> A particularly eyebrow-raising claim […] is that the 40-year-old CEO has claimed he was employed as a spy for the British government. He also insists that he's spoken to more than one prime minister about building AI for nation-states.<p>> Earlier this summer, Forbes published an exposé that highlighted his "history of exaggeration," and in its opening lines notes that Mostaque's claim that he has a master's degree from Oxford didn't hold up to scrutiny.<p>Those statements are very precise and can really only be true or false. I can’t verify the veracity, but if they’re false, he is <i>lying</i>, not embellishing or “exaggerating”.<p>There is a forgiving attitude towards compulsive liars in tech startups, and perhaps business in general, but that’s a cultural <i>decease</i>. There is no reason for journalists to play along in shifting the Overton window way into this kafkaesque relativistic worldview dictated by a small group of sociopaths and their enablers.