Founder Admits His “AI Transcription” Startup Was Just Him Joining People’s Meetings and Taking Notes by Hand

In 18th century Vienna, the Hungarian engineer and debutant Wolfgang von Kempelen shocked court patrons with a bizarre contraption: a great mechanical box which could seemingly play and even win chess games without any input from a human. Called the “Mechanical Turk,” Kempelen’s device became the talk of high society for decades, and went on to beat famed opponents including Ben Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte.

Of course, they didn’t exactly have computers back then. In reality, Herr Kempelen had built a complicated-looking device with enough dummy wires and gears to fool any suspicious observer — all meant to conceal a human chess master pulling the strings deep inside.

Though Kempelen’s cover was finally blown in the 1850s, the legacy of the Mechanical Turk lives on to this day. Except