Slop World Podcast

Juan Faisal / Kate Cook

AI news with receipts. Juan Faisal and Kate Cook fact-check the claims Big Tech is making about AI, follow the money, and break down what it actually means for your job, your data, and your daily life. From leaked data and corporate cover-ups to AI schools, stolen identities, and layoff headlines that don't add up, we cover the AI stories that everyone's hyping but nobody's verifying. New episodes every Saturday.

  1. 5d ago

    The Internet Is Being Rebuilt for AI (And You’re Not Invited)

    Bots now generate 57.5% of web page requests. For the first time, machines are making more requests to web pages than humans, and more of the internet is being rebuilt around them. This isn’t the dead internet theory, because the internet is very much alive. But the thing is, more of it is being designed for AI agents, while we humans are becoming an afterthought. Juan and Kate run the receipts: Cloudflare says bots now generate 57.5% of web requests, 18 months ahead of its CEO’s own prediction. Agentic AI traffic grew 7,851% in a single year. Stripe reports that 70% of its API commands already come from agents, and a quarter of developers now build their APIs with AI as the primary customer. So what happens when the web’s most important users aren’t people? When an AI agent can cancel your gym reservation because an API has zero authorization checks, and more systems are being built for agents to act on our behalf, what happens to the ad-funded, human-facing internet? Will it even exist as we know it five years from now? ABOUT SLOP WORLD AI news with receipts. Juan Faisal and Kate Cook fact-check the claims Big Tech is making about AI, follow the money, and break down what it actually means for your job, your data, and your daily life. From leaked data and corporate cover-ups to AI schools, stolen identities, and layoff headlines that don’t add up, we cover the AI stories that everyone’s hyping but nobody’s verifying. New episodes every Thursday. DISCLAIMER All content is commentary and opinion based on publicly available documents, interviews, and verifiable sources. References to “scams,” “grifts,” or related terms reflect our editorial opinion, not legal conclusions. Anyone featured who believes a statement is inaccurate may contact us. CHAPTERS 00:00 The Dead Internet Theory Just Got Proof 01:32 Why AI Agents Visit 5,000 Sites at Once 03:17 How AI Scraping Crushed Cara 04:54 Why Does Everything Online Feel Fake Now? 06:41 How Bots Took Over r/BuyItForLife 08:35 The Band Geese Was a Total AI Psyop 10:51 AI Didn't Invent Fake Trends. It Scaled Them. 12:38 The Internet's New Go-To Insult: You're a Bot 14:16 Why the Internet Became the Opposite of The Matrix 16:33 You Don't Deserve Nice Things Right Now 18:22 Your New Front Door to the Internet Is an LLM

  2. Aug 23

    Your New Coworker Might Be Fake. Companies Are Hiring Them Anyway.

    North Korean IT workers used stolen identities, AI-generated faces, and AI-assisted interview answers to get hired by real US companies. In Hong Kong, deepfake versions of a CFO and senior colleagues convinced an Arup finance worker to transfer $25 million.This episode is about what happens when AI makes remote hiring easier to fake and harder to verify.We break down the North Korean IT worker operation that submitted roughly 167,000 job applications in 10 months, the deepfake video call behind the $25 million Arup fraud, and the US facilitators who helped overseas workers appear to be working from inside the country.The larger problem is that AI now works on both sides of the hiring process. Companies use it to screen résumés and move candidates through the process faster. Candidates can use it to coach themselves through interviews, generate fake identities, and impersonate someone else entirely.The tools that made remote hiring faster and cheaper also made verification harder. Seeing someone on Zoom is no longer proof they are who they claim to be. ABOUT SLOP WORLD AI news with receipts. Juan Faisal and Kate Cook fact-check the claims Big Tech is making about AI, follow the money, and break down what it actually means for your job, your data, and your daily life. From leaked data and corporate cover-ups to AI schools, stolen identities, and layoff headlines that don’t add up, we cover the AI stories that everyone’s hyping but nobody’s verifying. New episodes every Saturday. DISCLAIMER All content is commentary and opinion based on publicly available documents, interviews, and verifiable sources. References to “scams,” “grifts,” or related terms reflect our editorial opinion, not legal conclusions. Anyone featured who believes a statement is inaccurate may contact us. CHAPTERS 00:00 Is Your Coworker Real, or an AI Hiring Scam? 01:04 How Remote Work Made Hiring Easy to Fake 03:33 The $25 Million Deepfake CFO Scam 06:27 North Korean IT Workers: 167,000 Applications 08:58 Why This Scam Needs a US Accomplice 10:00 When Fake Workers Steal Real Identities 11:56 How a Stolen ID and ChatGPT Build a Fake Worker 14:55 Why "Human in the Loop" Isn't Working 16:05 Can AI Tools Catch Fake Job Applicants? 17:25 Trust Is the Real Cost of AI Hiring

  3. Aug 15

    AI Is Getting More Expensive. The Use Cases Are Getting Dumber.

    Sam Altman thinks the ChatGPT use case that changes everything is turning your family calendar into a daily podcast for your kids on the drive to school. That is, until someone replied asking a simple question... “Why don’t you just talk to your children?” Juan and Kate review the dumbest AI use cases doing the rounds right now. Grocery lists turned into haikus, Gemini Notebook (formerly known as Google NotebookLM) podcast bots saying “fascinating, let me add to that” to each other. Vibe-coded websites (sites generated by AI purely from an aesthetic prompt) that should have been a three-line email. Anthropic’s weirdly dystopian “there’s hope in hard questions” ad. Which would all be easier to laugh off if AI weren’t eating this much money and infrastructure. Because od data centers, the same hard drive we bought for this podcast a year ago is now nearly three times the price, while 70% of Microsoft’s AI earnings... come directly from OpenAI. That’s what this episode is all about, asking ourselves (and you), how did a technology attracting this much money end up being sold to us with bedtime stories, recipes and increasingly elaborate ways to avoid doing simple things ourselves? ABOUT SLOP WORLD AI news with receipts. Juan Faisal and Kate Cook fact-check the claims Big Tech is making about AI, follow the money, and break down what it actually means for your job, your data, and your daily life. From leaked data and corporate cover-ups to AI schools, stolen identities, and layoff headlines that don’t add up, we cover the AI stories that everyone’s hyping but nobody’s verifying. New episodes every Saturday. DISCLAIMER All content is commentary and opinion based on publicly available documents, interviews, and verifiable sources. References to “scams,” “grifts,” or related terms reflect our editorial opinion, not legal conclusions. Anyone featured who believes a statement is inaccurate may contact us. CHAPTERS 0:00 What Was Sam Altman's Wildest ChatGPT Pitch? 1:13 The Tweet Reply That Got 220,000 Likes 3:20 Is Gemini Notebook's Podcast Feature Useless? 6:24 The Haiku Grocery List Nobody Asked For 7:44 Claude Websites: All Style, Zero Substance 10:16 Anthropic's Cringe 'Hope in Hard Questions' Ad 12:49 Why These 'Cute' AI Demos Feel So Empty 15:31 Why Your Hard Drive Costs 3x More Now 17:14 What AI Should Actually Feel Like (Kate & Juan Disagree)

  4. Aug 8

    Workday Says “We Just Make the Tool.” So Who’s Responsible When AI Rejects You?

    One of Derek Mobley’s rejection emails arrived at 1:50 in the morning, less than an hour after he applied through Workday. His lawsuit has since grown into a nationwide age-discrimination collective involving Workday’s AI hiring tools. Workday says its software doesn’t make hiring decisions. Employers do. But the court allowed plaintiffs to continue arguing that Workday can still be liable when its tools screen and rank applicants. The bigger fight is over evidence. Plaintiffs were denied access to Workday’s bias-testing data and customer applicant records, while Workday’s internal bias audit remains protected from disclosure. The case has also expanded to include HiredScore and claims involving gender, race, and disability. ABOUT SLOP WORLD AI news with receipts. Juan Faisal and Kate Cook fact-check the claims Big Tech is making about AI, follow the money, and break down what it actually means for your job, your data, and your daily life. From leaked data and corporate cover-ups to AI schools, stolen identities, and layoff headlines that don’t add up, we cover the AI stories that everyone’s hyping but nobody’s verifying. New episodes every Thursday. DISCLAIMER All content is commentary and opinion based on publicly available documents, interviews, and verifiable sources. References to “scams,” “grifts,” or related terms reflect our editorial opinion, not legal conclusions. Anyone featured who believes a statement is inaccurate may contact us. CHAPTERS 00:00 Mobley v. Workday: Who’s Liable When AI Rejects You? 01:00 The Judge Blocks Workday’s Bias-Testing Data 02:52 Derek Mobley’s 50-Minute Rejection 05:06 Workday’s Defense: “We Just Make the Tool” 06:52 Age Discrimination Claims Expand the Case 09:24 HiredScore Gets Pulled Into the Lawsuit 11:44 What Workday Has to Hand Over 13:52 Workday’s Bias Audit Stays Out of Reach

  5. Aug 1

    Meta Says “The Future Is for Everyone.” Unless You’re on Medical Leave.

    A pregnant Meta employee says she was laid off two days before giving birth. Another manager was cut sixteen days into approved medical leave. A third says they were warned: take the leave and you’ll end up on the list. They’re among 26 former Meta employees suing over layoffs they say were influenced by AI and workplace tracking data, including keystrokes, browser activity, and AI usage. Meta says humans made the final decisions based on performance ratings and organizational needs. The workers also face a problem: proving what the system actually did. A federal judge rejected their effort to rely on claims about decisions they weren’t present for, leaving key questions about how Meta’s internal systems influenced the layoffs unresolved. Juan and Kate break down the lawsuit, Meta’s “betting on people” campaign, its $115 million workforce academy for data-center trades, and the contradiction between cutting employees while investing heavily in AI infrastructure. ABOUT SLOP WORLD AI news with receipts. Juan Faisal and Kate Cook fact-check the claims Big Tech is making about AI, follow the money, and break down what it actually means for your job, your data, and your daily life. From leaked data and corporate cover-ups to AI schools, stolen identities, and layoff headlines that don't add up, we cover the AI stories that everyone's hyping but nobody's verifying. New episodes every Thursday. DISCLAIMER All content is commentary and opinion based on publicly available documents, interviews, and verifiable sources. References to "scams," "grifts," or related terms reflect our editorial opinion, not legal conclusions. Anyone featured who believes a statement is inaccurate may contact us. CHAPTERS 00:00 Meta Laid People Off on Approved Medical Leave 01:16 The Federal Lawsuit and The Room Where It Happened 02:37 8,000 Layoffs, $135B AI Bet, Secret Surveillance 03:49 Linh Doan and The Human Decision Defense 05:08 Meta's "The Future is for Everyone" Ad Campaign 07:38 The Real Reason Meta Launched a $115M Trade School 09:22 Why Meta Is Training Blue-Collar Workers 12:13 Betting on Data, Not on People 13:14 A Blank Check to Fire You by Spreadsheet

  6. Jul 25

    OpenAI Wants to Be Worth $1 Trillion. Apple Says It Stole Its Trade Secrets.

    Apple is suing OpenAI over allegations that its hardware team stole trade secrets while recruiting former Apple employees. The lawsuit claims job candidates were told to bring parts from unreleased Apple devices to interviews, while departing employees were coached on how to avoid Apple’s security review. At the same time, OpenAI may be slowing down its IPO. CFO Sarah Friar has said the company isn’t operationally ready for public markets as it projects $600 billion in compute spending through 2030. Sam Altman reportedly has another reason for waiting: he wants OpenAI valued at $1 trillion. Juan and Kate break down Apple’s claims, OpenAI’s IPO tension, the proposed $42.6 billion U.S. government equity stake, and what happened to Sora and the Atlas browser. If the government owns part of an AI company, does it have a financial reason to regulate it differently? ABOUT SLOP WORLD AI news with receipts. Juan Faisal and Kate Cook fact-check the claims Big Tech is making about AI, follow the money, and break down what it actually means for your job, your data, and your daily life. From leaked data and corporate cover-ups to AI schools, stolen identities, and layoff headlines that don't add up, we cover the AI stories that everyone's hyping but nobody's verifying. New episodes every Thursday. DISCLAIMER All content is commentary and opinion based on publicly available documents, interviews, and verifiable sources. References to "scams," "grifts," or related terms reflect our editorial opinion, not legal conclusions. Anyone featured who believes a statement is inaccurate may contact us. CHAPTERS 00:00 — Sam Altman’s Trillion-Dollar IPO Dream 01:40 — Is OpenAI Ambitious or Just a Mess? 02:43 — The Amazon Defense 03:43 — The IPO Delay and $600 Billion Compute Bill 04:47 — CFO Sarah Friar vs. Sam Altman 08:01 — The Apple Lawsuit: "Show & Tell" Stolen Hardware 09:15 — Tang Tan & The "LOL" Stolen Laptop Allegations 10:28 — OpenAI Wants the U.S. Government as a $42B Partner 12:14 — Dead Projects: Sora and the Atlas Browser 14:38 — The Math Ain't Mathing: Moving Fast and Breaking the Economy

  7. Jul 18

    Uber Told Everyone to Use AI. They Blew the Budget in 4 Months.

    Uber told its engineers to use AI aggressively and built an internal leaderboard ranking teams by usage. By April, the company had burned through its entire 2026 AI coding budget. Uber responded by capping employees at $1,500 a month per coding tool. The company had been using tools like Claude Code and Cursor, while some engineers were running up thousands of dollars in monthly token costs. Juan and Kate break down how the leaderboard helped drive the spending, why roughly 10% of Uber’s code is now built by AI agents, and the bigger question companies are starting to face: what happens when AI adoption grows faster than the return on investment? They also get into rising agentic AI costs, Microsoft Copilot pricing, tokenmaxxing, and three ways companies can get AI spending under control before the bill gets worse. ABOUT SLOP WORLD AI news with receipts. Juan Faisal and Kate Cook fact-check the claims Big Tech is making about AI, follow the money, and break down what it actually means for your job, your data, and your daily life. From leaked data and corporate cover-ups to AI schools, stolen identities, and layoff headlines that don't add up, we cover the AI stories that everyone's hyping but nobody's verifying. New episodes every Saturday. DISCLAIMER All content is commentary and opinion based on publicly available documents, interviews, and verifiable sources. References to "scams," "grifts," or related terms reflect our editorial opinion, not legal conclusions. Anyone featured who believes a statement is inaccurate may contact us. CHAPTERS 00:00 Uber Burned a Year of AI Budget in 4 Months 00:38 What Uber Gave Its Engineers: Cursor and Claude Code 01:57 The Leaderboard That Turned AI Into a Competition 03:13 The $1,500 Cap, the Dashboard, and the Stock Dip 06:10 Who AI Coding Tools Actually Benefit Most 08:09 Microsoft Copilot Raises Prices: It's Not Just Coding 10:19 Tokenmaxxing and the Education Gap 12:03 Three Ways to Get Your AI Costs Under Control 13:47 Sometimes the Best Tool Is Your Own Brain

  8. Jul 11

    LAUSD Paid AllHere $3 Million for an AI Chatbot. The CEO Got Arrested for Fraud.

    A $3 million AI chatbot for LA's public schools lasted 90 days. This week, the superintendent who championed it resigned, four months after the FBI raided his home and office. The company behind the bot faked its revenue by more than 300x, and the fraud reaches all the way to the top of the district. Juan and Kate follow the money. ABOUT SLOP WORLD AI news with receipts. Juan Faisal and Kate Cook fact-check the claims Big Tech is making about AI, follow the money, and break down what it actually means for your job, your data, and your daily life. From leaked data and corporate cover-ups to AI schools, stolen identities, and layoff headlines that don't add up, we cover the AI stories that everyone's hyping but nobody's verifying. New episodes every Thursday. DISCLAIMER All content is commentary and opinion based on publicly available documents, interviews, and verifiable sources. References to "scams," "grifts," or related terms reflect our editorial opinion, not legal conclusions. Anyone featured who believes a statement is inaccurate may contact us. CHAPTERS 00:00 LAUSD's Superintendent Just Resigned. Here's Why. 02:16 Is AI Bad for Schools—or Just This One? 03:55 How LAUSD's $3 Million AI Deal Collapsed 06:04 Who Is Joanna Smith-Griffin? 07:26 $3.7 Million on Paper. $11,000 in the Bank. 09:26 Why Innovative Beat Safe at LAUSD 10:59 Zero Research. Zero Accountability.

See All (36)

Ratings & Reviews

3.8
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

AI news with receipts. Juan Faisal and Kate Cook fact-check the claims Big Tech is making about AI, follow the money, and break down what it actually means for your job, your data, and your daily life. From leaked data and corporate cover-ups to AI schools, stolen identities, and layoff headlines that don't add up, we cover the AI stories that everyone's hyping but nobody's verifying. New episodes every Saturday.

Information

  • Creator
    Juan Faisal / Kate Cook
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    36
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Juan Faisal / Kate Cook
  • Show Website
    Slop World Podcast

You Might Also Like