Looking for work is already arduous enough — but for one job-seeker, the process became something out of a deleted "Black Mirror" scene when the AI recruiter she was paired with went veritably insane.
In a <a href="https://www.404media.co/ai-recruiter-apriora-tiktok/">buckwild TikTok video</a>, the job-seeker is seen suffering for nearly 30 seconds as the AI recruiter barked the term "vertical bar pilates" at her no fewer than 14 times, often slurring its words or mixing up letters along the way.
<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@its_ken04/video/7499859438732414251" data-video-id="7499859438732414251" data-embed-from="oembed" style="max-width:605px; min-width:325px;">
<section> <a target="_blank" title="@its_ken04" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@its_ken04?refer=embed">@its_ken04</a> 
It was genuinely so creepy and weird. Please stop trying to be lazy and have AI try to do YOUR JOB!!! It gave me the creeps so bad <a title="fyp" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fyp?refer=embed">#fyp</a> 
 <a target="_blank" title="♬ original sound - Its Ken 🤍" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-7499859603190975278?refer=embed">♬ original sound - Its Ken 🤍</a> </section>
</blockquote>
 <script async src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script>
The incident — and the way it affected the young woman who endured it — is a startling example not only of where <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/05/02/nx-s1-5383289/jobs-employment-labor-economy-recession-tariffs">America's abysmal labor market</a> is at, but also of how ill-conceived this sort of AI "<a href="https://www.techradar.com/pro/over-half-of-uk-businesses-who-replaced-workers-with-ai-regret-their-decision">outsourcing</a>" has become.
Though she looks nonplussed on her interview screen, the TikToker who goes by Ken <a href="https://www.404media.co/ai-recruiter-apriora-tiktok/">told 404 Media</a> that she was pretty perturbed by the incident, which occurred during her first (and only) interview with a Stretch Lab fitness studio in Ohio.
"I thought it was really creepy and I was freaked out," the college-aged creator told the website. "I was very shocked, I didn’t do anything to make it glitch so this was very surprising."
As 404 discovered, the glitchy recruiter-bot was hosted by a Y Combinator-backed startup called Apriora, which <a href="https://www.apriora.ai/book-a-demo">claims</a> to help companies "hire 87 percent faster" and "interview 93 percent cheaper" because multiple candidates can be interviewed simultaneously.
In a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2024/05/10/your-next-job-interview-may-be-with-alex-the-ai-interviewer/?sh=3a44b4d976f2&amp;ref=404media.co">2024 interview with Forbes</a>, Apriora cofounder Aaron Wang attested that job-seekers "prefer interviewing with AI in many cases, since knowing the interviewer is AI helps to reduce interviewing anxiety, allowing job seekers to perform at their best."
That's definitely not the case for Ken, who said she would "never go through this process again."
"If another company wants me to talk to AI," she told 404, "I will just decline."
Commenters on her now-viral TikTok seem to agree as well.
"This is the rudest thing a company could ever do," one user wrote. "We need to start withdrawing applications folks."
Others still pointed out the elephant in the room: that recruiting used to be a skilled trade done by human workers.
"Lazy, greedy and arrogant," another person commented. "AI interviews just show me they don't care about workers from the get go. This used to be an actual human's job."
Though Apriora didn't respond to 404's requests for comment, Ken, at least, has gotten the last word in the way only a Gen Z-er could.
"This was the first meeting [with the company] ever," she told 404. "I guess I was supposed to earn my right to speak to a human."
More on AI and labor: <a href="https://futurism.com/shop-class-manual-work-ai">High Schools Training Students for Manual Labor as AI Looms Over College and Jobs</a>

Glitch Mob

"I guess I was supposed to earn my right to speak to a human."

Deranged Video Shows AI Job Recruiter Absolutely Losing It During an Interview

<h2>Papal Predictor</h2>
Polymarket, the crypto-based prediction market where users can place bets on events ranging from national elections to <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/crypto-platforms-polymarket-bets-fire">natural disasters</a>, got the Pope odds way wrong.
Those forecasts were reflected in Polymarket as well as the similar platform Kalshi, which both took a hard turn toward Parolin as the public caught sight of <a href="https://www.today.com/news/papal-conclave-white-smoke-meaning-rcna205603">white smoke</a>, <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/05/08/robert-prevost-pope-prediction-markets">according to Axios</a>. Meanwhile, market betters had Prevost hovering around a one-to-two percent chance of becoming the next Pope.
And yet, in a stunning twist of fate, it was the American-born Robert Prevost — a graduate of Villanova and the conclaver with the highest likelihood of ever consuming a hot dog and/or $1.99 pizza slice from Costco — who clinched the title. According to a s<a href="https://x.com/brewmarkets/status/1920546769269604441">creenshot</a> posted to X-formerly-Twitter by Brew Markets, Prevost was sitting at around 0.03 percent when his shock election was announced.
In short, Polymarketers were absolutely blindsided — highlighting how Polymarket's <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/technology/polymarket-election-betting-crypto-trump.html">oft-exalted</a> predictive prowess isn't always <a href="https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/10/30/polymarket-trump-election-crypto-wash-trading-researchers/">all it's cracked up to be</a>.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Robert F. Prevost has been elected the first American pope in history.
Polymarket gave him just a 0.3% chance of being chosen. <a href="https://t.co/QzD41JYpU9">pic.twitter.com/QzD41JYpU9</a>
&mdash; Brew Markets (@brewmarkets) <a href="https://twitter.com/brewmarkets/status/1920546769269604441?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 8, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<h2>Vatican Bombshell</h2>
The Vatican shocked the world today when the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/us/pope-leo-xiv-chicago.html">Chicago-born</a> American and Peruvian was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/world/europe/new-pope-crowds-celebrate-balcony.html">named</a> Pope Leo XIV before taking to the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica to greet the world as Holy Father.
Prevost is the first American Pope, and appears to be the first Pope to <a href="https://x.com/MikeIsaac/status/1920535454304383474">retweet</a> Catholic Snoopy posts.
Though Prevost was an ally of his predecessor, the late Pope Francis, he was by no means seen as the frontrunner; most <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/next-pope-francis-candidates.html">expected</a> either Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin or Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle to ascend to the papacy.
The hard swing towards Parolin in the moments before the announcement broke was likely due to the conclave's speediness, as Axios pointed out.
Anyway, if you're a Polymarket who bet on the American Prevost to win the papacy, email us!
More on Polymarket: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/crypto-platforms-polymarket-bets-fire">Crypto Platforms Like Polymarket Now Taking Bets on Los Angeles Fire Devastation</a>

Popemarket

The American Pope surprised everyone.

Crypto Prediction Platform Polymarket Was Utterly Wrong About the New Pope

It's not a great time to be an attorney for Tesla.
In recent months, the floundering electric vehicle company has been bombarded with dozens of lawsuits, like the <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-hit-lawsuit-over-alleged-101555252.html">California class-action</a> that alleges Tesla's manipulated odometers to get out of warranties, or the <a href="https://electrek.co/2025/02/27/tesla-is-hit-with-a-fresh-class-action-about-its-self-driving-claims-hardware-3-computer/">Australian class-action</a> that alleges the company misled consumers with claims about its so-called "Full Self-Driving" software.
As if that weren't enough for the company's lawyers, Tesla execs are dishing out their <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/tesla-sues-wisconsin-open-dealerships-supreme-court-race/">fair share</a> of legal threats in return. Following a recent freeze in Canadian EV tax credits, Tesla is now <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/tesla-threatens-canadian-government-with-legal-action-over-frozen-electric-vehicle-money/article_b102f46a-c9a2-4f0c-a1f6-3084c538437b.html">threatening to sue</a> the Canadian government, alleging the move cuts the company off from $30 million in tax credits.
The whole shooting match kicked off back in January, when Canada abruptly <a href="https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/electric-vehicles/ev-transition-trouble-transport-canada-pauses-rebate-program">stopped issuing</a> rebates under its Incentives for Zero-Emission Vehicles program (iZEV), sending auto dealers and manufacturers <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chaotic-end-canada-ev-rebate-183100187.html">into a frenzy</a>. The program was viewed as a major boost for EV sales, offering Canadian consumers up to $3,590 in rebates for qualifying fully-electric and hybrid vehicles.
Later in March, Musk's Tesla <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-sales-numbers-canada">came under fire</a> after placing suspicious claims for tens of millions of dollars worth of iZEV rebates right before the January freeze.
Most of those claims came from just four dealers, with a single Tesla showroom in Quebec City claiming it had sold some 4,000 eligible vehicles over a <a href="https://www.thestar.com/business/8-600-teslas-in-one-weekend-how-the-surprise-end-to-a-federal-subsidy-led/article_0e2213d4-f858-11ef-9a6e-6385bfdbc505.html">single weekend</a>. Altogether, Tesla filed over <a href="https://teslanorth.com/2025/05/02/tesla-threatens-to-sue-canada-over-millions-in-frozen-ev-rebates/">8,600 claims</a> in 72 hours, at a cost of C$43 million (US$30.9 million), or about 60 percent of the remaining iZEV budget.
A few weeks later, Canadian Transport Minister Chrystia Freeland announced a freeze on iZEV payments for <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-freezes-rebates-tesla-1.7493434">Tesla specifically</a>, a move seen as retaliation for Donald Trump's unprecedented <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-disemboweled-tariffs">tariff threats</a>. In addition, she directed her office to ban the EV giant from eligibility for future tax credit programs so long as "illegitimate and illegal US tariffs are imposed against Canada."
Now, Tesla is claiming that the tax credit freeze was "inappropriate," because "Tesla Canada has been fully compliant with its participation in the program," according to the <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/tesla-threatens-canadian-government-with-legal-action-over-frozen-electric-vehicle-money/article_b102f46a-c9a2-4f0c-a1f6-3084c538437b.html">Toronto Star</a>. The EV mammoth is demanding iZEV payouts start "in the immediate term" for those rebates filed before the January cutoff, despite the fact that they were <a href="https://electrek.co/2025/04/09/tesla-canada-says-its-shady-43-million-incentive-grab-was-a-misunderstanding/">almost certainly fudged</a>.
If a legal battle kicks off in full, Tesla will have to successfully argue that it was allowed to file rebate claims after vehicles were delivered — a distinction which the Canadian government has evidently <a href="https://mobilesyrup.com/2025/05/02/tesla-threatens-to-sue-canadian-government-over-frozen-incentives/">flip-flopped</a> on in the past.
While Canada is probably safe to kick back and let Tesla spin its wheels, the EV company needs all the help it can get. As sales tank to record lows <a href="https://futurism.com/teslas-sales-continue-fall">around the world</a>, government handouts in the form of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2025/elon-musk-business-government-contracts-funding/">EV tax credits</a> — Tesla's bread and butter — have become all but critical if the company wants any hope of surviving.
That said, it'll likely be an uphill battle for the carmaker to claw anything out of the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/carney-shuts-down-trumps-threats-to-annex-canada-says-tensions-will-take-time-to-resolve">new Canadian government</a> — but even then, there's reason to believe tax credits <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-sales-carbon-credits-europe">won't be enough</a> to plug the holes.
More on Tesla: <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-unsold-cybertrucks-crisis">Tesla Is Sitting on an Enormous Pile of Unsold Cybertrucks as Crisis Deepens</a>

Sorry Bud

The company is getting desperate.

Elon Musk Threatens to Sue Canada After Tesla Was Caught Doing Something Incredibly Sketchy

A slain Arizona man's family <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-dead-brother-impact-statement">used AI to bring him back</a> from the dead for his killer's sentencing hearing — and the judge presiding over the case apparently "loved" it.
As <a href="https://www.404media.co/i-loved-that-ai-judge-moved-by-ai-generated-avatar-of-man-killed-in-road-rage-incident/">404 Media reports,</a> judge Todd Lang was flabbergasted when he saw the AI-generated video of victim Chris Peskey that named and "forgave" the man who killed him in 2021.
"To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me, it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances," the video, which Peskey's sister Stacey Wales generated, intoned. "In another life we probably could have been friends. I believe in forgiveness, in God who forgives, I always have. And I still do."
Found guilty earlier this year, Horcasitas' sentencing was contingent, as many cases are, upon various factors, including impact statements from the victim's family.
As Wales told 404 Media, her husband Tim was initially freaked out when she introduced the idea of creating a digital clone of her brother for the hearing and told her she was "asking a lot."
Ultimately, the video was accepted in the sentencing hearing, the first known instance of an AI clone of a deceased person being used in such a way.
And the gambit appears to have paid off.
"I loved that AI, and thank you for that," Lang said, per a <a href="https://youtu.be/tr9b1_rintk">video of his pre-sentencing speech</a>. "As angry as you are, and as justifiably angry as the family is, I heard the forgiveness, and I know Mr. Horcasitas could appreciate it, but so did I."
"I feel like calling him Christopher as we’ve gotten to know him today," Lang continued. "I feel that that was genuine, because obviously the forgiveness of Mr. Horcasitas reflects the character I heard about today."
Lang acknowledged that although the family itself "demanded the maximum sentence," the AI Pelkey "spoke from his heart" and didn't call for such punishment.
"I didn’t hear him asking for the maximum sentence," the judge said.
Horcasitas' lawyer also referenced the Peskey avatar when defending his client and, similarly, said that he also believes his client and the man he killed could have been friends had circumstances been different.
That entreaty didn't seem to mean much, however, to Lang. He ended up sentencing Horcasitas to 10.5 years for manslaughter, which was a year and a half more than prosecutors were seeking.
It's a surprising reaction, showing that many are not only open to AI being used this way, but also in favor of it — evidence that the chasm between AI skeptics and adopters could be widening.
More on AI fakery: <a href="https://futurism.com/slop-farmer-ai-social-media">Slop Farmer Boasts About How He Uses AI to Flood Social Media With Garbage to Trick Older Women</a>

Judging You

"I didn’t hear him asking for the maximum sentence."

The Judge's Reaction to an AI-Generated Victim Impact Statement Was Not What We Expected

To bypass <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/i-tested-10-ai-content-detectors-and-these-5-correctly-identified-ai-text-every-time/">artificial intelligence writing detection</a>, college students are reportedly adding typos into their chatbot-generated papers.
In a wide-ranging exploration into the ways AI has rapidly changed academia, students <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/openai-chatgpt-ai-cheating-education-college-students-school.html">told New York Magazine</a> that AI cheating has become so normalized, they're figuring out creative ways to get away with it.
While it's common for students — and for anyone else who uses ChatGPT and other chatbots — to edit the output of an AI chatbot, some are adding typos manually to make essays sound more human.
Some more ingenious users are advising chatbots to essentially dumb down their writing. In a TikTok viewed by NYMag, for instance, a student said she likes to prompt chatbots to "write [an essay] as a college freshman who is a li’l dumb" to bypass AI detection.
Stanford sophomore Eric told NYMag that his classmates have gotten "really good at manipulating the systems."
"You put a prompt in ChatGPT, then put the output into another AI system, then put it into another AI system," he said. "At that point, if you put it into an AI-detection system, it decreases the percentage of AI used every time."
The irony, of course, is that students who go to such lengths to make their AI-generated papers sound human could be using that creativity to actually write the dang things.
Still, instructors are concerned by the energy students are expending on cheating with chatbots.
"They're using AI because it’s a simple solution and it’s an easy way for them not to put in time writing essays," University of Iowa teaching assistant Sam Williams told the magazine. "And I get it, because I hated writing essays when I was in school."
When assisting a general education class on music and social change last fall, Williams said he was shocked by the change in tone and quality between students' first assignments — a personal essay about their own tastes — and their second, which dug into the history of New Orleans jazz.
Not only did those essays sound different, but many included egregious factual errors like the inclusion of Elvis Presley, who was neither a part of the Nola scene nor a jazz musician.
"I literally told my class, 'Hey, don’t use AI,'" the teaching assistant recalled. "'But if you’re going to cheat, you have to cheat in a way that’s intelligent. You can’t just copy exactly what it spits out.'"
Students have seemingly taken that advice to heart — and Williams, like his <a href="https://www.inc.com/kit-eaton/teachers-warn-ai-use-makes-students-less-smart-what-does-this-mean-for-future-hiring/91169788">colleagues around the country</a>, is concerned about students taking their AI use ever further.
"Whenever they encounter a little bit of difficulty, instead of fighting their way through that and growing from it, they retreat to something that makes it a lot easier for them," the Iowa instructor said.
It's a scary precedent indeed — and one that is, seemingly, <a href="https://www.edsurge.com/news/2025-03-27-teachers-believe-that-ai-is-here-to-stay-in-education-how-it-should-be-taught-is-debatable">continuing unabated</a>.
More on AI cheating: <a href="https://futurism.com/columbia-student-ai-cheating-startup">Columbia Student Kicked Out for Creating AI to Cheat, Raises Millions to Turn It Into a Startup</a>

Cheat Codes

"If you’re going to cheat, you have to cheat in a way that’s intelligent."

College Students Are Sprinkling Typos Into Their AI Papers on Purpose

<h2>Taking a Bath</h2>
For the third time in six months, an uber-expensive military fighter jet has fallen into the sea from the same Navy warship amid continued American strikes against Yemen's Houthi rebels.
As <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/06/politics/second-us-navy-jet-is-lost-at-sea">CNN reports</a>, a <a href="https://www.navair.navy.mil/product/FA-18EF-Super-Hornet">$67 million F/A-18F jet</a> was lost to the Red Sea earlier this week after its pilots failed to brake quickly enough during an attempted landing on the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier.
In a statement to the outlet, the Navy said that both aviators were safely ejected from the two-seater "Super Hornet" jet, as they're nicknamed, and neither sustained major injuries.
Incredibly, this is the second time one of these massively expensive fighter crafts has plunged into the Red Sea from the Truman in less than two weeks — a tremendous waste of money amid this administration's quest to both <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-government-deals-trump-budget-slashed">fatten up the Pentagon's budget</a> while cutting spending on, well, <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/elon-musk-doge-veterans-affairs">everything else</a>.
<h2>Watery Death</h2>
At the end of April, another Super Hornet met its watery demise after <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/28/politics/us-navy-jet-overboard">falling off the warship</a>, which had swerved rapidly to avoid a drone strike from the Houthis, as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/28/politics/us-navy-jet-overboard">CNN</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/04/29/fighter-jet-lost-hornet-houthis-red-sea/">other outlets</a> reported at the time.
The Truman's most recent mission fighting Houthis in the Red Sea was <a href="https://news.usni.org/2024/09/23/carrier-uss-harry-s-truman-leaves-for-deployment">launched at the end of 2024</a> and has seemingly been cursed ever since.
In late December, shortly after the <a href="https://www.military.com/equipment/nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier">Nimitz-class warship</a> exited the Suez Canal in North Africa and reached the Middle East, yet another F/A-18F crashed into the Red Sea — though on that occasion, it was the result of <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2-navy-fighter-pilots-eject-safely-shot-down-red-sea-friendly-fire-uss-gettysburg/">mistaken friendly fire</a> between the Truman and the USS Gettysburg.
Unsurprisingly, the Navy has maintained since that first Super Hornet incident that it's investigating the unusual incidents with the Truman, which was also involved in a <a href="https://www.c6f.navy.mil/Press-Room/News/Article/4065260/uss-harry-s-truman-involved-in-collision-at-sea/">collision with a Panamanian merchant vessel</a> back in February.
Thus far, the only results we've seen from those probes were the <a href="https://www.c6f.navy.mil/Press-Room/News/Article/4065260/uss-harry-s-truman-involved-in-collision-at-sea/">firing of the Truman's commanding officer</a> after the February crash.
While it's not exactly surprising that the Navy is keeping its cards close to its proverbial (war) chest, it does seem mighty egregious that upwards of $200 million have been lost at sea due to careless mistakes while Donald Trump's administration has brutally slashed government budgets.
More on the military: <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-administration-signal-clone-hacked">The Trump Administration Switched to a Sketchy Signal Clone and It Got Hacked, Leaking Messages</a>

Farcical

What the hell is going on?

Ludicrously Expensive Fighter Jets Keep Mysteriously Tumbling Off of an Aircraft Carrier

In an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/27/bill-gates-elon-musk-far-right">ongoing battle</a> for which capitalist overlord can claim the moral high ground, Microsoft founder and the world's sixth richest man, Bill Gates, has accused Elon Musk of "killing the world's poorest children" by <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-conflict-interest-shutting-down-usaid">gutting</a> the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
"The picture of the world's richest man killing the world's poorest children is not a pretty one," Gates <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/bdd9bb89-ac3c-4043-9ca4-bc7efbd41fed">told the </a><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/bdd9bb89-ac3c-4043-9ca4-bc7efbd41fed">Financial Times</a>.
Musk, through his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), all but shuttered USAID in February by <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-judge-bars-musk-doge-further-efforts-shut-down-usaid-2025-03-18/">freezing its grants</a> used for foreign assistance and <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/doge-guts-usaid-workforce/">slashing its workforce</a>, once 10,000 strong, to less than 300 employees.
Gates said that the abruptness of the cuts meant that troves of food and medicines are now <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/02/12/millions-dollars-worth-american-food-rots-ports-usaid-shut/">rotting in warehouses</a>. In April, the New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/19/world/africa/sudan-usaid-famine.html">reported</a> that Musk's USAID cuts forced hundreds of <a href="https://futurism.com/children-starving-death-elon-musk-cut-food">soup kitchens in Sudan to shut down</a>.
Gates also slammed Musk for having no understanding of USAID or the work it did, citing how Musk cancelled grants because he <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/12/politics/some-of-the-things-that-i-say-will-be-incorrect-musk-backs-away-from-false-claim-of-usd50-million-for-gaza-condoms/index.html">wrongly believed</a> that the agency was supplying condoms to Hamas in Gaza, Palestine — when in reality, those grants were for a hospital in Gaza Province, Mozambique, to prevent women transmitting HIV to their babies. 
"I'd love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money," Gates told the FT.
In a separate <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/magazine/bill-gates-foundation-closing-2045.html">interview with the New York Times</a>, Gates called the USAID cuts "stunning" and chided Musk for his <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-charity-hoarding-money">lack of charitable giving</a>.
"Well, he's the one who cut the USAID budget. He put it in the wood chipper, because he didn't go to a party that weekend," Gates told the NYT. When the interviewer raised Musk's commitment to the Giving Pledge, Gates noted that the pledge to give away most of your fortune doesn't have to be fulfilled while you're still alive — it can be done after you're dead, too.
"So who knows? [Musk] could go on to be a great philanthropist," he said. "In the meantime, the world's richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world's poorest children."
Grimly, Gates offered an estimate of just how many children's lives were being endangered due to the cuts to foreign aid.
"On childhood deaths, which over the next few years should have gone from five million to four million — now, unless there’s a big reversal, we’ll probably go from five million to six million," Gates told the NYT.
Gates' comments come as he announces his plan to close down the Gates Foundation by 2045, which is decades ahead of schedule. His intent, in the meantime, is to accelerate his philanthropic giving.
As the FT notes, critics have accused Gates of using his charitable initiatives <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-philanthropy-misanthropy/">as a tax shield</a>. USAID isn't above criticism, either. For all the very real aid it provides, it's also <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/usaid-trump-musk-history-controversies/">an extension of aggressive US foreign policy</a>, furthering imperial interests under a benevolent guise and going as far as in some cases to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/us-cuban-twitter-zunzuneo-stir-unrest">foment regime change</a>.
Of course, that's not why Musk or the Trump administration is gutting the agency. There's no coherent and principled anti-imperialist thinking informing Musk, who <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/25/we-will-coup-whoever-we-want-the-unbearable-hubris-of-musk-and-the-billionaire-tech-bros">once declared</a> that the US would "coup whoever we want." 
Most of his logic, from what he's shared with the public, <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-usaid-constructing-reality">amounts to brainless conspiracies</a>, such as <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887172343954563552">believing</a> that USAID has been constructing a "Truman Show"-style false reality around all of humanity, or <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886098373251301427">that it was</a> a "viper's nest of radical left Marxists who hate America." 
His right-wing counterparts, meanwhile, believe that USAID went "<a href="https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/how-usaid-went-woke-and-destroyed-itself">woke</a>." Musk himself <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1891408049857761414">once claimed</a> that USAID was "funding DEI abroad." 
In short, it's clear that Musk doesn't have the best interests in mind of the children and everyone else who once depended on foreign aid to survive.
More on DOGE cuts: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/trump-children-toxic-chemicals">Trump Admin Cancels Programs to Protect Children From Toxic Chemicals</a>

Blood On His Hands

"I'd love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money."

Bill Gates Accuses Elon Musk of "Killing the World's Poorest Children"

<h2>Bye Bye, Savings</h2>
The Trump administration is so committed to environmental deregulation that it's ending a program that has saved Americans more than half a trillion dollars.
According to officials briefed on the matter who <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/05/06/energy-star-program-epa-trump/">spoke to the Washington Post</a>, the Environmental Protection Agency — or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/06/trump-epa-cuts">what's left of it</a>, anyway — is slated to end the Energy Star program, which has certified electric efficiency on appliances across the country and resulted in <a href="https://www.energystar.gov/sites/default/files/2024-05/Annual%20Overview%20Report_2023.pdf">more than $500 billion</a> in utility bill savings since 1992.
The Energy Star closure was announced during an all-hands meeting of the EPA's Office of Atmospheric Protection, which also learned at the same time that it would be dissolved.
In a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/06/climate/energy-star-trump">statement to CNN</a>, an agency spokesperson did not lay out a timeline for the closure or say when Americans could expect to stop seeing Energy Star certification stickers on appliances.
While the EPA itself has been tight-lipped about the changes, Republican senator Susan Collins of Maine said she was "baffled" by the move to close the program.
"I know that my constituents like knowing what the energy usage is of a particular appliance," she told CNN, "so that they can factor that into their buying decisions."
<h2>Energy Crowbar</h2>
As WaPo notes, widespread adoption of Energy Star-certified appliances has prevented an estimated four billion metric tons of greenhouse gases from leaking into our atmosphere, the equivalent of taking nearly 950 million cars off the roads for a year.
That focus on energy efficiency could well be why Trump, a longtime Energy Star hater who <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/killing-energy-star-a-popular-program-lands-on-the-trump-hit-list">floated closing the program</a> during his first presidency, wants to kibosh it now.
Trump has also long opposed appliance efficiency standards because, according to him, they don't provide enough water to wash his "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/us/politics/the-president-pushes-for-more-flow-from-the-nations-shower-heads.html">perfect</a>" and "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&amp;v=k3OMkS0dDyk">beautiful</a>" hair. Last month, he signed an executive order lifting restrictions on "<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-makes-americas-showers-great-again/">weak and worthless</a>" showerheads to that end.
Now that Energy Star's future is unknown, the public is left wondering — if this administration will kill even <a href="https://www.energy.gov/articles/remembering-president-george-h-w-bush-5-key-moments-energy-department-history">George HW. Bush-era</a> conservation programs, how much further will it go?
More on Trump's energy haterade: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/trump-tariffs-solar-panels">Trump Just Set a Tariff on Solar Panels So High That Your Eyebrows May Raise Involuntarily</a>

Need To Cut It

Nothing is safe.

You’ll Start Spiralling When You Learn What the Trump Administration Just Did

Tesla's Cybertruck, it's fair to say, isn't exactly flying off the shelves. 
As Electrek <a href="https://electrek.co/2025/05/05/tesla-cybertruck-inventory-skyrockets-to-record-high/">reports</a>, the automaker's inventory of unsold Cybertrucks has reached a record high of over 10,000 units — even as it reportedly <a href="https://futurism.com/cybertruck-disaster-production">slows down production of the disastrous vehicle</a>.
The figure is an estimate based on the number of Cybertruck listings in the US, tracked by <a href="https://tesla-info.com/blog/inventory-stats-regional/US?q=1">Tesla-Info.com</a>. If accurate, it's an embarrassingly high amount of expensive vehicles out there — about a staggering $800 million worth, per the reporting — that have never even left the dealership lot. 
In the entire first quarter of the year, for comparison, Tesla barely sold around 6,400 Cybertrucks, <a href="https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/q1-2025-ev-sales/">according to Cox Automotive</a>.
Clearly, Musk's company is having trouble suckering people into buying the stainless steel behemoths, and it's not hard to understand why buyers are staying away. With complaints of it <a href="https://futurism.com/cybertruck-brick-car-wash">bricking after going through a car wash</a> to <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/cybertruck-breaks-down-one-mile-driving">breaking down after a single mile of driving</a>, its reputation for being shoddily made is well earned.
It's also <a href="https://futurism.com/rent-cybertruck-flipped-off">become a symbol</a> of public outrage against Musk, as the automaker faces <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-targeted-protests-vandalism">worldwide protests</a> for its CEO's <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-rally-nazis-holocaust">far-right politics</a> and his <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-failed-cuts-sleepovers">role in the Trump administration</a>.
The Cybertruck has also been recalled a whopping <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-cybertruck-recall-piece-flying-off">eight times </a>since it first started shipping to customers <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/30/23982569/tesla-cybertruck-delivery-price-specs-features-elon-musk">in late 2023</a>, One recall was because its accelerator <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/19/business/tesla-cybertruck-recall">got stuck in the down position</a>. The latest recall, meanwhile, was to address the small issue of its <a href="https://futurism.com/cybertruck-held-together-glue">glued-on body panels flying off</a>, affecting nearly every single Cybertruck the company had sold at that point — approximately 46,000.
If you just did the mental math, then you'll know that, at this rate, Tesla is nowhere near on track to match the amount of Cybertrucks it sold in 2024 this year. Consequently, it's also an entire galaxy away from reflecting the <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/where-did-the-one-million-people-who-wanted-a-cybertruck-go/">one million Cybertruck reservations</a> that were allegedly made ahead of its launch — or, for that matter, the 250,000 Cybertrucks sold per year that <a href="https://insideevs.com/news/667723/musk-estimates-tesla-could-sell-250000-500000-cybertrucks-yearly/">Musk promised</a> would happen.
Right now, Tesla will be lucky if it cracks 20,000 Cybertrucks sold by the end of 2025.
To boost sales, Tesla introduced a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-cheaper-slower-cybertruck-worse-deal">cheaper Long Range Rear Wheel Drive version</a> of the Cybertruck in April, with way less features and a still pretty steep price tag of $69,990. Behind the scenes, though, it's signaling that it has little faith in the vehicle's fortunes: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-cybertruck-production-drops-sales-slump-2025-4">according to Business Insider</a>, Tesla has reduced production targets at several Cybertruck manufacturing lines over the past few months, shifting some employees who worked on the truck to work on the Model Y. 
That could be a revealing omen of what's to come for the Cybertruck, and perhaps for Tesla, which is <a href="https://futurism.com/teslas-sales-continue-fall">facing its worst sales in years in Europe</a>.
More on Tesla: <a href="https://futurism.com/teslas-sales-continue-fall">Tesla's Sales Are Somehow Continuing to Fall</a>

Cyberstuck in the Lot

Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Cybertrucks are rotting in dealership lots.

Tesla Is Sitting on an Enormous Pile of Unsold Cybertrucks as Crisis Deepens

Astronomers have made an intriguing discovery that could upend everything we know about the structure of the universe and its expansion.
Scientists recently found that dark energy, the mysterious form driving the accelerating expansion of the universe, could be weakening over time.
The findings could undermine the existing standard cosmological model of the universe called the lambda-cold dark matter (LCDM) model, which takes dark energy, ordinary matter, and cold dark matter — a hypothetical form of dark matter that moves slowly compared to the speed of light — into consideration.
The symbol lambda in the model refers to Albert Einstein's cosmological constant, which assumes that the universe is accelerating at a fixed rate.
Yet, last year, scientists <a href="https://www.desi.lbl.gov/2024/04/22/desi-2024-in-the-news-is-dark-energy-weakening-new-uncertainty-invites-optimism-about-the-fate-of-the-universe/">concluded</a> that dark energy isn't a constant after all, analyzing observations by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) in Arizona, as <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2478344-dark-energy-bombshell-sparks-race-to-find-a-new-model-of-the-universe/">New Scientist reports</a>. They found that the mysterious force could be evolving and weakening over time.
In March, scientists <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/02/science/desi-dark-energy-results/index.html">released a follow-up,</a> strengthening the unusual findings.
"This is exciting – it might actually be putting the standard model of cosmology in danger," Autonomous University of Madrid assistant research professor Yashar Akrami told New Scientist.
Instead of making changes to the LCDM itself, Akrami and his colleagues suggested redefining dark energy as a "quintessence field," which has been used to explain observations of an accelerating rate of expansion of the universe.
That could allow scientists to harmonize more advanced string theory with the standard cosmological model.
"If you prove that quintessence is dark energy, it’s very good for [string theorists]," Akrami told New Scientist. "That’s why the string theory community is really excited now."
An altered take on the quintessence model of dark energy suggests the mysterious force could be interacting with gravity itself.
"We’ve always grown up thinking about the universe as having the gravitational force, and gravity fuels everything," University of Oxford astrophysicist Pedro Ferreira told the publication. "But now there’s going to be an additional fifth force, which is due to the dark energy, which also fuels everything."
But before we can add this fifth force, we'd have to reconcile the fact that we simply haven't seen any evidence for it, at least not when we're making precise measurements of our neighborhood of the universe.
"Physics ends up being even more complicated than we thought it could have been, and that kind of makes you wonder, why do you want to go down that route?" Ferreira added.
The researcher believes it's most likely that scientists will debate different models of dark energy and "never resolve it."
Yet, there's still a chance researchers could observe gravity being influenced by dark energy in upcoming observations by the European Space Agency's Euclid satellite and DESI.
More on dark energy: <a href="https://futurism.com/black-hole-bomb">Scientists Say They've Built a "Black Hole Bomb"</a>