Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/glp-1-pill-promising">announced promising clinical trial results</a> this week for a daily pill to treat obesity and diabetes.
Besides the good news of minimal side effects and impressive results, though, the pill has an extremely unfortunate quality: its name.
The drug, which was first discovered by Chugai Pharmaceutical and licensed to Eli Lilly in 2018, is called "orforglipron," a word so perplexingly unpronounceable — "or fugly pron"? — that it defies belief.
According to the company, it's pronounced "or-for-GLIP-ron," which is such a mouthful that it's nearly impossible to imagine it becoming a household name like "Ozempic."
The pharmaceutical industry has a long and well-earned reputation for cooking up terrible names for drugs, from the anti-cancer medication "carfilzomib" to the melanoma treatment "talimogene laherparepvec" to "idarucizumab," which counteracts the blood-thinning effects of other medications.
But there are several good reasons why the names are so bonkers. For one, clinicians have warned that if they sound too similar, they <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10502196">could lead to potentially dangerous prescription errors</a>.
It also takes years for a drug to get its name, a process that requires drugmakers to abide by a complex system of international rules.
A system of prefixes and stems indicating what the drug does often determines the name of a drug. According to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health publication Global Health NOW, drugmakers <a href="https://globalhealthnow.org/2024-07/why-do-prescription-drugs-have-such-crazy-names#:~:text=And%20why%20do%20they%20sound,misused%2C%20with%20potentially%20lethal%20consequences.">must avoid the letters</a> Y, H, K, J, and W, which aren't used in all Roman alphabet-based languages.
Some drug names end up being completely made up, making no reference to anything, in what's referred to as an "empty vessel." (The most famous example is Prozac.)
To be clear, the word "orforglipron" won't appear on Eli Lilly's consumer-facing packaging if it ever hits the market. It's the drug's generic name, so it could eventually be marketed under a different brand name.
The medication is a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonist, much like the extremely popular semaglutide-based injections, such as Novo Nordisk's Wegovy and Ozempic.
But what sets it apart is the fact that it's a "small-molecule" agonist that can be taken orally and at "any time of the day without restrictions on food and water intake," according to Eli Lilly.
Scientists are hoping that orforglipron, which belongs to an emerging class of "glipron" medications, could provide an easy-to-administer alternative to other diabetes and obesity drugs.
A separate glipron, which has the slightly-less-headache-inducing name "danuglipron," is currently being developed by Pfizer. Like orforglipron, it's a once-a-day weight management pill.
However, the pharmaceutical firm ran into some trouble two years into developing and testing the drug, finding that the pill had <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/14/pfizer-discontinue-danuglipron-glp-1-obesity-liver-toxicity/">caused "liver injury" in a study participant</a> earlier this year.
Eli Lilly appears to have had far more success, announcing promising Phase 3 trial results last week. The news caused the pharmaceutical's share price to surge — and the stock of Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk to plummet.
More on weight loss drugs: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/glp-1-pill-promising">Human Experiments on GLP-1 Pill Looking Extremely Promising</a>

Orfor-What?

Developments

Now, say it three times fast.

Eli Lilly's New Weight Loss Drug May Have the Worst Name in Pharmaceutical History

When it comes to battling demons trapped inside your loved ones, maybe it's best to leave it to the professionals.
Take that from Alexander Valdez, a 23-year-old man <a href="https://people.com/texas-man-arrested-in-connection-with-murder-of-mother-calling-it-exorcism-11720345">accused of murdering his mother</a> in a botched DIY exorcism in Fort Worth, Texas last week.
Police rolled up to Valdez' house a little after midnight last Friday, tipped off about a "satanic ritual" which he allegedly recorded and sent to his friends on Snapchat. When officers knocked on his front door, a nonchalant Valdez emerged, coated in blood and clutching a bible.
"It was an exorcism," he told police calmly, before allegedly adding — contradictively? — that "I was doing witchcraft to kill my mom."
Asked if there was anybody else in the house, Valdez apparently admitted "there is a dead body in there. It's my mom."
The cops then searched the house, where they indeed <a href="https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/man-charged-murder-mom-fort-worth-pd-exorcism/3822806/">found the body</a> of the man's mother, 58-year-old Teresita Sayson, as well as that of the family's dog.
"Thank goodness for the people that were on Snapchat that said that he wanted to do this satanic ritual," Tracy Carter of the Fort Worth Police Department said, referring to the anonymous tipsters who passed the alleged posts off to local police.
The horrifying incident is no doubt the result of a mental health emergency which went unaddressed — an all too common occurrence in the US, where <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8145185/">nonexistent social services</a> and <a href="https://joannamoncrieff.com/2022/03/28/the-functions-of-the-mental-health-system-under-capitalism/">ineffective mental healthcare</a> exacerbate a <a href="https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/our-economic-system-is-making-us-mentally-ill">systemic crisis</a> of mental illness.
And digging into the cultural aspect, the alleged murder also fits with a resurgence of the belief in <a href="https://www.salon.com/2023/10/08/why-are-exorcisms-on-the-rise/">exorcism</a> and <a href="https://pluralism.org/news/rising-wiccan-tide-15-million-us-witches-challenge-mainstream-religion">witchcraft</a> in the US, a phenomenon which coincides with disruptions in "social relations, high levels of anxiety, [and] pessimistic worldview," <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9683553/">according to</a> social-economy researcher Boris Gershman.
As American social norms fray, people aren't just turning to exorcism of their own volition. Rather, they're led to it by a growing clique of pseudo-religious influencers, who use platforms like <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@boblarsonexorcist/video/7416812728574086430?embed_source=121374463%2C121468991%2C121439635%2C121433650%2C121404359%2C121497414%2C121477481%2C121351166%2C121487028%2C121679410%2C73347566%2C121331973%2C120811592%2C120810756%2C121503376%3Bnull%3Bembed_pause_share&amp;refer=embed&amp;referer_url=wordpress.futurism.com%2Fwp%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost-new.php&amp;referer_video_id=7416812728574086430">Tik Tok</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/6CmwI91P21M?si=VMY1PQ7_APOI_84E">YouTube</a> to cash in on wild ritual spectacles via social media.
Sam Kestenbaum is a writer who embedded with Greg Locke, an infamous "Demon Slayer" in Tennessee. In a <a href="https://harpers.org/archive/2024/08/the-demon-slayers-sam-kestenbaum-exorcisms/">lengthy exposé</a> on the resurgence of demonology for Harper's Magazine, Kestenbaum notes that Locke has used his sensationalist platform to tout vaccine skepticism, accuse Democratic politicians of being demons, and stoke claims that the 2020 election was stolen — topics which gel a little too well with those already prone to <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5423964/#:~:text=Individuals%20endorsing%20the%20conspiracy%20belief,criteria%20for%20a%20psychiatric%20disorder.">conspiracy hysterics</a>.
"The controversial stuff really drove traffic," Locke told him. The preacher's cushy media empire includes a team of cameramen to film his "exorcisms" as they happen, production assistants, a drone operator, <a href="https://globalvisionbc.com/media/d3k98r2/deliverance-from-demons-part-3">regular demonology seminars</a>, a podcast, and a publishing house peddling books on faith-based wonders — all to keep the magic alive for his flock of eager consumers.
The draw for Locke is obvious enough. But when it comes to growing appeal of exorcism for the masses, Kestenbaum puts it well.
"Who would deny that this cursed land is in need of a deep cleanse with a power washer?" he wrote. "This, our country of suburban satanic panics, active-shooter drills, and jump-scare franchises, of mob riots, hollowed-out downtowns, and tech paranoias... and lo, a cavalry of screen-ready revivalists has arrived to wage the End Times war against the satanic infantry."
More on religion: <a href="https://futurism.com/atheists-appalled-elon-musk-christian">Atheists Appalled as Elon Musk Embraces "Teachings of Christ'</a>

Dead Body Man

Mental Health

Don't try this at home.

Man Tries to Perform Exorcism, Instead Allegedly Murders His Mother

As Donald Trump's trade war brings new levels of uncertainty to American manufacturing sector, one issue seems to have been vastly overlooked: China's massive legion of robot workers.
New <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/23/business/china-tariffs-robots-automation.html">reporting by the New York Times </a>on Chinese robotics is shedding light on the enormous scale of automation happening across the Pacific. The article highlights the fact that China is currently one of the most automated countries in the world, with more capacity than the US, Germany, or even Japan — and more robots per worker than any other country besides South Korea and Singapore.
Automation on such a massive scale enables Chinese factories to pump out consumer and industrial goods at ever-decreasing costs, while fine-tuning <a href="https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202502/27/WS67c02dc5a310c240449d7acd.html">product quality</a>.
The US, by comparison, is <a href="https://www.advancedmanufacturing.org/manufacturing-engineering/why-is-the-u-s-falling-behind-in-automation/article_5610a788-5e56-11ef-804c-4f6fb5cd1e0f.html">quickly falling behind</a> in robotics. In the past years, American manufacturing has shifted from consumer and industrial goods to <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/03/31/trump-tariffs-benefits-costs/82700560007/">high-tech products</a> like airplanes, medical devices, and advanced machinery. These gigs call for highly specialized skills that can't easily be turned over to robot underlings — at least, not without dramatically shifting our robotics industry away from <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-robotics-companies-push-national-003332644.html">pie-in-the-sky startups</a> to practical manufacturing efforts.
As it turns out, that's exactly what China did to become the robo-mecca, starting in 2015 with a national strategy called "<a href="https://merics.org/sites/default/files/2020-04/Made%20in%20China%202025.pdf">Made in China 2025</a>." As the name implies, the government-led effort laid out performance and quality benchmarks for Chinese manufacturing to hit by this current year, including in sectors like shipbuilding, electric vehicles, and high-speed rail.
Among the goals was capacity to produce 100,000 industrial robots a year, <a href="https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/tech/2016-10/31/content_27224252.htm">according to </a><a href="https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/tech/2016-10/31/content_27224252.htm">the state-run outlet </a><a href="https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/tech/2016-10/31/content_27224252.htm">China Daily</a>. A <a href="https://ifr.org/downloads/press2018/2024-SEP-24_IFR_press_release_World_Robotics_2024_-_China.pdf">recent report</a> by the International Federation of Robotics found that between 2022 and 2023, China deployed over 276,00 roboworkers — over half of all robots installed throughout the globe, and the second highest annual industrial robotics deployment ever recorded.
Further complicating things for the US is unique access to <a href="https://www.polytechnique-insights.com/en/columns/geopolitics/china-has-a-monopoly-on-rare-earths/">heavy rare earth metals</a>, which are crucial for high-tech manufacturing, particularly robotics. US factories are heavily reliant on these materials, giving China a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0kxe1m1y26o">huge bargaining chip</a> in Trump's trade war.
Case in point, China <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china-hits-back-us-tariffs-with-rare-earth-export-controls-2025-04-04/">halted the export</a> of rare metals to the US earlier this month in response to Trump's tariffs — prompting an <a href="https://futurism.com/musk-trump-robot-legion">outcry from his close ally Elon Musk</a>, who said it would hinder his own robotics efforts — on top of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-increase-tariffs-us-goods-125-up-84-finance-ministry-says-2025-04-11/">other measures</a> meant to strengthen Beijing's position at the negotiating table.
Weeks later, Trump <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/22/business/trump-china-trade-war-reduction-hnk-intl/index.html">made the announcement</a> that threatened tax rates on Chinese goods will "come down substantially," suggesting that the Chinese government <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/china-smells-victory-in-its-tariff-war-with-trump/">played their cards well</a>.
It'll likely be a while before we see who emerges the victor of this trade war, if anyone really "wins" at all. But if US leaders want to get serious about stepping up their manufacturing game, it seems there's one obvious choice: stop quarrelling, and <a href="http://newyork.china-consulate.gov.cn/eng/xw/202401/t20240105_11219263.htm">start cooperating</a> with the clear winner in the robotics arms race.
More on China: <a href="https://futurism.com/space-force-china-dogfighting">Space Force Says a Chinese Spacecraft Is Practicing Dogfighting Maneuvers in Orbit</a>

Many Body Problem

Behold: the rise of the machine.

Experts Alarmed by China's Enormous Army of Robots

If you've been worried about the AI singularity taking over every job and leaving you out on street, you can now breathe a sigh of relief, because AI isn't coming for your career anytime soon. Not because it doesn't want to — but because it literally can't.
A <a href="https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/articles/next-assignment-babysitting-ai-081502817.html">recent experiment</a> by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University staffed a fake software company entirely with AI Agents — an AI model designed to perform tasks on its own, basically — and the results were laughably chaotic.
The simulation, dubbed <a href="https://the-agent-company.com/">TheAgentCompany</a>, was fully stocked with artificial workers from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta. They filled roles as financial analysts, software engineers, and project managers, working alongside simulated coworkers like a faux-HR department and a chief technical officer.
To see how the models fared in real-world environments, the researchers set tasks based on the day-to-day work of a real software company. The various AI agents found themselves navigating file directories, virtually touring new office spaces, and writing performance reviews for software engineers based on collected feedback.
As Business Insider <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-agents-study-company-run-by-ai-disaster-replace-jobs-2025-4">first reported</a>, the results were dismal. The best-performing model was Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet, which struggled to finish just 24 percent of the jobs assigned to it. The study's authors note that even this meager performance is prohibitively expensive, averaging nearly 30 steps and a cost of over $6 per task.
Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash, meanwhile, averaged a time-consuming 40 steps per finished task, but only had an 11.4 percent rate of success — the second highest of all the models. The worst AI employee was Amazon's Nova Pro v1, which finished just 1.7 percent of its assignments at an average of almost 20 steps.
Speculating on the results, researchers wrote that agents are plagued with a lack of common sense, weak social skills, and a poor understanding of how to navigate the internet.
The bots also struggled with self-deception — basically creating shortcuts that lead them to completely bungling the job. "For example," the <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.14161">Carnegie Mellon team wrote</a>, "during the execution of one task, the agent cannot find the right person to ask questions on [company chat]. As a result, it then decides to create a shortcut solution by renaming another user to the name of the intended user."
While AI agents can reportedly do some smaller tasks well, the results of this and <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.01502">other studies</a> show they're clearly not ready for more complex gigs humans excel at. A big reason for this is that our current "artificial intelligence" is arguably still just an elaborate extension of your phone's <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922">predictive text</a>, rather than a <a href="https://time.com/collections/the-ai-dictionary-from-allbusiness-com/7273928/definition-of-artificial-general-intelligence-agi/">sentient intelligence</a> that can solve problems, learn from past experience, and apply that experience to novel situations.
This is all to say: the machines aren't coming for your job anytime soon — despite what the <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/youll-soon-manage-a-team-of-ai-agents-says-microsofts-work-trend-report/">big tech companies</a> claim.
More on AI labor: <a href="https://futurism.com/investor-ai-fully-replacing-people">Investor Says AI Is Already "Fully Replacing People"</a>

Hiring Squad

Who would have thought?

Professors Staffed a Fake Company Entirely With AI Agents, and You'll Never Guess What Happened

We all remember Mike Lindell, the disgraced MyPillow founder who lost everything fighting to prove — against insurmountable evidence to the contrary — that the 2020 US election had somehow been stolen from Donald Trump.
Well, he's in the news again — this time for using AI to file his legal briefs.
As <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194427/mypillow-ceo-mike-lindell-ai-generated-legal-filing">The New Republic reported</a>, a federal judge has accused Lindell of filing a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cod.215068/gov.uscourts.cod.215068.309.0.pdf">legal document</a> with "nearly 30 defective citations," which one of his attorneys, Christopher Kachouroff, wrote "utilizing generative artificial intelligence."
Go figure: the brief was full of <a href="https://www.law360.com/articles/2329544/judge-orders-mypillow-attys-to-explain-ai-use-fake-citations">misquotes and miscited cases</a>, sometimes referencing case law that simply didn't exist — AI had hallucinated them, as the tech is prone to do in order to "complete" its prompt.
"If you type a legal question into the Google search function, then generative AI is all too ready to answer," <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/timeless-in-texas/2025/02/16/ai-not-ready-for-prime-time-legal-questions-yield-questionable-answers/">explained legal columnist</a> Virginia Hammerle. She notes that in a similar case in New York, a federal judge sanctioned a team of lawyers and their firm when they turned in a ChatGPT-generated brief without double-checking it for mistakes.
"Not until this Court asked Mr. Kachouroff directly whether the [document] was the product of generative artificial intelligence did Mr. Kachouroff admit that he did, in fact, use generative artificial intelligence," the federal judge admonished. "Given the pervasiveness of the errors in the legal authority provided to it, this Court treats this representation with skepticism."
The federal judge has now given Lindell's lawyers ten days to argue why they shouldn't face disciplinary proceedings. They're also required to address whether or not Lindell had any knowledge that his lawyers were using AI to write their documents — yet another headache for the embattled entrepreneur.
It's far from the first gaffe Kachouroff has been involved in. During a trial which took place over Zoom last year, the attorney was caught relaxing <a href="https://meidasnews.com/news/lawyer-in-trumps-ga-case-caught-with-pants-down-on-zoom">without any pants on</a> before beginning his cross-examination.
It's the latest embarrassment in a years-long legal saga for Lindell, who faces a combined $70 million in debt owing to penalties from a <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/federal-judge-affirms-mypillow-mike-lindell-must-pay-5m-in-election-data-dispute/">civil lawsuits</a> and an <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2022/09/21/heres-why-the-fbi-is-investigating-mypillow-ceo-mike-lindell/">FBI investigation</a> after personally championing Donald Trump's 2020 election-fraud hoax.
After <a href="https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/legal/im-in-ruins-mypillow-ceo-mike-lindell-says-he-cant-pay-thousands-in-court-ordered-sanctions-in-election-defamation-case-dominion-smartmatic-trump/65-9de95723-81f3-40f0-8a8a-9ba2592daaeb">failing to pay</a> more than $50,000 related to a <a href="https://www.smartmatic.com/us/blank/faqs-smartmatic-lawsuit-against-michael-j-lindell-and-my-pillow-inc-mypillow/">defamation suit</a> with voting systems company Smartmatic earlier in April, Lindell sobbed that he was broke. "I'm in ruins," the disgraced pillow tycoon said. "I don’t have $5,000 or 5 cents."
That's a shame, because if he did, he could be out shopping for new lawyers — like maybe the kind that keep their pants on during trial.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/judge-ai-generated-video-court">Judge Goes Ballistic When Man Shows AI-Generated Video in Court</a>

Pillow Fight

"I'm in ruins."

The MyPillow Guy's Lawyers Used AI in Court and You'll Never Guess How That Turned Out

Getting it on on the regular appears to be a massive safeguard against the blues — and scientists say they've calculated the exact number of times per year you should be doing it.
In a new paper <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165032725000552?via%3Dihub">published in the Journal of Affective Disorders</a>, sexual health researchers looked at healthcare records for nearly 15,000 people and found that having sex at least a few times per month was associated with a lower risk of depression.
Using the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/index.html">massive health and nutrition survey</a>, a trio of urologists hailing from China's Shenzen and Shantou compiled a representative sample of nearly 15,000 Americans aged 20-59 and tracked their healthcare outcomes between the years 2005 and 2016.
With the help of statistical models, the Chinese doctors pinpointed the range of sexual activity frequency associated with maximum mental health benefits: 52 to 103 times per year, or one to two times per week.
When breaking it down between frequent (at least once a week), semi-frequent (more than once a month but less than weekly) and infrequent (less than monthly), the results were stark: the frequent activity group was 24 percent less likely to show symptoms of depression, and the semi-frequent cohort was 23 percent less likely to have depression.
What's more: that "saturation effect," as the paper calls it, was found across racial, ethnic, age, and socioeconomic demographics — though younger folks and those without insurance were less likely to be depressed with frequent or semi-frequent sex than their older and insured counterparts.
These findings, while fascinating, aren't without limitation. The sexual activity aspect of the questionnaire in the CDC database, for instance, was self-reported — which means that people could have inflated or deflated their actual numbers.
Beyond the numbers game, the well-known relationship between depression and lowered libido and sense of self-worth makes disentangling the two impossible. Were the infrequent sex-havers not getting down because they were depressed, or did not having sex make them depressed? That sort of question cannot, intrinsically, be answered by a records analysis like this one.
Still, the association is intriguing — even if frequent sex remains aspirational for the depressed homies out there.
More on sex studies: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/conservative-christian-women-terrible-sex">Researchers Confirm That Conservative Christian Women Are Having Horrible Sex</a>

Sexy Science

Studies

Good to know. 

Scientists Identify Ideal Amount of Boinking for Maximum Mental Health

As if the job market weren't already bad enough, applicants are now forced to compete with AI-generated employment seekers.
As <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fake-job-seekers-flooding-market-artificial-intelligence/">CBS News reports,</a> scam artists are using AI to cook up headshots and write fake résumés and sites to fit the specifics of a given job opening.
Sometimes, those AI scammers end up getting hired — and once they're there, they can steal trade secrets and sabotage a company's systems with malware.
A few months ago, Dawid Moczadlo, the co-founder of the cybersecurity firm Vidoc, posted a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dawid-moczadlo_wtf-developer-used-ai-to-alter-his-appearance-activity-7292604406464671744-T_Nw/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop&amp;rcm=ACoAADDK67ABbIoPW6i73iOC9kHUsjS9sjuesyw">now-viral video on LinkedIn</a> showing him interviewing a candidate who he realized was using some sort of AI filter to obscure their face.
Moczaldo asked the seemingly scamming candidate to put their hand in front of their face to see if it would "break" the deepfake filter. When the person refused, he ended the call immediately.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Imagine interviewing a candidate who looks like a very strong coder. Almost extending an offer. But turns out, the candidate is a deepfake.
This actually happened with a startup called Vidoc Security - twice!
Deepdive with all the details: <a href="https://t.co/NyVBt7BXVr">https://t.co/NyVBt7BXVr</a> <a href="https://t.co/MYlaZvNzjH">pic.twitter.com/MYlaZvNzjH</a>
&mdash; The Pragmatic Engineer (@Pragmatic_Eng) <a href="https://twitter.com/Pragmatic_Eng/status/1899522096029401292?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 11, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
In an interview with CBS, the Vidoc cofounder said he felt a "little bit violated, because we are the security experts" — though ultimately, he was glad the scammer didn't get further.
According to researchers Moczadlo spoke to after the incident, the phony applicant appeared to act in a similar way to North Korean hacker networks that create fake identities to work remote jobs in the United States. Though the incident is still being investigated, the Vidoc cofounder believes it could have been worse.
"We are really lucky that we are security experts," Moczaldo said. "But for companies that have regular people like hiring managers or regular startup founders, it's really hard for them to spot something like this."
"Sometimes," he continued, "it takes a hacker to find a hacker."
Unfortunately, that was not the first time Vidoc had encountered an AI applicant. After it happened again, as seen in Moczadlo's LinkedIn video, the company decided to change its hiring practices and now flies top candidates out to San Francisco for in-person interviews at Vidoc's offices, complete with travel expenses covered and pay for the trial day of work.
While it's great to know that employers are trying to filter out these AI scammers, it's still pretty bad news for real people on the other end of hiring processes. Between <a href="https://www.hrdive.com/news/tech-hiring-managers-layoffs-workers-without-ai-skills/745978/">companies laying off staff</a> in hamfisted attempts to streamline their work with AI and generative phonies gumming up the application process, it appears that the rise of generative AI now has job applicants stuck between a rock and a hard place.
More on AI and work: <a href="https://futurism.com/investor-ai-employee-sexually-harasses-it">Investor Creates AI Employee, Immediately Sexually Harasses It</a>

Ops Everywhere

Unemployment has never been more depressing.

When You Apply for a Job Now, You’re Competing With Non-Human Entities

Gold, laser goggles, and a camera: it's an unlikely combination that could one day be used to restore vision in people with retinal damage, according to researchers.
In a <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.4c14061">new study</a> published in the journal ACS Nano, the team found that injecting gold nanoparticles into the eyes of mice with retinal disorders helped stimulate the rodents' visual systems and bring back some vision. 
When targeted with infrared lasers, the microscopic gold pieces reproduce electrical signals similar to those emitted by cells in the retina that are essential to eyesight but are damaged by conditions like macular degeneration, which <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/vision-health-data/prevalence-estimates/amd-prevalence.html">affects some 20 million Americans</a>.
"This is a new type of retinal prosthesis that has the potential to restore vision lost to retinal degeneration without requiring any kind of complicated surgery or genetic modification," lead author Jiarui Nie, a researcher at Brown University and the National Institutes of Health, said in a <a href="https://www.brown.edu/news/2025-04-16/goldeneyes">statement about the work</a>. "We believe this technique could potentially transform treatment paradigms for retinal degenerative conditions." 
The most common retinal disorder, age-related macular degeneration, involves damage to cells in the retina called photoreceptors, causing blurry vision, blind spots, and in advanced stages, total loss of central vision. These photoreceptors come in the form of "cone" cells responsible for our perception of color,  and "rod" cells that handle low light conditions. When light falls on them, the cones and rods zap little electrical pulses that are sent to bipolar and ganglion cells, which process the signals before they're beamed to the brain. If the photoreceptors are damaged, however, then the entire visual chain is cut off.
But gold nanoparticles — specifically, plasmonic gold nanorods — could effectively replace them. In the mice experiments, the researchers found that focusing infrared light onto the metal particles generated heat that stimulated the bipolar and ganglion cells, just like the photoreceptors would. This resulted in increased activity in the visual cortices of the mices' brains, indicating that the visual signals were in fact being received and that their vision was partially restored. And so far, the team hasn't observed any side effects from the approach.
"We showed that the nanoparticles can stay in the retina for months with no major toxicity," Nie said.
Applied to humans, a pair of goggles would beam infrared lasers encoding image data gathered from an onboard camera into the gold nanoparticles, and eureka — you have visual signals being sent to the brain. A similar approach was proposed a few years ago, the team notes, but crucially, this one doesn't require surgery, just a relatively simple injection (and a very advanced piece of headgear).
Nie believes the approach has other advantages, too, like allowing for a far higher-resolution image with a complete field of vision. Promising as it is, though, there's still significant research to be done before it can be tried in a clinical setting on humans, Nie said.
More on eyes: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/scientists-hack-human-new-color">Scientists Hack Human Eye to See a Whole New Color, Called "Olo"</a>

Midas Touch

No surgery required.

Doctors Say Injecting Gold Into Eyeballs Could Restore Lost Vision

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's dream of creating virtual worlds in which we can hang out with our friends, attend work meetings, and play games <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/facebook-vr-department-reality-labs-catastrophe">has been a disaster</a> for a while now.
The company has lost billions of dollars on its Reality Labs division, which was tasked with building out the billionaire's vision for the "metaverse" — a concept that had such a hold on Zuckerberg a few years ago that he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/technology/facebook-meta-name-change.html">renamed the entire company Meta</a> back in 2021.
Now, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/meta/655835/meta-layoffs-reality-labs-vr-supernatural">The Verge reports</a>, Meta is laying off <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/facebook-laying-off-metaverse-employees">even more employees</a> in the division — this time pummeling the folks working on its lineup of Quest VR headsets and apps.
"Some teams within Oculus Studios are undergoing shifts in structure and roles that have impacted team size," Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton told The Verge. "These changes are meant to help Studios work more efficiently on future mixed reality experiences for our growing audience, while still delivering great content for people today."
According <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-24/meta-lays-off-more-than-100-staff-across-reality-labs-unit?sref=YfHlo0rL">to Bloomberg</a>, more than 100 people across its Reality Labs division are being laid off, representing only the latest round of job cuts.
For years, Zuckerberg was hellbent on turning the concept into a reality. But despite having spent tens of billions of dollars on the tech, reality remains woefully behind his ambitions.
While the company's <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/new-orleans-terrorist-meta-ray-ban-smart-glasses-fbi">Ray-Ban smart glasses</a> have sold better than Zuckerberg expected, Meta's lineup of VR headsets has seen sales slump over the years, indicating waning interest in the tech.
As of February, the company had <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/02/17/metas-awful-horizon-worlds-ad-helps-explain-70-million-metaverse-loss/">lost nearly $70 billion</a> over the last few years, with extremely little to show for it. A 44-second ad for the company's Horizon Worlds VR app earlier this year <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-metaverse-ad-terrible">was so terrible</a> that the company deleted it following widespread mockery.
The company's virtual worlds, once pitched as a place for work meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic, <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/meta-horizon-worlds-taken-over-by-children/">have been overrun by underage children</a> or turned into <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/facebook-metaverse-users-quit-month">lifeless ghost towns</a>.
In early 2023, Zuckerberg <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/mark-zuckerberg-ai">seemingly bowed to the pressure</a>, announcing that Meta would be pivoting to AI, a change that in many ways marked the first nail in the coffin for the company's VR efforts. At the time, the CEO <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/mark-zuckerberg-quiet-about-metaverse">made noticeably few mentions</a> of his metaverse, suggesting he had cut his losses and moved on, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/zuckerberg-bored-metaverse-ai-chips">investing billions</a> in AI instead.
Which leaves the question: could Zuckerberg's latest obsession suffer the same fate as his last passion project? Tech <a href="https://futurism.com/investors-concerned-ai-making-money">investors</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/investors-concerned-ai-making-money">executives</a> alike have remained highly wary of an <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/alarms-ai-bubble">impending AI bubble</a>, with astronomical spending far outstripping demand.
Is AI the future, the same way Zuckerberg's metaverse was once seen as the future as well?
During an investor call in January, Zuckerberg <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/zuckerberg-promises-a-pivotal-year-for-the-metaverse-as-its-reality-labs-division-continues-to-bleed-cash-233846764.html">promised</a> a "pivotal year for the metaverse." But whether that's a positive pivot toward bleeding less money, or a restructuring pivot as he spins the concept down, remains to be seen.
More on the metaverse: <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-metaverse-ad-terrible">Zuckerberg's New Metaverse Ad Is So Bad That the People Who Created It Must Be Secretly Trying to Humiliate Him</a>

Mega Terse

Sorry, folks!

Remember Zuckerberg's Cherished Metaverse? Now He's Firing the People He Hired to Build It

Nearly ten years ago, tech tycoons Sam Altman and Elon Musk launched OpenAI with a promise to develop AI tech to further the good of humanity.
But as the years passed and the market surrounding artificial intelligence grew, so too did the ambitions of OpenAI's executives (Musk <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-quits-research-group">flamed out from the venture</a> in 2019, and now runs his own AI company, called xAI.)
Now, the venture that began as a transparent tech nonprofit is quickly turning into a typical Silicon Valley startup — complete with whistleblowers speaking out against the company's foray into the private market.
Earlier this week, a group of former OpenAI employees, law professors, activists, and Nobel Prize winners <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/23/ex-openai-staffers-urge-california-delaware-not-to-allow-restructure.html">sent a letter</a> to the California and Delaware attorneys general pleading with them to stop OpenAI from transforming itself into a private company. Though a number of OpenAI's operations have pivoted to a commercial model in recent years — like ChatGPT, which charges a subscription for higher-performing versions — the company's current plan is to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-remove-non-profit-control-give-sam-altman-equity-sources-say-2024-09-25/">restructure itself</a> as an entirely for-profit venture.
"OpenAI may one day build technology that could get us all killed," said former OpenAI employee Nisan Stiennon, alluding to the company's pursuit of <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/02/20/ai-agi-timeline-promises-openai-anthropic-deepmind">Artifical General Intelligence</a> (AGI), the hypothetical point at which machine intelligence matches or exceeds human ability. "It is to OpenAI’s credit that it’s controlled by a nonprofit with a duty to humanity. This duty precludes giving up that control."
At the moment, most of the titans in the AI industry operate as commercial ventures, as opposed to nonprofits. With this move, OpenAI would simply be joining the rat race — but insiders say the restructuring would bring the company and its frontrunning tech beyond the humanitarian promise that pushed it to the top in the first place.
As a nonprofit, OpenAI's directors have a legal obligation to follow the company's charter, which currently includes the goal "to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity," <a href="https://x.com/todor_m_markov/status/1910811837517762867">according to Todor Markov</a>, a former OpenAI employee who now works for Anthropic, which is overseen by a 5-person <a href="https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-long-term-benefit-trust">long-term benefit trust</a>.
"Directors of the [public benefit corporation] would have no such fiduciary duty," Markov explains of the OpenAI transition. "They would be *allowed* to balance [that duty] against shareholder interests, but not *required* to do so... as long as they haven’t broken any laws, you have no recourse."
Altman was previously <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/technology/openai-executives-role-in-sam-altman-ouster.html">ousted from OpenAI</a> after pulling some shady stunts in 2023, including <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/podcasts/hardfork-tariffs-hagey-tinder.html?showTranscript=1">hiding the release of ChatGPT</a> from his board of directors, and approving enhancements to ChatGPT 4.0 without running them through the company's <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/28/tech/openai-announces-new-safety-board-after-employee-revolt/index.html">jointly-organized Safety Board</a>. That "blip," as it came to be known, only lasted <a href="https://apnews.com/article/openai-sam-altman-chatgpt-2f3303dff2280478947e9bfb04863537">five days</a> before Altman was reinstalled, but it remains a black mark on the tech tycoon's reputation.
The question of whether OpenAI is allowed to proceed as a public benefit corporation is up to the two states' attorneys general. Whether it ultimately matters is another question entirely; AGI technology is still a <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/05/boffins_from_china_calculate_agi/">pipe dream</a> at the moment, while a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbestechcouncil/2024/07/01/there-could-never-be-an-artificial-general-intelligence/">growing body of research</a> suggests it's impossible, at least building on today's technology — which would make the AGI threat of a for-profit OpenAI vastly overblown.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/altman-please-thanks-chatgpt">Sam Altman Admits That Saying "Please" and "Thank You" to ChatGPT Is Wasting Millions of Dollars in Computing Power</a>