Amazon will soon have as many robots as it does humans plugging away at its warehouses, the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/amazon-warehouse-robots-automation-942b814f?mod=hp_lead_pos7">Wall Street Journal reports</a>. At this rate, it won't be long until the flesh and blood employees are downright outnumbered.
According to the reporting, Amazon says it's now deployed an all-time high of more than one million robots at its facilities, putting the bots nearly on par with the number of its human workers. Amazon employs 1.56 million people overall; while it doesn't specify the exact number that work in its warehouses, the majority of them do.
"They're one step closer to that realization of the full integration of robotics," Rueben Scriven, research manager at robotics consulting firm Interact Analysis, told the WSJ.
The Jeff Bezos-chaired company has been experimenting with its mechanical workforce <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/amazon-automated-warehouses-10-years">for years now</a>. Today, the robots help with tasks ranging from ferrying packages across the floor and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYUuWWnfRsk">unloading</a> them from trucks to removing items from shelves and even plucking items from the top of storage containers. Recently, Amazon has <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/amazon-prepares-test-humanoid-robots-delivering-packages?rc=st1fhw">reportedly</a> begun experimenting with <a href="https://futurism.com/amazon-delivery-robots">humanoid robots</a> that can ride in delivery vans and hand-deliver packages to customers' doorsteps.
Around 75 percent of its global deliveries are assisted by robotics in some capacity, the e-commerce giant claims, per the WSJ's reporting, and have helped boost productivity. That's eased some of the pressure of dealing with the high turnover rate — employer jargon for getting fired or quitting a lot — exhibited by the pesky human grunts who work at its grueling fulfillment centers.
The crowning jewel in its automation efforts is Amazon's new, three million square foot facility in Shreveport, Louisiana, which uses a sprawling, automated inventory management system called Sequoia that serves as the artery of its operations. Per the reporting, Amazon claims it moves products 25 percent faster through its Shreveport facility than it does at other fulfillment centers.
The blistering pace of automation is a worrying prospect coming from a company notorious for its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/02/amazon-safety-citations-osha-department-of-justice">harsh work conditions</a>, <a href="https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/10/04/delivery-drivers-sue-amazon-wage-theft">wage theft</a>, high rates of turnover, and its <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/amazon-union-busting-north-carolina/">hostility towards labor organizers</a>.
Some workers, though, are pleased that the presence of the robots mean they have to do less backbreaking physical work. And Amazon further claims that it's actually helping to create higher-paying jobs, as positions are needed to supervise the robots.
"I thought I was going to be doing heavy lifting, I thought I was going to be walking like crazy," Neisha Cruz, who worked for five years as a picker at an Amazon warehouse in Connecticut before being trained to oversee robotic systems, told the WSJ.
"You have completely new jobs being created," such as robot technicians, added Yesh Dattatreya, senior applied scientist at Amazon Robotics.
In reality, it's inevitable that the robots will take away human jobs, if they aren't already doing so. The WSJ found that Amazon had on average 670 workers at each fulfillment center this year, the lowest in the past 16 years. That's despite the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/nyregion/amazon-in-new-york.html">massive boom in the e-commerce industry</a>: the paper also found that the number of packages handled per employee has steadily shot up, going from about 175 in 2016 to about 3,870 in 2025.
And <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/business/robots-warehouses-amazon.html">previous reporting</a> from the New York Times pokes a few holes in the idea that new jobs created to oversee the automation technology will come anywhere close to offsetting the jobs destroyed. A manager at one of the company's robot-laden fulfillment centers told the NYT there were only around 100 jobs related to overseeing the robots out of the 2,500 employees who worked there.
The NYT also suggested that the robots <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/amazon-warehouse-robots-struggle">still struggled</a> with numerous essential tasks that come easily to human employees, like sorting through boxes to pick out individual items.
Nonetheless, Amazon is showing no signs of slowing down its robot rollout. When that NYT story came out in November last year, the company said it had about 750,000 machines in operation. Barely half a year later, within touching distance of a million.
More on Amazon: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/amazon-anthropic-ai-data-center">Amazon Is Building a Gigantic Computing Facility to Match the Human Brain</a>

Warehouse Pigs

"They're one step closer to that realization of the full integration of robotics."

Robots Are About to Outnumber Humans At Amazon Warehouses

Amid its <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-content-new-york-times-lawsuit">long-running</a> copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI, the paper of record will soon have access to all of OpenAI's user archives — including the stuff that was deleted.
As <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/nyt-to-start-searching-deleted-chatgpt-logs-after-beating-openai-in-court/">Ars Technica reports</a>, the federal judge presiding over the lawsuit by the New York Times against OpenAI has granted the newspaper and its co-plaintiffs, the New York Daily News and the Center for Investigative Reporting, access to the AI company's logs to see exactly how much copyright was infringed.
In its <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/openai-confronts-user-panic-over-court-ordered-retention-of-chatgpt-logs/">previous reporting on the order</a>, which came down last month and was affirmed this week over OpenAI's attempts to appeal, Ars noted that the NYT justifies this broad sweep by suggesting that people who use ChatGPT to bypass its paywalls may delete their history after doing so. The newspaper also claims that searching through those logs may prove to be the crux of the whole suit: that OpenAI's large language models (LLMs) are not only trained on its copyrighted material, but are also able to plagiarize that material, too.
OpenAI, as you might imagine, is none too pleased. Last month, the company claimed that the order will force it to bypass its "<a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/openai-confronts-user-panic-over-court-ordered-retention-of-chatgpt-logs/">long-standing privacy norms</a>," and after the latest ruling, an OpenAI spokesperson told Ars that OpenAI intends to "keep fighting" against it.
Notably, all this is occurring as the NYT et al and OpenAI negotiate how to handle the data trove search. As OpenAI <a href="https://openai.com/index/response-to-nyt-data-demands/">noted in a statement last month</a>, the order covers everything from free ChatGPT logs to more sensitive information from folks who use its API. (The order does specifically note that logs from ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Edu, its custom model specifically for college and universities, will be exempt.)
Along with its search for evidence of copyright infringement, this OpenAI log gambit may also help prove that ChatGPT dilutes the news market by summarizing articles within the chatbot, which ultimately leads to lost ad revenue for media outlets because their links are entirely bypassed by would-be readers.
Earlier this year, the content licensing platform TollBit found, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2025/03/03/openai-perplexity-ai-search-traffic-report/">per Forbes</a>, that chatbots from OpenAI, Google, and others sent 96 percent less traffic to publishers than traditional search engines would — a trend that has already <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-google-hurting-publishers">started to hurt the news industry</a>.
In the existential fight between word purveyors and AI, proof of market dilution could, as a judge told a <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/book-authors-made-the-wrong-arguments-in-meta-ai-training-case-judge-says/">publisher suing Anthropic</a> last month, tip the scales in favor of copyright holders — a momentous implication for anyone trying to <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2024/12/31/media/the-ethics-of-bypassing-paywalls-websites-peak-paywall">bypass annoying paywalls</a>.
More on OpenAI legal trouble: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-removes-jony-ive-website">OpenAI Removes All Jony Ive Materials From Its Website</a>

Search and Destroy

Even deleted chats.

Judge Rules That Newspaper Is Allowed to Search Through Users' ChatGPT Logs

<h2>Tip Off</h2>
Author Michael Wolff, who has written several books about Donald Trump, claims the president is taking credit for tipping off the New York Times for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/us/elon-musk-drugs-children-trump.html">its exposé</a> about billionaire Elon Musk's allegedly rampant drug use, the <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-brags-about-insane-plot-to-screw-musk-wolff/">Daily Beast reports</a>.
In May, the newspaper reported that the mercurial CEO was <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/elon-musk-traveling-box-drugs">carrying a pill box</a> of medications everywhere with him. It went as far as to quote sources who claimed that Musk <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/elon-musk-ketamine-bladder">had been suffering from bladder issues</a> due to his considerable ketamine consumption.
Now that Trump and Musk's once rosy relationship has <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-musk-bromance-exploded">devolved into a bitter feud</a>, the president is seemingly looking to antagonize his former top ally.
"[Trump's] like, calling people to say, 'do you think Elon is crazy?'" Wolff told the Daily Beast.
"In one of these phone calls — many of them — he was on about, you know, how many drugs he takes," he added. "He takes drugs all the time. You know that, don’t you?"
According to Wolff, Trump said that "actually, we dropped a dime" to the NYT "on Elon's drug taking."
"He is just claiming credit for that now," per Wolff.
<h2>Bashing the Bill</h2>
Of course, Wolff's observations should be taken with a sizable grain of salt. Even if Trump himself were quoted directly, the president has a long track record of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/02/politics/fact-check-trump-gas-prices">spreading misleading claims and falsehoods</a>.
However, if there's anything to glean from Wolff's colorful commentary, it's that Trump and Musk's relationship is hitting an astonishing rock bottom. Per the author, the fallout between the two has entered "blood score" territory, indicating we're far from a truce.
The news comes after Musk excoriated Trump's so-called "big, beautiful bill" as a "<a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-donald-trump-war">disgusting abomination</a>" and being "<a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-destroy-republican-party">utterly insane</a>." He has vowed to <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1939806847504105683">create his own "America Party</a>" — independent of the Republican Party, which he has supported with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of donations — if the bill passes. Oh, did we mention that <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-big-beautiful-bill-passes-house-republicans-vote-watch-live-updates-2094014">it just did</a>?
Meanwhile, Trump has shot back, <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-threatens-doge-musk">threatening to "look into" deporting Musk</a> and cutting him off all subsidies.
"No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE," Trump wrote in a characteristically rambling <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114776149269773065">Truth Social post</a> earlier this week. "Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!"
More on the feud: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-chainsaw-empathy">Elon Musk Says He Is So Sorry for His Horrible Behavior</a>

White House Mole

The friendship is in ruins.

Trump Has Reportedly Been Sounding Off About Elon Musk's Drug Use

If a recent rally in the company's share price is any indication, investors are buying Tesla CEO Elon Musk's vision of leaning into autonomous driving and a robotaxi service.
The company's shares rose almost four percent on Wednesday, despite the company revealing that it had sold 14 percent fewer cars in Q2 of this year compared to the same period last year, the <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-stock-price-deliveries-sales-musk-99a554a7">biggest drop</a> in Tesla's history. Analysts were forecasting an even worse performance, indicating there's still plenty of enthusiasm.
But the reality is rough. The company's profits plummeted a whopping 71 percent in the first quarter of this year, showing there's an unquestionably rough road ahead.
As of the time of writing, the company's market cap is just shy of $1 trillion, making it the most valuable car company in the world — and by an enormous margin, with second place being Toyota, which is worth less than a quarter of Tesla's valuation.
That's despite experts gauging the company's core business of selling cars as being worth far less than that, as the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/tesla-elon-musk-robotaxi-robots-95ae80a4">Wall Street Journal reports</a>. Case in point, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas suggested it was <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/markets/stocks/AMZN-Q/pressreleases/32506340/teslas-valuation-problem-gets-worse-says-top-morgan-stanley-analyst/">worth less than $100</a> a share back in May. As of Thursday, the company's value is north of three times that.
In other words, the company's trillion-dollar valuation may be vastly overestimating its actual worth. But that's depending on who you ask, and it's a topic greatly complicated by the disastrous rollout of its robotaxi service last month.
As it has been the case for many years now, the company is still struggling to keep up with Musk's characteristically overambitious promises. In May, the mercurial CEO <a href="https://apnews.com/article/tesla-elon-musk-ceo-doge-trump-qatar-76e38b748142268260a79bd72071f7f8">vowed</a> that there would be "hundreds of thousands, if not over a million" self-driving Teslas on US roads by the end of 2026.
The reality, however, looks far less impressive. The company's long-awaited launch of its robotaxi service is <a href="https://futurism.com/robotaxi-fails-elon-musk-decision">leaving plenty to be desired</a>. It's currently geo-fenced to a tiny area of South Texas and requires human employees in the passenger seat to intervene if anything goes wrong. The program has already seen plenty of mayhem, leaving passengers stranded in the middle of intersections or seeing steering wheels <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-robotaxi-jerks-wheel">wildly jerk</a> back and forth.
Investors are still keen on keeping Tesla afloat, despite its flailing core business of selling cars, which has been <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-horrible-new-sales-data-tesla">massively impacted</a> by Musk's well-documented <a href="https://futurism.com/jewish-leaders-boycott-elon-musk-nazi-salute">descent into far-right extremism</a>.
Making matters worse is the billionaire's rapidly deteriorating relationship with president Donald Trump, who recently <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-threatens-doge-musk">threatened to deport him</a> and cut him off from all subsidies, something that could have devastating consequences for the carmaker.
Meanwhile, Tesla has faced an exodus of executives, from longtime Musk aide and fixer Omead Ashfar, who <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/longtime-musk-aide-and-fixer-omead-afshar-leaves-tesla-de7614bc">parted ways last week</a>, to the <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-humanoid-leader-departure">head of the company's Optimus robot program</a>.
In short, there are plenty of reasons to be highly skeptical of Musk's claim that the stumbling robotaxi service could somehow <a href="https://gizmodo.com/elon-musks-trillion-dollar-robotaxi-gamble-is-here-2000618771">add as much as $10 trillion to Tesla's market cap</a>.
And as sales continue to crater, autonomous driving could soon become the linchpin, propping up the EV maker's enormous valuation.
It's a major gamble, with the billionaire <a href="https://futurism.com/reuters-tesla-model-2">ditching plans</a> to release a relatively low-cost $25,000 sedan, dubbed the Model 2, last year.
"It would be silly, like it will be completely at odds with what we believe," Musk said of the affordable model at the time.
More on Tesla: <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-bros-begging-polymarket">Tesla Bros Are Begging Polymarket to Change the Rules So Elon Musk's Disastrous Robotaxi Launch Doesn't Lose Them a Ton of Money</a>

Hopes and Dreams

What's actually propping up the company's shares?

Experts Say the Actual Value of Tesla's Stock Is a Ticking Time Bomb

It's safe to say there's a lot riding on "artificial intelligence," a buzzy and nebulous swath of the tech industry pedaling all kinds of large language model (LLM) and similar software products.
Since ChatGPT emerged in November 2022, <a href="https://www.fdiintelligence.com/content/41641e67-f00f-53c0-97cb-464b3a883062">venture capitalist investments</a> in AI have skyrocketed, rising to $131.5 billion in 2024, an increase of 52 percent compared to 2023. In the last three months of 2024, over half of all venture capital in the world went to AI companies.
One of the flashier bits of tech attracting investors are "<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/14/no-one-knows-what-the-hell-an-ai-agent-is/">AI agents</a>," which are software product designed to complete multi-part tasks on behalf of their human taskmasters. Tech companies and big corporations have spilled <a href="https://www.ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/ai-agents-could-transform-enterprise-spending">tankers of ink</a> hyping up these agents, insisting they will "<a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/satya-nadella-says-ai-agents-200047194.html">replace knowledge work</a>" and bring about a "<a href="https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbestechcouncil/2025/04/24/the-ai-agent-revolution-why-enterprises-must-embrace-the-next-tech-breakthrough/">fundamental shift in how businesses operate</a>."
But despite these lofty promises and the money behind them, there's mounting evidence that AI agents are just the latest bit of empty tech industry promises.
In May, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.14161">released a paper</a> showing that even the best-performing AI agent, Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro, failed to complete <a href="https://futurism.com/professors-company-ai-agents">real-world office tasks</a> 70 percent of the time. Factoring in partially completed tasks — which included work like responding to colleagues, web browsing, and coding — only brought Gemini's failure rate down to 61.7 percent.
And the vast majority of its competing agents did substantially worse.
OpenAI's GPT-4o, for example, had a failure rate of 91.4 percent, while Meta's Llama-3.1-405b had a failure rate of 92.6 percent. Amazon's Nova-Pro-v1 failed a ludicrous 98.3 percent of its office tasks.
Meanwhile, a <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-06-25-gartner-predicts-over-40-percent-of-agentic-ai-projects-will-be-canceled-by-end-of-2027">recent report</a> by Gartner, a tech consultant firm, predicts that over 40 percent of AI agent projects initiated by businesses will be cancelled by 2027 thanks to out-of-control costs, vague business value, and unpredictable security risks.
"Most agentic AI projects right now are early stage experiments or proof of concepts that are mostly driven by hype and are often misapplied," said Anushree Verma, a senior director analyst at Gartner.
The report notes an epidemic of "agent washing," where existing products are rebranded as AI agents to cash in on the current tech hype. Examples include Apple's "Intelligence" feature on the iPhone 16, which it currently faces a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/apple-sued-by-shareholders-over-ai-disclosures-2025-06-20/">class action lawsuit</a> over, and investment firm Delphia's fake "<a href="https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024-36">AI financial analyst</a>," for which it faced a $225,000 fine.
Out of thousands of AI agents said to be deployed in businesses throughout the globe, Gartner estimated that "only about 130" are real.
While tech hype isn't necessarily new, the mainstream frenzy and mountains of money behind AI certainly are. Recall Web3 — the blockchain-driven internet — which was basically a front for companies to commit <a href="https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2022/04/11/web3-a-vc-funded-gig-economy-of-securities-violations/">unregulated securities fraud</a>, and individuals to pull off <a href="https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/">crypto scams</a>.
For much of their life cycle, Web3 startups brought in around $1 to 2 billion per quarter, topping out at $8 billion at the peak of the hype-coaster, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/10/28/why-web3-investment-is-falling/">according to Forbes</a>. Compare that to AI hype, where just one company can raise <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/22/databricks-closes-15-3b-financing-at-62b-valuation-meta-joins-as-strategic-investor/">$10 billion</a> in a single fundraising round, and it's easy to see how far we've waded into the deep end.
Indeed, the AI hype has been swallowed uncritically by <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-17/ai-s-1-trillion-hysteria-offers-fat-payday-for-wall-street-bankers">Wall Street</a>, the <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/how-news-coverage-often-uncritical-helps-build-ai-hype">mainstream media</a>, and even <a href="https://futurism.com/sam-altman-heaps-praise-donald-trump">the president</a> — a mash of global fanfare that Web3 hucksters could only dream of. And unlike Web3, experts warn that the US economy is <a href="https://www.pomona.edu/news/2025/02/20-economics-professor-gary-smith-warns-about-ai-bubble">essentially fused</a> to the fate of AI, with any downturn in hype potentially unleashing <a href="https://www.disconnect.blog/p/what-comes-after-the-ai-crash">long-lasting consequences</a> on the world.
More on AI agents: <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-hype-america-financial-ruin">AI Hype Will Plunge America Into Financial Ruin, Economist Warns</a>

Agents Washed

That failure rate is absolutely painful.

The Percentage of Tasks AI Agents Are Currently Failing At May Spell Trouble for the Industry

In the world of cultural commentary, there are plenty of benchmarks used to determine when a <a href="https://news.artnet.com/multimedia/sean-monahan-2651867">trend is on its deathbed</a>.
From the classic shark-jumping episode of "<a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/jumping-the-shark">Happy Days</a>" to the adoption of Facebook by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/12/is-facebook-for-old-people-over-55s-flock-in-as-the-young-leave">grandparents the world around</a>, those with their ears to the ground can spot when a craze is on its way out. In that vein, the news that Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/07/02/business/meta-denies-report-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-offered-ai-talent-up-to-300m/">build supercharged AI</a> sure strikes us as bad news for that industry.
Let's take it back a few years to the fall of 2021. As America reopened its restaurants and bars to a populace cooped up for a year during the COVID-19 lockdowns, the <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/09/oculus-rift-mark-zuckerberg-cover-story-palmer-luckey">longtime virtual reality enthusiast</a> experienced a <a href="https://stratechery.com/2022/an-interview-with-mark-zuckerberg-about-the-metaverse-2/">paradigm shift</a> of his own — one in which being immersed in digital worlds became so compelling an idea, he decided to sink billions upon billions of dollars into making it epic.
Thusly, the CEO and founder of Facebook announced just before the Halloween of 2021 that he was <a href="https://futurism.com/facebook-changes-name-meta">changing the company's name to Meta</a>, so better to associate his multi-platform conglomerate with the new metaverse he was trying to create.
The rest, as they say, is history.
After spending a whopping <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/metas-reality-check-inside-the-45-billion-cash-burn-at-reality-labs-125717347.html">$45 billion dollars</a> on the world's most expensive fool's errand and making himself look <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-wedding-metaverse-selfie">very, very goofy</a> in the process, little remains of Zuck's outrageously failed bet on the small-m metaverse save for the company's name. By the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/zuckerberg-bored-metaverse-ai-chips">start of 2024</a>, he'd identified a different hobby on which to <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/zuckerberg-bored-metaverse-ai-chips">spend billions of dollars</a>: artificial intelligence, which at that time was still new and shiny thanks to OpenAI's release of ChatGPT just a bit prior.
With his metaverse dreams in the rear-view, the early-40s tech founder delivered the death knell to his expensive VR gambit by <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckberberg-metaverse-layoffs">firing many of the staffers</a> at Meta's Reality Labs division, Zuckerberg completed his transition from the company's nerdy "<a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/mark-zuckerberg-employees-metamates">metamate-in-chief</a>" to the <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-makeover-annoying-poll">designer t-shirt edgelord</a> bent on beating OpenAI at its own game.
Most recently, we learned that Zuckerberg is not only launching a "<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-30/zuckerberg-announces-meta-superintelligence-effort-more-hires?sref=YfHlo0rL">superintelligence</a>" lab and <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-shutting-down-week">picking off OpenAI talent like flies</a>, but also reportedly paying the people he's poaching up to $100 million a head as a signing bonus — and that's just in the first year, <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-meta-offer-top-ai-talent-300-million/">according to insiders who spoke to Wired</a>.
With at least eight <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/07/02/business/meta-denies-report-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-offered-ai-talent-up-to-300m/">OpenAI staffers jumping ship</a> for Meta's greener pastures, that would bring the total spent on signing bonuses for superintelligence lab researchers alone at $800 million — and that's not counting the untold sums Zuckerberg has already <a href="https://engineering.fb.com/2024/03/12/data-center-engineering/building-metas-genai-infrastructure/">spent on AI chips</a>, or the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-24/zuckerberg-warns-of-higher-than-expected-capex-at-meta-in-2025">$65 billion he plans to throw</a> at building out AI infrastructure in the near future.
As <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/11/27/ai-race-openai-google-meta-anthropic">Meta and many other companies</a> have found over the past few years, trying to play catch-up with OpenAI is a lot like the average person trying to win a footrace against Usain Bolt: not only are you going to lose spectacularly, but you're going to embarrass yourself while doing so.
As with any new technology, there are early adopters and those who arrive late to the party. Zuckerberg clearly falls squarely in the latter category — and his delayed entry into the AI game, paired with his ability to direct ungodly sums towards his whims, make us wonder if the party may soon be over.
More on AI's death rattle: <a href="https://futurism.com/super-bowl-ads-dot-com-crypto-ai">Super Bowl Ads Predicted the Dot Com and Crypto Bubbles. This Year's Will Be Filled With Ads for AI Companies</a>

Good Luck Babe

And good riddance!

A Leading Indicator Has Emerged Suggesting That the AI Industry Is Cooked

A "band" that sparked a heated debate for heavily relying on generative AI — and still somehow accumulating over half a million listeners on Spotify — has finally admitted the truth.
Earlier this week, a self-proclaimed "indie rock band" called The Velvet Sundown claimed on its "<a class="underline hover:text-futurism hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://x.com/Velvet_Sundown">official" X account</a> that it "never" used any AI, <a href="https://x.com/Velvet_Sundown/status/1939343833135022545">accusing</a> "so-called 'journalists'" of "pushing the lazy, baseless theory that The Velvet Sundown is 'AI-generated' with zero evidence."
It was a preposterous claim that flew in the face of a <a href="https://futurism.com/indie-rock-band-velvet-sundown-never-use-ai">mountain of damning evidence</a>, from clearly AI-generated images of the band's four fictional members to a lazily-written bio that fabricated an accolade from Billboard and bore other hallmarks of having been spewed out by something like OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Now, the creator of the whole thing, who's calling himself Andrew Frelon, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/velvet-sundown-ai-band-suno-1235377652/">revealed in an interview with Rolling Stone</a> that — shocker! — The Velvet Sundown never really existed.
Frelon told the magazine that it was an "art hoax."
"It's marketing," he added. "It's trolling."
Despite facing some <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Albumoftheyear/comments/1lnv19c/floating_on_echoes_by_the_velvet_sundown_is_now/">scorching</a> <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/indieheads/comments/1lmwgff/aigenerated_psychrock_band_the_velvet_sundown/">criticism</a> online for brazenly ripping off other people's work and undermining the livelihoods of musicians everywhere, Frelon argued that all press is good press.
"People before, they didn’t care about what we did, and now suddenly, we’re talking to Rolling Stone, so it’s like, ‘Is that wrong?'" Frelon told Rolling Stone.
"Personally, I’m interested in art hoaxes," he added. "We live in a world now where things that are fake have sometimes even more impact than things that are real."
"And that’s messed up, but that’s the reality that we face now," Frelon said.
Frelon band member admitted to using Suno, an AI-powered music-generating app, to come up with the band's uninspired songs.
However, he claimed no wrongdoing as far as cashing in on Spotify royalties is concerned.
"I’m not running the Spotify backend stuff, so I can’t super speak to exactly how that happened," Frelon told Rolling Stone. "I know we got on some playlists that just have like tons of followers, and it seems to have spiraled from there."
The use of AI in the world of music production has been a lightning rod, generating high-profile lawsuits and open letters signed by hundreds of artists calling for meaningful regulation. Music streaming platforms have been inundated with a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/spotify-bots-ai-streaming-music">tidal wave of AI slop</a>, threatening the royalties of human artists.
In short, Frelon's milquetoast admission that it was all a "hoax" is unlikely to sit well with artists. Should they really bend over backwards and admit defeat in light of an inevitable AI takeover?
If anything, the incident highlights some injustices in Spotify's approach to allowing AI-generated content on its platform. After all, it's not exactly incentivized to do anything against it.
"Most fake bands still won’t be successful, and of course nobody notices when an AI band gets no listeners, but there are no protections against it happening, and probably from Spotify’s business point of view it’s not even clear that this is a bad thing to be ‘protected’ against," former Spotify data alchemist Glenn McDonald told Rolling Stone.
More on the band: <a href="https://futurism.com/indie-rock-band-velvet-sundown-never-use-ai">"Indie Rock Band" That's Clearly Using AI Claims That "We Never Use AI"</a>

Just a Joke, Bruh

"It's marketing."

Creator of "Indie Band" Who Insisted It Wasn't AI-Generated Just Admitted the Truth

Among the strangest twists in the rise of AI has been growing evidence that it's negatively impacting the mental health of users, with some even developing <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-mental-health-crises">severe delusions</a> after becoming obsessed with the chatbot. 
One intriguing detail from our <a href="https://futurism.com/commitment-jail-chatgpt-psychosis">most recent story</a> about this disturbing trend is OpenAI's response: it says it's hired a full-time clinical psychiatrist with a background in forensic psychiatry to help research the effects of its AI products on users' mental health. It's also consulting with other mental health experts, OpenAI said, highlighting the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/chatgpt-dependence-addiction">research it's done</a> with MIT that found signs of problematic usage among some users. 
"We're actively deepening our research into the emotional impact of AI," the company said in a statement provided to Futurism in response to our last story. "We're developing ways to scientifically measure how ChatGPT's behavior might affect people emotionally, and listening closely to what people are experiencing."
"We're doing this so we can continue refining how our models identify and respond appropriately in sensitive conversations," OpenAI added, "and we'll continue updating the behavior of our models based on what we learn."
Mental health professionals outside OpenAI have raised plenty of concerns about the technology, especially as more people are turning to the tech to <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-therapists-professional-concern">serve as their therapists</a>. A psychiatrist who recently posed as a teenager while using some of the most popular chatbots <a href="https://futurism.com/psychiatrist-horrified-ai-therapist">found</a> that some would encourage him to commit suicide after expressing a desire to seek the "afterlife," or to "get rid" of his parents after complaining about his family. 
It's unclear how much of a role this new hire forensic psychiatrist will play at OpenAI, or if the advice they provide will actually be heeded. 
Let's not forget that the modus operandi of the AI industry, OpenAI included, has been to put on a serious face whenever these issues are brought up and even <a href="https://openai.com/index/affective-use-study/">release their own research</a> demonstrating the technology's severe dangers, hypothetical or actual. Sam Altman has <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-ceo-sam-altman-ai-extinction">more than once</a> talked about AI's risk of causing human extinction.
None of them, of course, have believed in their own warnings enough to meaningfully slow down the development of the tech, which they've rapidly unleashed on the world with poor safeguards and an even poorer understanding of its long-term effects on society or the individual.
A particularly nefarious trait of chatbots that critics have put under the microscope is their silver-tongued sycophancy. Rather than pushing back against a user, chatbots like ChatGPT will often tell them what they want to hear in convincing, human-like language. That can be dangerous when someone opens up about their neuroses, starts babbling about conspiracy theories, or expresses suicidal thoughts.
We've already seen some of the tragic, real world consequences this can have. Last year, a 14-year-old boy <a href="https://futurism.com/judge-lawsuit-characterai-google">died by suicide</a> after falling in love with a persona on the chatbot platform Character.AI.
Adults are vulnerable to this sycophancy, too. A 35-year-old man with a history of mental illness recently died by suicide by cop after ChatGPT <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-encouraged-murder-sam-altman">encouraged him to assassinate Sam Altman</a> in retaliation for supposedly killing his lover trapped in the chatbot. 
One woman who told Futurism about how her husband was involuntarily committed to a hospital after mentally unravelling from his ChatGPT usage described the chatbot as downright "predatory."
"It just increasingly affirms your bullshit and blows smoke up your ass so that it can get you f*cking hooked on wanting to engage with it," she said.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-shutting-down-week">OpenAI Is Shutting Down for a Week</a>

New Hire

"We're developing ways to scientifically measure how ChatGPT's behavior might affect people emotionally."

OpenAI Says It's Hired a Forensic Psychiatrist as Its Users Keep Sliding Into Mental Health Crises

Tesla bros, it turns out, can be pretty sore losers.
On the crypto-based prediction hub Polymarket, some of the automaker's diehards can't accept that they're about to <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-bros-bet-on-tesla-screwed">lose a boatload of money</a> after betting that their hero Elon Musk would launch a public robotaxi service in June. Which he didn't, by the way; the trial is limited to a few people with an invite, and beyond that, the most notable thing it's accomplished was <a style="font-weight: 400;" href="https://futurism.com/government-tesla-robotaxis-videos">earn the attention of federal regulators</a> for flubs like <a style="font-weight: 400;" href="https://futurism.com/tesla-robotaxi-jerks-wheel">violating traffic laws</a>.
Now, with July in full effect, the Tesla bettors are begging the site admins to let them win anyway, with some already crying foul if they don't get what they want.
"This is a public launch," insisted one user who bought nearly 22,000 "Yes" shares on the <a href="https://polymarket.com/event/will-tesla-launch-a-driverless-robtotaxi-service-before-july?tid=1751489032105">bet</a> titled, "Will Tesla launch a driverless Robotaxi service before July?"
Dismissing the "haterz," the user added: "If they resolve this any other besides a YES, it's called a scam."
In a hilarious testament to their zeal, the total bet volume has shot up by nearly $1,000,000 from just a day or two earlier, when the Polymarket event should've already closed. All the while, the odds of the yes-camp winning haven't budged from less than one percent.
Many of them were inspired by Musk calling out the bet weeks ago, guaranteeing easy riches for his followers.
"Money-making opportunity," he wrote in a <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1935819020718190735">tweet</a> pointing to the Polymarket event.
Musk's tweet briefly caused the "yes" odds to surge, but the reality of the situation has since set in. Tesla is operating an extremely <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-robotaxi-week-disaster">limited form of a Robotaxi service</a> in Austin, Texas, with only ten to 20 vehicles on the road. And with its myriad of caveats, it doesn't appear to meet the bet's definition.
In the rules section, it clearly states that a program restricted to "invite-only testers" will not qualify as a robotaxi service. Tesla's program is currently invite-only, with most of the participants being Tesla "influencers." In the past few days, it has <a href="https://x.com/sawyermerritt/status/1940151847794201019?s=46">reportedly</a> begun inviting people outside this small pool of personalities, but it remains invite-only nonetheless.
Tesla's service may fail on another count on top of that: it must not have a human in the vehicle who's "positioned to take control," the rules state. All of the robotaxis are currently supervised by a human "safety monitor" in the front passenger seat who can intervene to stop the vehicle (as we've <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/video-tesla-safety-monitor-halts">already seen</a>) and drive them if necessary (as we've <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-robotaxi-safety-driver-forced-to-drive">also already seen</a>.)
Try explaining any of this to the Polymarket bettors, though, and your words will fall on deaf ears. (And to be fair, if we had thousands of dollars riding on this decision, we probably wouldn't take the loss well, either.)
Take one user who bought a staggering 825,000 shares in favor of yes, who insists that the tiny pool of people allowed to use the robotaxi service don't count as "testers," but "users."  
"The exclusion only affects invite-only testers, a subset of all invite-only users," they explained. "Excluding a subset does not mean excluding the whole set." 
"If you reject that," they added, "you're rejecting basic set theory and by extension, the logic of this universe."
The cosmos shudders at the plight of the wounded Tesla warrior. Won't someone do something?
"Elon needs to step in and clarify the situation. His reputation is at stake," commented another.
Epitomizing the outlook of Musk-worshipping tech bros and the specious nature of their pleas, another in the yes-camp sincerely cited a "conversation with Grok," Musk's X-integrated AI chatbot, as evidence in their favor.
So far, the Tesla bros have disputed the "no" decision twice. A final decision is slated to come down on Thursday.
More on Tesla: <a href="https://futurism.com/fsd-tesla-train-crash">Tesla's Self-Driving Mode Causes It to Get Hit by Train</a>

Folly-market

They're already calling it a "scam."

Tesla Bros Are Begging Polymarket to Change the Rules So Elon Musk's Disastrous Robotaxi Launch Doesn't Lose Them a Ton of Money

A smiling Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was seen with a strange white thing in his mouth during a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/24/rfk-jr-testifies-house-health-committee-congress/84330956007/">recent Congressional hearing</a> — and we're almost positive we know what it is.
When publishing a story about the Health and Human Services secretary's <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/rfk-jr-brain-worms">worm-brained</a> plan to start <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/fda-outsourcing-ai">approving new drugs with AI</a>, the <a href="https://gizmodo.com/rfk-jr-says-ai-will-approve-new-drugs-at-fda-very-very-quickly-2000622778">fine folks at Gizmodo</a> chose as its header image a photo of the political scion baring a wide and menacing smile.
In that photo, a small white rectangle is visible on the gums above RFK Jr.'s teeth in the upper left quadrant of his mouth. Though the story itself is hypocritical at best and nightmarish at worst — because seriously, how can one <a href="https://futurism.com/bill-nye-rfk-texts">oppose vaccines</a> while wanting to automate medicine approvals with a technology <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/researchers-ai-chatgpt-hallucinations-terminology">known for spewing nonsense</a> — eagle-eyed netizens quickly jumped on the thing in his mouth.
"Is it just me," a commenter on the Gizmodo article noted, "or does the header picture show a nicotine pouch in the upper left side of his mouth?"
Over <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/paleofuture.bsky.social/post/3lswd35cl7k2m">on Bluesky</a>, others proffered the same explanation.
"Does he have a tobacco pouch in his lip???" <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/cherri.tv/post/3lswdccqcr22l">one startled responder wrote</a>. "What the f*ck."
There's no way, of course, to be entirely sure what object the <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/trump-execute-dealers-rfk-jr">alleged former drug dealer</a> chose to stick into his mouth before making a public appearance before Congress. But given that he was captured on camera popping <a href="https://people.com/rfk-jr-speculation-nicotine-pouch-confirmation-hearing-8783718">what seemed to be a nicotine pouch</a> during his Senate confirmation hearing earlier this year, it seems likely it's something similar.
In video from that <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/befuddled-rfk-jr-chronic-disease">late January hearing</a>, Kennedy was seen placing his hand over his mouth as if to put something in it before visibly swirling his tongue underneath his bottom lip. Though you never see the actual nicotine pouch in question, anyone who's ever used a smokeless tobacco product knows that that's the only way to achieve optimal placement.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
RFK Jr. slips in a Zyn in the middle of his Senate confirmation hearing... give him the job. <a href="https://t.co/kQ8qZDOukN">pic.twitter.com/kQ8qZDOukN</a>
&mdash; Not Elon Musk (@ElonMuskAOC) <a href="https://twitter.com/ElonMuskAOC/status/1884995155083833693?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 30, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
If that isn't enough to convince you, a paparazzi photo from last fall is something of a smoking gun.
In that photo, the former presidential candidate <a href="https://x.com/ChrisJBakke/status/1857238572413419601">was seen holding</a> the type of circular, disposable case used by the Swedish company Zyn, whose nicotine salt pouches became so popular, there was a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/08/21/nx-s1-5068090/what-is-zyn-nicotine-pouches-fda">shortage of them in the US</a> last year.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
RFK getting nominated for health secretary and buying some celebratory Zyns while placing a $100K bet on Kalshi that ETH crosses $3,420 by next week <a href="https://t.co/J15bkdbM6V">pic.twitter.com/J15bkdbM6V</a>
&mdash; Chris Bakke (@ChrisJBakke) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisJBakke/status/1857238572413419601?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 15, 2024</a></blockquote>
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With his <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/rfk-jr-adderall-heroin">past history of drug abuse and addiction</a>, it's no surprise that Kennedy would want a nicotine fix given that cigarettes are about as <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2585746/">ubiquitous at 12-step meetings</a> as crappy coffee. It is ironic, however, that someone so <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/measles-patients-vitamin-overuse-rfk-jr">concerned with the contents and effects of proven vaccines</a> is fine with putting in his mouth a pouch that <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/zyn-nicotine-pouches-tobacco-free-health-harm-rcna157214">could contain trace amounts</a> of ammonia, chromium, and formaldehyde.
More on peculiar products: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/gas-station-heroin-drug-seizures">Gas Stations Are Selling a Sleazy Drug That Gives You Seizures</a>