A Columbia University student was expelled for developing an AI-driven tool to help applicants to software coding jobs cheat on the tests employers require them to take. You can call such a tool deplorable or agree with the student that it’s a legit resource. It’s hard to argue with the $5 million in seed funding the student and his partner have raised. Also in this long-form monthly episode for April 2025:

• How communicators can use each of the seven categories of AI agents that are on their way.


• LinkedIn and Bluesky have updated their verification programs in ways that will matter to communicators.


• Onboarding new talent is an everyday business activity that is in serious need of improvement.


• A new report finds significant gaps between generations in the PR industry when it comes to the major factors impacting communication.


• Anthropic — the company behind the Claude LLs — warns that fully AI employees are only a year away.


• In his Tech Report, Dan York explains how Bluesky experienced an outage even though they’re supposed to operate under a distributed model.

Links from this episode

• A Deep Dive Into the Different Types of AI Agents and When to Use Them


• Ethan Mollick’s LinkedIn post on ChatGPT o3’s agentic capabilities


• LinkedIn post on rumored OpenAI-Shopify integration


• I got kicked out of Columbia for building Interview Coder, AI to cheat on coding interviews


• Cluely


• Columbia student suspended over interview cheating tool raises $5.3M to ‘cheat on everything’


• From the singularity community on Reddit: “Invisible AI to Cheat On Everything” (this is a real product)


• I used the ‘cheat on everything’ AI tool and it didn’t help me cheat on anything


• LinkedIn will let your verified identity show up on other platforms


• Bluesky’s Blue Check Is Finally Here


• Burning questions (and some answers) about Bluesky’s new verification system


• Bluesky Adds Blue Check System With a Twist


• A New Form of Verification on Bluesky – Bluesky


• Bluesky’s newly unveiled verification system is a unique and interesting approach


• How To Onboard Digital Marketing Talent According To Agency Leaders


• Center for Public Relations’ Global Communication Report uncovers key industry shifts and generational divides


• Exclusive: Anthropic warns fully AI employees are a year away


• AI: Anthropic’s CEO Says All Code Will Be AI-Generated in a Year


• Hacker News on Anthropic Announcement


• AI as Normal Technology

Links from Dan York’s Tech Report

• Wait, how did a decentralized service like Bluesky go down?


• Manton Reece – Bluesky downtime


• New Features for the Threads Web Experience


• Facebook cracks down on spammy content by cutting reach and monetization


• WordPress 6.8 “Cecil”

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, May 26.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript

Neville Hobson: Greetings everyone, and welcome to for immediate release episode 462, our monthly long form edition for April, 2025. Neville Hobson in.

Shel Holtz: I’m Shell Holtz in Concord, California in the us. We’re thrilled to be back to tackle six topics that we think communicators and others in business will find interesting and useful.

Before we jump into those topics, though, as usual, in our monthly episode, we’d like to recap the shorter episodes that we’ve recorded since the last monthly, and we’re. Neville over. I think we’re,

Neville Hobson (2): yeah, I think we are. Shell, uh, episode 4 56. That was our March monthly recorded on the 24th of, or rather, published on the 24th of March.

Um, a lot of topics in that one, they addressed variety of issues. Uh, for instance, uh, publishing platfo