The rise of 'pseudo-AI': how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots' work | Technology | The Guardian

I wonder how many AI services are augmented or in some cases just done by people.

“Using a human to do the job lets you skip over a load of technical and business development challenges. It doesn’t scale, obviously, but it allows you to build something and skip the hard part early on,” said Gregory Koberger, CEO of ReadMe, who says he has come across a lot of “pseudo-AIs”.

Skipping the hard part could be a cost optimization to get validation quicker, or it could invalidate your entire business model.