Latest news with #Chungin"Roy"Lee
India Today
22-05-2025
- Business
- India Today
Creator of AI cheating tool says that technical job interviews for engineers are over, everyone will cheat
A month ago, a student at Columbia University made headlines, but for all the wrong reasons. Chungin "Roy" Lee was expelled from university and had his internships with Meta, Amazon, and TikTok revoked. The reason: he created an app, called Cluely, that helps engineers cheat in interviews. The story began when Lee posted a video on YouTube, showing off this app and how it works. While creating a viral app is a significant achievement, Lee landed on a disciplinary hearing. But this did not stop him from working on the app and making it even better. In his defence, he believes cheating with AI is the only fair way into the industry a recent interview with Business Insider, Lee stated, 'We say 'cheat on everything' because, ironically, we believe this is the only path towards a future that is truly fair." The statement gives birth to several ethical questions. One such question that is stuck in my mind is: if AI is the future and "cheating is the only way", is it even fair? If you visit the first thing that greets you is the large gray type that reads this. Lee says cheating will soon be standard practiceOnce known for creating software designed to assist job applicants in passing coding assessments using AI prompts, Lee has now expanded his ambitions. His company Cluely is positioned as an all-purpose tool that assists users during live conversations, from job interviews to first dates — even claiming to offer "cheating for literally everything."advertisement 'There's a very, very scary and quickly growing gap between people who use AI and people who moralise against it,' Lee said in an email to Business Insider. 'And that gap compounds: in productivity, education, opportunity, and wealth.'Lee believes that what's seen today as cheating will soon be standard practice. In another interview, he stated that once everyone begins relying on AI to navigate meetings, it will no longer be considered cheating — it will simply become the standard way people function and think moving predicts traditional interviews will become obsolete, replaced by AI-generated candidate profiles. These systems, he says, will analyse work history, skills, and compatibility to match candidates to jobs — leaving just a brief conversation to determine 'culture fit.''I already know all the work you've done, or at least the AI already knows the work you've done,' Lee told Business Insider. 'It knows how good it is. It knows what skills you're good at, and if there is a skill match, then I should just be able to match you directly to the job.'Lee reveals Cluely's hiring processCluely's own hiring process reflects this shift, with interviews reportedly replaced by informal chats. He said that since the company is not a believer of old-style interviews, it only aims to hold a conversation with the candidate. 'We check if you're a culture fit, we talk about past work you've done, and that's pretty much it," he the hiring process, Lee believes AI will fundamentally reshape the way people think, communicate and interact. In a new video, posted on EO YouTube channel, he said, "The entire way we're going to think will be changed."He added, 'Every single one of my thoughts is formulated by the information I have at this moment. But what happens when that information I have isn't just what's in my brain, but it's everything that humanity has ever collected and put online, ever?'He imagines a future where AI provides real-time summaries of people's lives, scraping digital footprints to give users condensed insights during interactions. 'What happens when AI literally helps me think in real time?' he asked. 'The entire way that humans will interact with each other, with the world, all of our thoughts will be changed.'Cluely, Lee says, is aimed at preparing people for this inevitable shift. 'The rate of societal progression will just expand and exponentiate significantly once everyone gets along to the fact that we're all using AI now,' he Lee, the divide between those who embrace AI and those who resist it will only grow. 'Mass adoption of AI is the only way to prevent the universe of the pro-AI class completely dominating the anti-AI class in every measurable and immeasurable outcome there is,' he told Business society accepts this vision or not, Lee is adamant: the AI revolution is already here, and it's time to keep up or be left behind.
Business Insider
21-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Founder of AI tool for cheating in interviews predicts everyone will do it — and technical job interviews are on their way out
Creating a tool that allowed job candidates to cheat on their technical interviews kicked off a chain of events that would eventually see Chungin "Roy" Lee kicked out of Columbia University — but he believes that, soon enough, everyone will be using AI to get ahead. Lee has since branched out from an AI tool for coding interviews alone, founding "Cluely," which he's previously called " a cheating tool for literally everything," including live conversation. A promotional video for the app, for instance, depicts Lee using the app to "cheat" his way through a date. "There's a very, very scary and quickly growing gap between people who use AI and people who moralize against it," Lee told Business Insider in an email. "And that gap compounds: in productivity, education, opportunity, and wealth." "We say 'cheat on everything' because, ironically, we believe this is the only path towards a future that is truly fair," he added. Lee talked more about his views on how AI use will impact interviews in a recent interview with EO. "When every single person is using AI to cheat on meetings, then it's not that you're cheating anymore," he said. "This is just how humans will operate and think in the future." In the coming years, Lee expects interviews to be a lot more "holistic," and largely assess whether the candidate is a "culture fit," rather than focusing on a deep dive into their skills. That is, if the interview as a means of assessment endures at all, given that he expects AI to become powerful enough to build individual profiles for each candidate and feed that information back to the interviewer. "I already know all the work you've done, or at least the AI already knows the work you've done," he told EO. "It knows how good it is. It knows what skills you're good at, and if there is a skill match, then I should just be able to match you directly to the job, assuming that we get along after like a 30-minute conversation." It's a practice that's already commonplace at Cluely, Lee added, where he says interviews tend to be less formal. "I really don't know that there is a need for interviews in today's age, but right now what we use is really just a conversation," he said. "We check if you're a culture fit, we talk about past work you've done, and that's pretty much it." Lee expects AI to eventually alter more than just the job interview — he believes everyone will soon be using it as frequently and broadly as possible. "The entire way we're going to think will be changed," Lee told EO. "Every single one of my thoughts is formulated by the information I have at this moment. But what happens when that information I have isn't just what's in my brain, but it's everything that humanity has ever collected and put online, ever?" For instance, Lee posed — how different would an interaction between two people look if an AI could feed one a "condensed blurb" of information about the other, after it was finished scraping their entire digital footprint? "What happens when AI literally helps me think in real time?" Lee said. "The entire way that humans will interact with each other, with the world, all of our thoughts will be changed." With Cluely, Lee hopes to get people used to what he believes is an inevitable transformation. "The rate of societal progression will just expand and exponentiate significantly once everyone gets along to the fact that we're all using AI now," he said. "And that's what Cluely hopes to achieve, is to get everybody used to, 'We're all using AI now.'" For Lee, it's simple — either get on board or fall so far behind you can't ever catch up. "Mass adoption of AI is the only way to prevent the universe of the pro-AI class completely dominating the anti-AI class in every measurable and immeasurable outcome there is," he told BI.
Yahoo
27-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Banned By Columbia, Backed By Millions: 21-Year-Old's AI Startup Cluely Lets You Cheat On Exams, Interviews, And Sales Calls
Cluely, a provocative AI startup born from academic controversy, just closed a $5.3 million seed round led by Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures. According to Futurism, the company's core product is a real-time, invisible AI assistant that operates through a hidden browser overlay, giving users live answers during interviews, coding tests, exams, and even meetings. Don't Miss: 'Scrolling To UBI' — Deloitte's #1 fastest-growing software company allows users to earn money on their phones. Hasbro, MGM, and Skechers trust this AI marketing firm — . The founders, Chungin "Roy" Lee and Neel Shanmugam dropped out of Columbia University after being suspended for creating the early version of the tool, known then as Interview Coder. That tool, built to help candidates navigate technical interviews on platforms like LeetCode, quickly went viral and caught the attention of Columbia's disciplinary board. Within weeks of their suspension, the co-founders rebranded the product and announced the funding round on LinkedIn. Their AI, marketed as "completely undetectable," sees the screen, hears the audio, and feeds the user context-specific responses in real time. In an interview with the New York Times' "Hard Fork' podcast, co-founder Lee stated, 'I read the student handbook quite thoroughly before I actually started building this thing [...] but I didn't actually expect to get expelled at all. And the student handbook very explicitly doesn't mention anything about academic resources.' Trending: Donald Trump Just Announced a $500 Billion AI Infrastructure Deal — The $5.3 million funding round, completed in just a few weeks following Cluely's rebrand, is being seen as a sign of growing investor appetite for new forms of human-AI collaboration, particularly in areas where performance pressure and assessment bias remain high. Since launching its current version, Cluely has reported more than $3 million in annual recurring revenue. While critics have raised ethical questions about the software, supporters argue that it highlights inefficiencies in existing gatekeeping systems, particularly the widespread reliance on memorization-heavy assessments like LeetCode in technical hiring processes, writes Business Today. A recent promotional video shared by the founder on X showed Lee using the software during a date to fabricate knowledge and facts in real-time, sparking debate across social media. While some saw the demonstration as a humorous take on modern dating and digital dependence, others likened it to scenarios featured in dystopian fiction such as Black Mirror. Some developers have already attempted to counteract Cluely's software, with one Reddit user claiming to have created a Swift-based tool that detects the platform when it is the public controversy, the startup continues to gain traction across industries. Early adopters include tech workers preparing for job interviews, sales professionals seeking support during live calls, and students managing online exam environments. According to Fortune, Cluely offers unlimited access to its AI tool through a subscription model priced at $20 per month or $100 annually. With funding, momentum building, institutional support from respected venture firms, and rapidly growing user demand, Cluely is signaling a broader shift in the conversation around AI, merit, and human augmentation. Whether the world sees that as a threat or an evolution remains to be seen. Read Next: Here's what Americans think you need to be considered wealthy. Inspired by Uber and Airbnb – Deloitte's fastest-growing software company is transforming 7 billion smartphones into income-generating assets – Image: Shutterstock Up Next: Transform your trading with Benzinga Edge's one-of-a-kind market trade ideas and tools. Click now to access unique insights that can set you ahead in today's competitive market. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? APPLE (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report TESLA (TSLA): Free Stock Analysis Report This article Banned By Columbia, Backed By Millions: 21-Year-Old's AI Startup Cluely Lets You Cheat On Exams, Interviews, And Sales Calls originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
A new AI app that helps you cheat in conversations is slick, a little creepy, and not quite ready for your next meeting
Cluely is an AI tool built for cheating in live conversations, and it has raised $5.3 million. The startup is founded by Chungin "Roy" Lee, who was suspended from Columbia. I put the app through a mock interview to see if it could help me land a job. A Ivy Leaguer just released an AI app to feed live answers to users. I put it to the test to see if AI could interview as well as I did. Chungin "Roy" Lee — the Columbia student who went viral for creating an AI tool to "cheat" on job interviews — was suspended in March for posting content from a disciplinary hearing, the university said. His new app, Cluely, helps users by analyzing what's on their screens, hearing audio, and suggesting answers to questions, all without detection from the other side. In a LinkedIn post, Lee said Cluely is a "cheating tool for literally everything." Lee said on Monday that San Francisco-based Cluely has raised $5.3 million, backed by Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures. Speaking to Business Insider on Wednesday night, Lee said that Cluely has gained about 70,000 users since its launch on Sunday. "It is pretty crazy. And this is just a lot more than we expected," he said. Lee said the concept of "cheating" needs to be rethought in the AI era. "Using AI is just inevitable and something that we should just all embrace," he said. I put Cluely to the test, and I saw promise — but also huge privacy concerns. I tested Cluely on Tuesday morning and paid $20 for the Pro version — a monthly subscription — since the free tier doesn't offer much. The interface is slick and minimal: a thin bar on the top of my screen. With one keyboard shortcut, Cluely scans my screen, then generates answers. I could also speak to it through my mic. It only works with what's already on my screen — it doesn't crawl the internet like ChatGPT. It also reads everything. I kept my Signal group chats closed. That's what makes it powerful — and also kind of terrifying. Lee told BI that Cluely doesn't save any data, and if it does, it's "heavily censored." "If there's something that you don't want to be seen, then you shouldn't use the tool, and it shouldn't be up while you're on sensitive information," Lee said. I deleted it right after writing this story. Cluely's killer pitch is real-time assistance. I let it scan my LinkedIn profile and kept it open while my editor put me through a mock interview with the same questions I answered to land this job. First up: What is my media consumption like? Could I share what I like to read or watch? What keeps me interested and busy? The app starts "thinking." Five seconds later, it gave me a summary of the question, not an answer. My editor tried again, more succinctly: "What media outlets do you read?" This time, Cluely came through: "I enjoy staying up to date with a mix of international and local news — typically from outlets like the New York Times, BBC, and CNA. I love longform journalism from The Atlantic and Wired, especially on tech and social issues. I also listen to 'The Daily' and 'Planet Money' during my commute." Not bad, though I don't listen to podcasts on my way to work. My editor asked me to talk about a difficult story I've worked on. 10 seconds of awkward silence later, Cluely offered: "One difficult story I worked on was about the impact of layoffs in the tech industry." I never wrote that story. The second hallucination came when the app said I had a "working knowledge of Malay." My editor congratulated me on my surprising — including to me — third language skill. It completely missed the elementary Korean listed on my LinkedIn. When my editor asked if I had questions for her, Cluely suggested a few basics: What do you enjoy most about working here? What's the team culture like? What does success look like in this role? Cluely's biggest flaw is speed. A five to 10-second delay feels like forever in a live interview. The answers were also too generic, occasionally wrong, and not tailored enough to me. It did generate decent answers to common questions. When I read them aloud, my editor said the biggest clue I had help was the delay, not the substance. She also said my real answers were better than Cluely's. Lee told BI that Cluely is in "a really raw state." "Our servers are super overloaded, so there's a lot of latency," he said. But there have been "significant performance updates" since the app went out on Sunday, he added. "We've upgraded all our servers, we've optimized the algorithms, and right now it should be about three times faster, which makes it much more usable in conversations." Lee said hallucinations will "exist insofar as the base models that we use allow for them." "The day that the models get better is the day that our product will get better," he added. There's definitely potential. If Cluely got faster, smarter, and could pull info from beyond just my screen, it could become a game-changing AI assistant. If I were hiring, I might think twice about conducting remote interviews because of these sorts of apps. But between the privacy risks, laggy performance, and random hallucinations, I'm keeping it off my computer. Read the original article on Business Insider
Business Insider
24-04-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
A new AI app that helps you cheat in conversations is slick, a little creepy, and not quite ready for your next meeting
A Ivy Leaguer just released an AI app to feed live answers to users. I put it to the test to see if AI could interview as well as I did. Chungin "Roy" Lee — the Columbia student who went viral for creating an AI tool to "cheat" on job interviews — was suspended in March for posting content from a disciplinary hearing, the university said. His new app, Cluely, helps users by analyzing what's on their screens, hearing audio, and suggesting answers to questions, all without detection from the other side. In a LinkedIn post, Lee said Cluely is a "cheating tool for literally everything." Lee said on Monday that San Francisco-based Cluely has raised $5.3 million, backed by Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures. Speaking to Business Insider on Wednesday night, Lee said that Cluely has gained about 70,000 users since its launch on Sunday. "It is pretty crazy. And this is just a lot more than we expected," he said. Lee said the concept of "cheating" needs to be rethought in the AI era. "Using AI is just inevitable and something that we should just all embrace," he said. I put Cluely to the test, and I saw promise — but also huge privacy concerns. First impressions I tested Cluely on Tuesday morning and paid $20 for the Pro version — a monthly subscription — since the free tier doesn't offer much. The interface is slick and minimal: a thin bar on the top of my screen. With one keyboard shortcut, Cluely scans my screen, then generates answers. I could also speak to it through my mic. It only works with what's already on my screen — it doesn't crawl the internet like ChatGPT. It also reads everything. I kept my Signal group chats closed. That's what makes it powerful — and also kind of terrifying. Lee told BI that Cluely doesn't save any data, and if it does, it's "heavily censored." "If there's something that you don't want to be seen, then you shouldn't use the tool, and it shouldn't be up while you're on sensitive information," Lee said. I deleted it right after writing this story. Flopping my mock interview Cluely's killer pitch is real-time assistance. I let it scan my LinkedIn profile and kept it open while my editor put me through a mock interview with the same questions I answered to land this job. First up: What is my media consumption like? Could I share what I like to read or watch? What keeps me interested and busy? The app starts "thinking." Five seconds later, it gave me a summary of the question, not an answer. My editor tried again, more succinctly: "What media outlets do you read?" This time, Cluely came through: "I enjoy staying up to date with a mix of international and local news — typically from outlets like the New York Times, BBC, and CNA. I love longform journalism from The Atlantic and Wired, especially on tech and social issues. I also listen to 'The Daily' and 'Planet Money' during my commute." Not bad, though I don't listen to podcasts on my way to work. My editor asked me to talk about a difficult story I've worked on. 10 seconds of awkward silence later, Cluely offered: "One difficult story I worked on was about the impact of layoffs in the tech industry." I never wrote that story. The second hallucination came when the app said I had a "working knowledge of Malay." My editor congratulated me on my surprising — including to me — third language skill. It completely missed the elementary Korean listed on my LinkedIn. When my editor asked if I had questions for her, Cluely suggested a few basics: What do you enjoy most about working here? What's the team culture like? What does success look like in this role? Not worth the $20 — yet. Cluely's biggest flaw is speed. A five to 10-second delay feels like forever in a live interview. The answers were also too generic, occasionally wrong, and not tailored enough to me. It did generate decent answers to common questions. When I read them aloud, my editor said the biggest clue I had help was the delay, not the substance. She also said my real answers were better than Cluely's. Lee told BI that Cluely is in "a really raw state." "Our servers are super overloaded, so there's a lot of latency," he said. But there have been "significant performance updates" since the app went out on Sunday, he added. "We've upgraded all our servers, we've optimized the algorithms, and right now it should be about three times faster, which makes it much more usable in conversations." Lee said hallucinations will "exist insofar as the base models that we use allow for them." "The day that the models get better is the day that our product will get better," he added. There's definitely potential. If Cluely got faster, smarter, and could pull info from beyond just my screen, it could become a game-changing AI assistant. If I were hiring, I might think twice about conducting remote interviews because of these sorts of apps. But between the privacy risks, laggy performance, and random hallucinations, I'm keeping it off my computer.
