerous that Stargate will be and $500,000,000,000 ain’t hay.
And going back to ADNOC we see “ADNOC’s commercial agreements under the In-Country Value (ICV) program have enabled facilities that allow businesses to benefit from diverse commercial opportunities, the company said. The ICV program aims to manufacture AED90 billion ($24.5 billion) worth of products locally in its procurement pipeline by 2030.” More impressive is the quote “ADNOC’s ICV program has contributed AED242 billion ($65.8 million) to the UAE economy and created 17,000 jobs for UAE nationals since 2018, according to the company.” You see, such a move makes sense as the UAE produces 3.22 million barrels per day, that has been achieved from 2024 onward and some say that they exceeded their quota (by how much is unknown to me). But that makes sense as an investment, the entire fictive AI setting does not and ever since the builder.ai setting it makes a lot less sense, if not for the simple reason that no one can clearly state where that billion plus went, oh and how many investments collapsed and who were those investors. Simple questions really.
Have a great day and try not to chase too many Edsel’s with your investment portfolio.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 