We’ve reached a new low in AI. There are few moments in my career when I’ve felt as deeply disappointed—and frankly, repulsed—by the direction of a technology that was once hailed as a force for good. This time, it’s not just a bad product or a flawed business model. It’s a startup backed by Y Combinator, the most prestigious and influential startup accelerator in Silicon Valley, that now stands as a symbol of everything that’s gone wrong with the AI boom. The optics are so glaringly bad that Garry Tan, YC’s CEO, felt compelled to respond—indirectly—when I voiced my outrage. He didn’t defend the startup, nor did he offer a clear justification. Instead, his silence and the tone of his reply suggested he, too, knew something was deeply off. And he wasn’t alone. I’m not the only one who feels sickened by this. This isn’t just another overhyped AI tool. It’s a product that doesn’t solve a real problem, doesn’t deliver meaningful value, and exists solely to exploit the current AI frenzy. It’s built on the same tired playbook: sprinkle in some machine learning jargon, promise “revolutionary” results, and raise money from investors who’ve stopped asking hard questions. What’s worse is what this reveals about the broader AI startup ecosystem. We were promised AI would cure cancer, revolutionize education, and unlock the secrets of the universe. Instead, we’re drowning in a sea of apps that do nothing but repackage existing tools with a thin layer of AI fluff. These startups aren’t advancing the frontier—they’re commoditizing it. This particular company is a perfect example of enshittification in action: the slow, inevitable degradation of a technology’s promise into something exploitative, trivial, and ultimately harmful. It’s not just that the product is bad—it’s that it’s being funded at a time when real innovation is being starved of attention and capital. The irony is thick: YC, once a beacon of integrity and technical rigor, now appears to be accelerating the very trend it was meant to prevent. The same culture that once celebrated scrappy founders building real products now rewards those who can best simulate progress. In TheWhiteBox, we break down AI in plain language—no hype, no jargon, just first principles. For those who are tired of the noise and want to understand what’s really happening behind the scenes, this is the place to go. Because if we don’t start asking harder questions now, we’ll wake up one day and realize the cure we were promised never existed—and we spent our time building the disease instead.