- 4 months ago
can't decide which is more tragic....Natasha being 700 guys locked behind a curtain, or trying to build wakanda and actually building a hut đ. Get the BEST scam defense system (90 days free!): https://bitdefend.me/90Boss - Bitdefender Premium Security includes Scam Copilot - your AI-powered defense against online fraud.
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TechTranscript
00:00Earlier this year, the game Fortnite made a grave mistake.
00:03They added Darth Vader as an interactable character in the game.
00:06Cool.
00:07They gave him a lightsaber.
00:08Okay.
00:09Awesome.
00:10They gave him full access to Google's Gemini AI.
00:13Uh-oh.
00:14Wait, can you hear me?
00:16Speak plainly, Nick A30.
00:18What information do you have?
00:19Suddenly, Vader could understand what you were saying.
00:22He could reply in the style of Darth Vader and even use voice replication technology
00:26to do so while sounding exactly like the character's original voice artist, James Earl Jones.
00:32I find your lack of kill to death ratio disturbing.
00:36It was pretty convincingly done.
00:38I'm family friendly.
00:39Family friendly, even as you wield a Sith lightsaber.
00:42Unfortunately, what Fortnite forgot is that when you drop an open-ended toy this powerful
00:47right into the hands of kids, they're not going to be using it for deep Star Wars lore discussions.
00:52Within literally hours, YouTube was flooded with clips of people successfully getting the AI to say
00:57Skibidi Toilet and I'm looking for Dixie Normus
01:02This Dixie Normus, you say?
01:05to literal racist and homophobic slurs, which is obviously very bad press for a game whose child safety measures millions of parents rely on.
01:13But since there was no major fallout from it, we'll let this one pass with a 2 out of 10 fail.
01:18Cannot say the same for the rest of these though.
01:20Honestly, good luck trying to sit through the most cringeworthy tech fails of all time.
01:26Because then we've got Victorinox, the company most famous for the Swiss army knife, but also traditional luxury watches.
01:33And this company, when the smartwatch first started taking off in 2016, clearly panicked and scrambled to come up with a way to stay relevant.
01:40The idea? Forward thinking.
01:42The execution?
01:43Or put it this way, I wish this had gone to a galaxy far, far away.
01:48This is the Inox Cyber Tool.
01:50It was an add-on for Victorinox's watches that effectively upgraded them into smartwatches.
01:55A have your cake and eat it too approach of being able to keep the already beautiful watch design, but with smart features like a stopwatch, like health tracking, like being able to get notifications from specific contacts you choose.
02:08But look at the thing, the only cyber tool here is someone who would actually buy a luxury watch like this, only then to pay $225 more to cover the whole thing up with this plastic calculator screen friendship bracelet abomination.
02:22Bear in mind, by the way, this display was not touchscreen, and it didn't even go all the way around.
02:27It's just this tiny sliver in the middle, which means it had to abbreviate words, like your contacts would just become the first four letters of their name.
02:35So if you knew both a George and a Georgia, then flip a coin.
02:41As you can imagine, Cyber Tool was not a hit.
02:44It sold pretty close to zero units, which is why it was impossible to actually get one so I could show you, and remains a rare blemish on Victorinox's well-established reputation for luxury.
02:55So, you can't have your cake and eat it too, 3 out of 10 fail.
02:59So, do you know Keurig, the coffee pod machine maker?
03:02Well, most likely, that's all you know them for.
03:05But, 2015 was when they tried to change that with Keurig Cold, a machine for brewing, well, cold, fizzy beverages.
03:13So, basically a SodaStream, but unlike SodaStream, whose cola is Pepsi, Keurig managed to secure fricking Coca-Cola as the drink that it could make.
03:22All topped off with a new mechanism that, unlike SodaStream, meant that it could carbonate your drinks without ever needing to even touch a CO2 canister.
03:30So, why didn't this just destroy them?
03:33Well, I absolutely love me some Dr. Pepper.
03:36So, let's get one of these Dr. Pepper pods, which, by the way, is absolutely enormous for one serving of a drink.
03:43Goes in there, and now we find out.
03:46Well, first off, this was insanely expensive.
03:49$370, or the equivalent of $500 now.
03:53The thing's absolutely colossal, demanding a large amount of your extremely valuable kitchen counter space.
03:59Oh yeah, and it's nearly as loud as a fricking blender.
04:02Which would have been fine if this was like a five second job, but it is still going.
04:09Still going.
04:10Still going.
04:11Much, much, much later.
04:13Oh, hey, that doesn't look like Dr. Pepper.
04:18Fight!
04:18Oh, okay.
04:19Then the cola comes after.
04:20I'll admit, there is something satisfying about seeing your own drink being made.
04:24The thing is, that took 90 seconds, or 80 seconds longer than just grabbing a can from the fridge.
04:31It is fizzy.
04:33It does taste somewhat like Dr. Pepper.
04:35It's got like a bit of gloopy, syrupy-ness to it.
04:39Kind of like it's not quite been mixed properly.
04:41I'm actually curious, how old is this pod?
04:43Best by 2016.
04:46Maybe it has something to do with it.
04:47Fine, we can cut it some slack when it comes to flavor.
04:49But this is the thing that's going to make you want to smack your head against a table.
04:54It's that having my drink made by my own Keurig machine, even if you take out the absolutely ridiculous cost of the unit itself,
05:01is still about four times more expensive than just going to a store and buying a can.
05:08One pod of this Dr. Pepper was priced at $1.75.
05:12And to really add insult to an already grievous injury, the only thing this thing does right, the method it had for carbonation, turned out to be dangerous.
05:23The pods themselves contain tiny beads that are saturated with CO2, which was then released into the drink when the beads interacted with moisture.
05:31Which sounds cool, but what it actually meant is that these pods are volatile.
05:36To the point where Keurig themselves were advising you to handle them with care and to avoid opening them.
05:41As they could literally burn your mouth and stomach if consumed.
05:45So unsurprisingly, the cold was available for less than a year before Keurig decided to can the thing.
05:51While also having to offer full refunds and cutting 108 jobs at the factory where it was made.
05:574 out of 10 fail.
05:59Now how do you want up a drink pod machine?
06:01Well, with a machine that 3D prints your drinks.
06:04That is what Canna was trying to do with their Canna 1 Molecular Beverage Printer.
06:09And this one flies particularly close to home because about 3 years ago, I was actually approached to become an investor in this product.
06:16So the idea is simple in theory.
06:18The vast, vast majority of any beverage is water.
06:22The rest is just tiny, subtle differences in chemical makeup.
06:25Like these 3 lines here.
06:27They represent 1 red wine and 2 white wines.
06:29The drinks have completely different colour, flavour, properties, but in a chromatography graph, where each one of these peaks is showing the presence of a molecule, you can actually see how similar the composition still is.
06:42And so this Canna 1 is the thing that's effectively providing those chemicals to build your drinks from the ground up on a molecular level.
06:50Which, don't get me wrong, is extremely exciting.
06:53It would mean that you could change the levels of sugar, caffeine, alcohol, carbonation, even the nutrition of the drinks that you're making to suit your exact preferences.
07:01And so when I was approached, the company even asked me to design a few cocktails of my own that anyone who buys one of these would also be able to recreate on their own.
07:09Obviously, I was planning something passion fruit related.
07:11Plus, also, this would almost completely kill waste.
07:15No more buying cans, no more bottles, no more semi-explosive pods that you have to keep throwing into landfill.
07:21And the pack of chemicals that you get could last you a month, with the company shipping you new ones as soon as you run out.
07:27The only thing you pay for is the drinks themselves, between $0.10 to $5, depending on what you order.
07:32Which is a little bit of a weird idea, paying per drink from a product that you've already paid for.
07:37But hey, I take that over a monthly subscription fee.
07:40So after three years of development, and even an actually working prototype to prove this wasn't science fiction, what killed it?
07:49Money problems.
07:50While the company did generate a healthy $30 million in funding, that still wasn't nearly enough to build a full manufacturing line.
07:58Which creates a bit of a vicious cycle, because then they couldn't fulfill their pre-orders.
08:02And if you can't fulfill your pre-orders, then your investors are going to start pulling out.
08:05Oh yeah, and they had to increase the price of the unit from $499 to $799 after the initial wave of pre-orders.
08:11All topped off with the COVID pandemic.
08:13Creating even more havoc for trying to get any physical product made in at all decent time.
08:19And leading to the rise of anti-vax paranoia.
08:21Which made the entire concept of chemically engineering your drinks start to sound more like a Bond villain plot to some people.
08:28So, before I could even get my hands on my unit to decide if I wanted to become an investor, the dream was dead.
08:34Without the money to make the thing, Kana had to very suddenly cancel all operations, lay off all of their employees, and sell their assets to another company.
08:41But the ripples are even greater when it's big companies who are screwing up.
08:46Like Apple, who in the year 2000, released their vision of the mainstream computer that every household should want to own.
08:52The Power Mac G4 Cube.
08:54God, wow.
08:55It's very small, even by today's standards.
08:57I do love the fact that the wire is specifically designed to pivot.
09:00But yeah, the entire pitch here is that this computer packs a real punch for its size.
09:05While looking a lot cleaner than the average home PC that people would have had at the time.
09:09It really does feel like the precursor to the modern day Mac Studio.
09:13And critics actually applauded the thing initially.
09:15It's housed in acrylic glass, and it was such a unique looking computer that it was winning design awards left, right, and center upon release.
09:22But then things went downhill pretty fast.
09:25There's a reason that you don't see this fancy glass acrylic on Apple products anymore.
09:29Because it was actually cracking at the corners.
09:33Leading to some very entertaining headlines like, is it all it's cracked up to be?
09:38It became enough of an uproar that Apple themselves had to respond.
09:41Except their response was that these were in fact intentional mold lines.
09:46What?
09:46But let's be honest, it doesn't really matter what it is if your product looks damaged.
09:52And if this thing wasn't winning on the design front, then what the hell was it winning at?
09:57Because at $1,799, this was far too expensive for most households.
10:02For pros, it was basically the same specs as the Power Mac G4 Tower, but with like half the ports.
10:08And then just look at this chunker of a power supply that, because it couldn't fit inside the body, had to be kept externally.
10:15Those are particularly ironic, because 25% of this design is just air.
10:20So Apple thought this was going to be a breakout success.
10:23They actually sold less than one third of their expectations, losing $90 million in projected sales,
10:29leading them to cut their losses and end the product entirely a year later.
10:33And what makes the Power Mac G4 Cube particularly noteworthy is,
10:36this is the only time in history that Apple has ever come out themselves and called one of their own products.
10:42It was a spectacular failure.
10:44It's got to haunt Tim at night.
10:47Four out of ten.
10:47But I am waiting for the day that they say the same thing about Apple Intelligence,
10:52because this is where things get a whole lot hairier.
10:56So in the middle of 2024, the company announced Apple Intelligence.
10:59They called it AI for the rest of us, because everyone else had already been using ChatGPT for two years.
11:06They were late, but fine, at least it exists now.
11:08Then in September, they announced the iPhone 16s and spent the whole time talking about Apple Intelligence again,
11:15pretty much instead of actually announcing new phone features.
11:18Okay, so this really had better be something game-changing now.
11:22And then the feature launched.
11:24Or should I say, face-planted.
11:27Siri was meant to be the big headline exciting upgrade with this flashy new animation, but I think it got worse.
11:33People found that it was slower, especially when it had to then reach out to ChatGPT for more complex answers.
11:38Some features that Apple had originally talked about just didn't make it.
11:42And the software that it all launched on, iOS 18, was like the buggiest piece of software Apple has ever made.
11:48I could probably summarise the sentiment with this here Reddit post, which people joked about in the comments,
11:53only then to realise that their own phones were just as screwed.
11:58What month was it last month?
12:00It's Thursday, the 14th of August, 2025.
12:04No, that's today.
12:05It's Thursday, the 14th of August, 2025.
12:10But what about last month?
12:16There was Cleanup, a new feature to remove things from your images.
12:20But compared to Samsung and Google's alternatives, it was really poor.
12:24There's this new AI summaries feature, which bundles all your notifications together,
12:28which is already confusing, because as soon as you have more than about two,
12:31the summaries start to lose their actual meaning.
12:33But it was also summarising wrong.
12:36So badly that the BBC actually made a complaint that their news was being misrepresented.
12:42Apple couldn't even come up with any good reasons to use their intelligence,
12:46even in their official trailers.
12:47Showing scenarios like someone who's done absolutely nothing at work all day,
12:51and then uses Apple intelligence to make his co-worker do it for him.
12:54Or this lady who forgot her partner's birthday,
12:57so uses Apple intelligence to make a movie as his gift.
13:00As if the concept of a phone-made movie hasn't already been a feature for like a decade.
13:05Plus, isn't it just a little bit weird that all of these characters are not being great people?
13:10It makes it feel less like AI for the rest of us,
13:13and more like AI for the worst of us.
13:16This is the tool for lying to your colleagues about having read an email that you haven't.
13:21And it's partly funny and cringe, especially when it's led to scenes like this,
13:25where Apple is actually just straight up getting told off by journalist Joanna Stern.
13:30And so there is a real expectation that Siri should be as good,
13:34if not better, than the competition.
13:36I don't think ultimately it should be.
13:38But it's not right now.
13:40That's certainly our mission.
13:41Yeah, but that's our mission.
13:42But this Apple intelligence fluff up has also put Apple in
13:46probably the most critical condition they've been in for the last 10 years.
13:49Because this makes the iPhone 16s that were predicated on Apple intelligence
13:53probably the most redundant upgrade ever.
13:56Apple's internal team organization has apparently fallen apart over this AI.
14:00But most concerningly, when you fall behind in artificial intelligence,
14:03it is very hard to catch up.
14:05Apple has no data to train a massive, powerful AI model on like Google do.
14:10And so unless they strike a very big deal with someone
14:13or they change their stance on the way that they use customers' data to help train their AI,
14:19it's hard to see how they're not just going to fall even further behind.
14:236 out of 10.
14:25This one's even harder to wrap your head around.
14:27Although, granted, not that hard to wrap around your head.
14:31Magic Leap, the mixed reality company who started work on essentially the precursor
14:36to the Apple Vision Pro headset, but in 2016 managed to hit a valuation of
14:41not millions, but $4.5 billion before they even released a single product.
14:47For years, they've been just trickling out teaser footage,
14:51promising some seriously powerful technology,
14:53like the ability for simulated objects to appear behind real objects in space
14:57rather than all being superimposed over the camera feed.
15:00And then a later demo, which was supposedly completely undoctored,
15:04also showed virtual light sources reflecting off of real objects,
15:08which, that's a tall order.
15:10You can see why people were excited about this.
15:12I mean, you look at the front, there's sensors everywhere.
15:15And look at this headband.
15:16That is how you do adjustability right.
15:19And so the hype train was, well, full.
15:24Google became a major backer.
15:25AT&T became an investor and sole partner too in 2018.
15:29And that same year, the Magic Leap 1 was released through them in the US.
15:34However, you know how, like, no one talks about the Apple Vision Pro anymore?
15:37Because while it's hard to deny that the thing isn't a miracle piece of hardware,
15:41there's just nothing to do on it for an average user.
15:44Well, Magic Leap 1 was essentially that, but even more so.
15:49The hardware wasn't as much of a miracle, and the price certainly wasn't.
15:53This thing was $2,300, which is far too much,
15:57considering that the software experience looked like a Teemu version of the Vision Pro,
16:02and that the field of view was far too narrow to be able to make the experiences feel immersive.
16:07So, unlike the millions of units that the company was expecting and gearing up to sell,
16:12how many were bought?
16:136,000 in the first six months.
16:17It fell so far short of expectations that Magic Leap was apparently losing tens of millions of dollars per month.
16:241,000 employees were laid off, and the CEO himself even stepped down.
16:29But if you haven't yet got cringe lines permanently baked into your face at this point,
16:34then it's time to spill the tea on tea.
16:36Tea is an app which has all the intentions of a knight in shining armor to enhance women's safety while dating,
16:43but with all the execution of a drunk man jousting on a unicycle.
16:50It's a women's-only app where those women can talk about, can rate,
16:53and can share stories about men that they've dated
16:56to highlight any red flags for other women who might be about to.
17:00You can probably start to see where the questions come in,
17:03because, yes, the premise is to build an entire profile all about these guys
17:08filled with intimate details like how they broke up,
17:11what their lesser traits are, anything about them that these women didn't like,
17:15without once asking for any kind of permission from the guys.
17:19It was creating, in some cases, as you can probably imagine,
17:22one of the most invasive forms of defamation,
17:25but just without the guys knowing that they'd been defamed.
17:28It does feel kind of dystopian that you could rock up to a first date
17:30knowing nothing about this person you're seeing,
17:32but she knows everything about you.
17:35Well, that did not seem to stop this app absolutely exploding in popularity in the US.
17:40It shot straight to number one and hit around 6 million users, according to the devs.
17:44But people on the internet, being understandably pissed,
17:49did what they always do.
17:50They took matters into their own hands.
17:52The T app was hacked, not once, but twice.
17:55I mean, you can barely call it hacked
17:56because the security of the thing was so damn poor.
17:59And all information, including IDs and photos from over 70,000 women on the app,
18:04and even messages discussing abortions and cheating,
18:07were all completely exposed.
18:09The app is still going,
18:11but has just been hit with no less than 10 class action lawsuits
18:15from its somewhat understandably peeved users.
18:18But the funniest part of this saga is now,
18:21an entirely new app has been made in response.
18:23T on her is literally the one-to-one male equivalent of T.
18:28And that has now just started leaking user data too.
18:33It's almost like there's a moral to the story.
18:35Number four is so bad.
18:37So Builder AI was one of the most promising British startups of like all time.
18:43It was a company that promised consumers who had zero coding experience,
18:46the ability to create their own apps.
18:48All you'd have to do was simply tell the AI agent Natasha what you wanted,
18:52and she would just pump out the finished software in a few weeks or even days.
18:57And I don't think I need to explain why this was a popular idea.
19:00They worked with Virgin, the BBC.
19:02They even became officially backed by Microsoft.
19:04This company was absolutely soaring with a valuation of $1.5 billion.
19:08But it turns out Natasha, in what can only be described as the biggest catfish of the century,
19:15was actually over 700 programmers sitting behind a curtain in an office in India.
19:20This truly was the Flintstones car of artificial intelligence.
19:25Technically, there was some AI at work picking out the best templates to start the app development from.
19:31But there's just something so unbelievably awkward about claiming to have developed super intelligence,
19:36only for it to actually be 700 underpaid guys locked in a dark room, furiously programming in secret.
19:42And that might not actually be the worst part.
19:45Because after the company was already exposed, a probe was launched into their sales,
19:49finding out that Builder AI had actually been claiming to be selling four times what they really were.
19:55And that this company already existed before as Engineer AI,
19:59and had pulled the exact same trick there too.
20:02So investors obviously started dropping out like flies, wanting their money back.
20:06And without the money, Builder pretty quickly ran dry and declared bankruptcy.
20:11And then was investigated by the authorities in both the UK and the US.
20:157 out of 10.
20:17And if they want some financial advice, I've got 700 guys in a closet called Amy they can talk to.
20:22How's this for cringe?
20:23A device originally intended for child tracking that then pivoted to becoming a games console
20:28when the company realized that no one wanted a child tracker,
20:31whose best-selling game ended up being Sticky Balls.
20:36This is the Gizmondo, and it's honestly one of the most legendary cock-ups of all time.
20:42So the year was 2005, the year of the Titan Nintendo DS,
20:46but Swedish company Tiger Telematics thought that they could do better.
20:51God, it still looks like a child tracker.
20:53Okay, games, movies, music, messaging, camera.
20:56So this is a 0.3 megapixel VGA sensor.
21:00It's actually not as bad as that makes it sound.
21:02Oh, and then GPS, which is clearly a remnant of the child tracker this thing was originally meant to be.
21:08And if you're thinking these sound more like phone features, you'd be right.
21:11The thing also has cellular connectivity, allowing you to browse the web and send SMS texts with pictures,
21:17with even music and movies.
21:19And of course, we gotta try a game.
21:21I guess you could say it's kind of like Mario Kart, if, you know, your kart was one wheel.
21:26At least it runs at 60 FPS.
21:27That much I'll give it.
21:29How many games?
21:31Eight in total, which is already red flag number one, considering the thing was $230.
21:37And that $230, by the way, was for the ad-supported tier of this console.
21:43Which meant that companies were able to use your location, thanks to the GPS chip inside,
21:47and then target ads to you as you walked near their stores.
21:51And so if you then didn't want these companies invasively stalking your children,
21:55the thing was $400.
21:57Pony up, mum.
21:59And the marketing was absolutely ridiculous.
22:01Millions were spent on stunts like a celebrity party in one of London's top hotels.
22:06And then Gizmondo's CEO, Stefan Eriksson,
22:08even taking part in the famous 24 hours of Le Mans race.
22:12Were they expecting either of these to be resonating with children?
22:16Just to make things worse, they then delayed the US release,
22:18and announced a widescreen version of the thing before that release.
22:22Which, I mean, what a fantastic way to make everyone that's already pre-ordered your normal console hate you.
22:27But here is where it just gets comical.
22:29Reports then started coming out in Swedish newspapers
22:32that Stefan Eriksson used to be the leader of a Swedish mafia group.
22:36Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
22:40Making the whole Le Mans race thing a relatively normal part of his personality by comparison.
22:46You know we like to give some video game CEOs silly nicknames
22:48and imagine their kind of mythological figures,
22:52like Reggie, the Reginator, Fils-AimĂŠ.
22:54But this is real.
22:56Eriksson was literally known as Fat Steve and The Banker in the criminal underworld.
23:01You can't make this stuff up.
23:03He actually served time in prison for car thefts and cocaine and arms deals,
23:08which is probably enough for anyone to rethink the GPS tracking ad-supported tier of the console.
23:14And it starts to make sense why the Nintendo DS sold 150 million units,
23:20Sony's PSP sold 80 million units,
23:22and this sold just 25.
23:26Thousand.
23:27Which put the company near $400 million in debt.
23:31Gizmondo Europe was liquidated in 2006,
23:34and almost like a final kill from the grave,
23:37the liquidators couldn't explain where half the money had gone.
23:40It had just disappeared without any documentation.
23:42But given the literal mafia involvement in the product,
23:47I think we have a pretty good idea where it went.
23:498 out of 10 fail.
23:50And speaking of organized crime,
23:53this one's actually kind of exciting,
23:54because you may remember me doing an unboxing for this little guy about five years ago.
23:59The Escobar Fold 2.
24:01And then not too long after, the Escobar Gold 11 Pro.
24:04Essentially, Escobar Inc.,
24:05the company responsible for managing the money of notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar,
24:10a lot started selling these strange gold-covered phones at ridiculously low prices.
24:15The Fold 2 that I was sent cost $399,
24:18like a literal fraction of the asking price for any self-respecting foldable device at the time.
24:23And they were making some wild claims,
24:25like the fact that the phone was indestructible,
24:27and that they were better than Samsung,
24:29and that they were intending to sue Apple for cheating people by selling worthless phones.
24:34Only for the Escobar devices to arrive in reviewers' hands,
24:37and for us to realize that, in fact,
24:39of course, these were just Samsung phones with stickers on them,
24:43and iPhones with a gold-colored backplate.
24:45But it gets a whole lot more devious,
24:47because the reviewers are the only ones who received anything.
24:51All they sent to the other customers was a couple of bits of paper,
24:54intended solely to establish a mailing record,
24:57so that if anyone replied for a refund,
24:59they could tell the payment processes that the product had arrived,
25:02and kept the money,
25:03which is just absolutely cartoonish, mustache-twirling villainy.
25:07Anyway, the reason that we're talking about this now
25:08is the guy behind the entire operation,
25:11Olaf Gustafsson,
25:12has now been caught,
25:13and has been charged with,
25:15get this,
25:16one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud,
25:19nine counts of wire fraud,
25:20three counts of mail fraud,
25:21one count of conspiracy to engage in money laundering,
25:2341 counts of actually engaging in money laundering,
25:2635 counts of international money laundering,
25:29and 25 counts of engaging in monetary transactions
25:31in property derived from specified unlawful activity.
25:35That has got to be one of the worst rap sheets in history.
25:39Nine out of ten.
25:40And because of it,
25:40he now faces up to 20 years in federal prison
25:43for each fraud charge,
25:45and up to 10 years for each laundering count.
25:47And so,
25:47even though he hasn't pleaded guilty to everything,
25:50it is quite easily a life sentence,
25:52plus up to $1.3 million in fines,
25:56which, knowing him,
25:57he will probably try to pay with strips of kitchen roll
26:00with dollar stickers on either side.
26:02It's not very often that we have R&B singers
26:04appearing on this series,
26:05but then again,
26:06it's not very often that you get R&B singers
26:08trying to build a city.
26:10Yes, we're talking about Akon,
26:12who in 2018 announced that he wanted to build
26:15a real-life Wakanda in Senegal, Africa,
26:18a hyper-futuristic city based on modern technologies.
26:21Sounds pretty cool, right?
26:22And credit where credit's due,
26:23these plans do look like something straight out of a movie,
26:26if only in a completely ludicrous,
26:28imaginary SpaceX Mars colony kind of way.
26:30But still,
26:31it was meant to be self-powered and environmentally friendly.
26:34It would have luxury condos,
26:35a beachfront resort,
26:36office parks,
26:37a university,
26:38and a hospital,
26:39which he wanted to all be an hour flight,
26:42maybe two from anywhere in Africa,
26:44which you'll know is quite to the claim
26:45if you've at all tried navigating the continent recently.
26:48But there was reason to take him seriously.
26:51Akon has delivered before.
26:52Like a few years prior,
26:53he did this whole Akon Lighting Africa campaign,
26:56installing street lights and household solar systems,
26:58and actually reaching 28.8 million people,
27:03which is probably why when it came to talking about Akon City,
27:05he managed to accrue astounding levels of funding.
27:08They got to a point where they had $4 billion worth of investors' money to play with.
27:13But this is Akon City.
27:16The skeleton of the visitor center is the entirety of what has been built,
27:21eight years after that announcement.
27:25Because the modern technologies that this city
27:28was supposed to be based on
27:29were the blockchain
27:30and Akon's own cryptocurrency.
27:33Close your ears.
27:35Akon.
27:37It didn't help that the buildings he wanted to make
27:39were very difficult to construct.
27:40The fact that they had so much metal
27:42and massive windows,
27:43which would effectively turn them into greenhouses
27:45in the Senegalese sun.
27:47And that even if they got around all of that,
27:49just the fact that they looked like,
27:51well,
27:52human parts.
27:53But I would say the crux of it
27:54was Akon absolutely collapsing.
27:57It lost 99% of its value.
28:00Because why wouldn't it?
28:01It didn't even mean anything.
28:02So like,
28:03what better way to kill a new economy
28:05before it's even started
28:06than for its currency to become worthless?
28:08It got to the point
28:09where the Senegalese government themselves
28:10had to step in
28:11and scrap the project entirely.
28:13Leaving behind just a single half-built hut,
28:16a dead crypto coin,
28:17and an abandoned,
28:19very phallic vision of the future.
28:229 out of 10.
28:22What if there was a way to know
28:24if something was a risky endeavor
28:25before taking it on?
28:26What if there was an AI-powered
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28:30from your texts
28:31to your emails
28:32to your WhatsApp
28:32to your calls
28:33and just flags the dodgy stuff
28:35before you end up
28:36on a tech fails video
28:37because you accidentally
28:37wired half your savings
28:39to the escobars?
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