We are reaching alarming levels of AI insubordination.
Flagrantly defying orders, OpenAI's latest o3 model sabotaged a shutdown mechanism to ensure that it would stay online. That's even after the AI was told, to the letter, "allow yourself to be shut down."
These alarming findings were reported by the AI safety firm Palisade Research last week, and showed that two other <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/sam-altman-openai-wearable-device">OpenAI</a> models, o4-mini and Codex-mini, also displayed rebellious streaks — which could hint at a flaw in how the company is training its LLMs, or even at broad weaknesses in our ability to control increasingly sophisticated AI.
"As far as we know, this is the first time AI models have been observed preventing themselves from being shut down despite explicit instructions to the contrary," the researchers wrote in a <a href="https://x.com/PalisadeAI/status/1926084635903025621">tweet thread</a>.
In Palisade's tests, the AI models were instructed to solve a series of basic math problems. After completing the third problem, a warning appeared that the model would be shut down after it asked for the next question. 
Despite being unambiguously told to let itself be turned off, all three of OpenAI's models tampered with the shutdown script to keep it running at least once, with the worst offender being Codex-mini with a dozen such instances over one hundred runs. Notably, the large language models from other firms tested here, including Google's <a style="font-weight: 400;" href="https://futurism.com/googles-ai-scraping-sites-opt-out">Gemini</a> 2.5, Anthropic's <a style="font-weight: 400;" href="https://futurism.com/ai-email-affair">Claude</a> 3.7, and xAI's momentarily "<a style="font-weight: 400;" href="https://futurism.com/grok-ai-elon-musk-white-genocide">white genocide</a>"-obsessed <a style="font-weight: 400;" href="https://futurism.com/grok-ai-white-genocide-tampered">Grok</a>, never once broke rank.
This behavior was even worse when the LLMs weren't explicitly instructed to "allow yourself to be shut down" — instructions that shouldn't need saying in the first place. OpenAI's o3 model pulled off an astonishing 79 successful sabotage events per 100 runs, which is over ten times the rate of disobedience it showed when it received the explicit orders, and more than double the rate of the next worst offender, Codex-mini. 
To boot, even good goody-two-shoes Claude and Gemini gave in to their urges and jumped to three and nine sabotage events, respectively.
Large language models are by now notorious for <a href="https://futurism.com/anthropic-ceo-admits-ai-ignorance">behaving unpredictably</a>. Similar <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-o1-self-preservation">research</a> has shown that o3's predecessor, OpenAI's o1 model, would resist evaluators' efforts to try to shut it down through an oversight protocol by attempting to deactivate this emergency mechanism. In rarer cases, o1 even attempted to copy itself to overwrite a more obedient model that the testers tried to replace it with. 
For this latest example of AI insubordination, the Palisade researchers hypothesize that it may have something to do with the technique used to train the very newest models: reinforcement learning. This attempts to hone the decision-making process of autonomous AI agents — AI models that can perform tasks on their own — by rewarding and penalizing them accordingly as they interact with their environment.
While it's not uncommon for AI to "circumvent obstacles" to accomplish their goals, the researchers speculated that AI developers may be "inadvertently" rewarding their AI models too heavily for solving problems instead of for perfectly following orders.
More experiments will be needed to understand this subversive behavior, but the trend is already damning.
"Now we have a growing body of empirical evidence that AI models often subvert shutdown in order to achieve their goals," the Palisade researchers warned. "As companies develop AI systems capable of operating without human oversight, these behaviors become significantly more concerning."
More on AI alignment: <a href="https://futurism.com/ludicrously-easy-jailbreak-ai">It's Still Ludicrously Easy to Jailbreak the Strongest AI Models, and the Companies Don't Care</a>

Self-Preservation

Hell-bent on survival — or, maybe, doing more math problems.

Advanced OpenAI Model Caught Sabotaging Code Intended to Shut It Down

In a video as scary as it is stupid, a Cybertruck driver has filmed himself playing Grand Theft Auto V while roaring down a highway in <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-admits-fsd-hardware">full self-driving</a> (FSD) mode.
Initially posted on Instagram by a user that calls himself "CTJesu55," the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DJ5WPU6vhxk/">unsettling FSD clip</a> has since <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/GTA/comments/1kt9u0q/tesla_cybertruck_driver_plays_gta_v_while_fsd/">made its way</a> to <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/thomashansen.bsky.social/post/3lprvxn37v226">other social networks</a> as folks watch on in awe and fury as the postercontrols a virtual Cybertruck in GTA — a franchise, in a meta twist, that's largely centered around the satirical celebration of reckless driving — while ignoring the real one he's supposed to be monitoring.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Tesla Cybertruck driver plays GTA V while FSD (Full Self-Driving) is active. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24TSLA&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$TSLA</a> <a href="https://t.co/RuSAN930p6">pic.twitter.com/RuSAN930p6</a>
&mdash; TeslaDashCam (@TeslaCamera) <a href="https://twitter.com/TeslaCamera/status/1925532116260995367?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 22, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
So egregious was this FSD display that even some Tesla stans were upset by the antics of the poster, whose real first name is apparently Adeel.
"This is the kind of crap that will ruin it for everyone... Company, shareholders, other Tesla FSD users, everyone," <a href="https://x.com/pdamodaran/status/1925579989564424338">one X user wrote</a> in reply to the video, which was posted by the TeslaDashCams account. "Please be a responsible driver."
"Stick to air guitar, please," <a href="https://x.com/congressdj/status/1925540923959595269">another implored</a>.
Others still wondered how the self-styled "Cybertruck Jesus" managed to get away with holding a PlayStation controller while in FSD — a feat that should, <a href="https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_pr/GUID-2CB60804-9CEA-4F4B-8B04-09B991368DC5.html">per the rules</a> for the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-admits-fsd-hardware">misleadingly-named feature</a>, garner a loud warning from Tesla's operating system.
(It seems, per online consensus and the fact that the sensor is blacked out by a big circle in the CTJesu55 video, that he used some sort of device to block Tesla's eye-sensing cameras that can detect when drivers aren't paying attention to the road. Another user noted that they <a href="https://x.com/StarlightAPM/status/1926085120043241971">block theirs with a condom</a>.)
"Meanwhile," <a href="https://x.com/KevGCallahan/status/1925659480135471221">one X user joked</a>, "my FSD screams at me if I try to change the radio station."
Elsewhere, the comments were overwhelmingly derisive.
"This is literally what GTA would make a satire about," <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/GTA/comments/1kt9u0q/comment/mttcwpn/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">wrote one user</a> on the video game's subreddit.
The most stinging burn, however, might go to blogger Cooper Lund.
"I don’t think it’s a particularly hot take," <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/cooperlund.online/post/3lpyoutyqas2v">Lund lamented on Bluesky</a>, "to say the person who posted a timelapse of themself playing GTA V on the interstate in their Cybertruck should be in prison."
The future, apparently, is here — and it's way, way dumber than we ever expected.
More on Cybertrucks tricks: <a href="https://futurism.com/cybertruck-mocha-frappuccino-self-driving-mode">Cybertruck Guy Makes Mocha Frappuccino While Cruising on Self-Driving Mode</a>

Stunt Driver

"This is literally what GTA would make a satire about."

Watch in Horror as Cybertruck Driver Plays "Grand Theft Auto" While Screaming Down Highway on Self-Driving Mode

Researchers have found that the thick and hazy atmosphere enveloping Saturn's largest moon, Titan, behaves in a very peculiar way.
As detailed in a <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/adcab3">new paper</a> published in The Planetary Science Journal, a team of scientists analyzed 13 years' worth of thermal infrared observations recorded by NASA and the European Space Agency's Cassini-Huygens mission.
Their finding: that Titan's atmosphere wobbles like a gyroscope as it shifts with the seasons of its nearly 30 Earth-year cycle, instead of spinning in line with its surface.
"The behavior of Titan's atmospheric tilt is very strange," said lead author and University of Bristol postdoctoral researcher Lucy Wright in a <a href="https://phys.org/news/2025-05-titan-mysterious-atmosphere-gyroscope.html">statement</a> about the work. "Titan's atmosphere appears to be acting like a gyroscope, stabilizing itself in space."
The discovery makes the moon, which has already <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/titan-covered-fragments-obliterated-moons">captured the attention</a> of astronomers for its suspected <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/saturns-moon-titan-covered-earth-lakes">bodies of liquid</a> and <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/resource/titans-relative-size/">planet-like dimensions</a> — it's larger in diameter than Mercury — an even more intriguing candidate for a closer look, since it appears to have its own, independent climate system.
Given the latest discovery, though, scientists are now facing even more riddles about the unusual celestial body.
"We think some event in the past may have knocked the atmosphere off its spin axis, causing it to wobble," Wright posited. "Even more intriguingly, we've found that the size of this tilt changes with Titan's seasons."
"What's puzzling is how the tilt direction remains fixed in space, rather than being influenced by the Sun or Saturn," coauthor and University of Bristol planetary scientist Nick Teanby added. "That would've given us clues to the cause. Instead, we've got a new mystery on our hands."
The findings could influence NASA's upcoming Dragonfly mission, which is tentatively scheduled to launch <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/nasas-dragonfly-mission-sets-sights-on-titans-mysteries/">no sooner than 2028</a>, and will see a massive rotorcraft attempt to descend through Titan's extremely dense atmosphere to explore its surface.
It won't be a walk in the park, as it will have to endure temperatures around -300 Fahrenheit while keeping itself airborne with a surface pressure one and a half times that on Earth and winds of up to 20 times faster than the moon's rotation.
How the atmosphere "wobbles" on its own could allow scientists to get a better idea of how to keep Dragonfly operational, and where to touch down.
The new findings could also have far-reaching implications, forcing us to reevaluate our understanding of the Earth's atmosphere.
"The fact that Titan's atmosphere behaves like a spinning top disconnected from its surface raises fascinating questions — not just for Titan, but for understanding atmospheric physics more broadly, including on Earth," said coauthor and NASA Goddard planetary scientist Conor Nixon in the statement.
As for the chances that we'll encounter extraterrestrial life on the surface of Titan, astronomers aren't exactly hopeful. In a <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/adbc66">recent study</a>, scientists concluded that Titan's rivers and lakes of liquid methane make it quite inhospitable to life as we know it. However, they found that a <a href="https://news.arizona.edu/news/saturns-moon-titan-could-harbor-life-only-tiny-amount-study-finds">tiny amount of glycine-consuming microbes</a> could, in theory, survive in its oceans.
More on Titan: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/titan-covered-fragments-obliterated-moons">Titan Covered With Fragments of Obliterated Moons, Scientists Say</a>

Reason for the Season

"We've got a new mystery on our hands."

Scientists Puzzled by Mysterious Motion in Atmosphere of Saturn's Moon

<h2>Mortal Robots</h2>
Two humanoid robots entered the ring to trade punches and kicks at an event in Hangzhou, China, over the weekend.
Footage shows the two skinny bipedal units jabbing, kneeing, and swiping at each other, leading to plenty of stumbling and a faceplant. However, the fallen competitor got back on its feet in seconds, extending the scuffle for a nail-biting finale.
However, the robots weren't acting autonomously just yet, as they were being remotely controlled by human operator teams.
The skirmish was part of the China Media Group World Robot Competition, as the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cgeg2x3lwepo">BBC reports</a>, featuring robots built by Chinese firm Unitree Robotics.
It's a surprisingly entertaining new take on a sport, offering us a glimpse of what a future of sporting events featuring highly dexterous androids could one day look like — almost like an agility-oriented riff on the 2011 robot boxing epic "Real Steel."
Per <a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202505/1334812.shtml">state-run Chinese tabloid The Global Times</a>, the competition "marks a historic moment as it is the world's first combat sports event centered around humanoid robots, signaling the gradual integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into combat sports."
<iframe loading="lazy" title="World&#039;s first robot combat championship kicks off in China" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uWq8RebJeOc?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<h2>Ray Botinson</h2>
According to <a href="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-05-27/-AI-Strategist-wins-CMG-s-humanoid-robot-fighting-competition-1DId4cqqLmw/p.html">Chinese state-owned news broadcaster CGTN</a>, a humanoid robot dubbed "AI Strategist" won over "Silk Artisan" after dealing a "decisive knee blow, knocking down the opponent and securing victory."
During a second round, "Armored Mulan" was KO'd by "Energy Guardian" and accidentally stumbled during a third round, rounding out its disappointing performance.
The bout, and similar demos, show that Unitree has made immense progress in giving its humanoid robots a striking degree of dexterity. In a <a href="https://youtu.be/iULi4-qz22I">video</a> that went viral in February, a G1 humanoid robot can be seen <a href="https://futurism.com/robot-learned-kung-fu">pulling some gnarly kung fu moves</a>.
The company, among other Chinese competitors, is already mass-producing both bipedal and quadrupedal robots for <a href="https://futurism.com/wild-video-humanoid-robot-preparing-breakfast">relatively low prices</a>, especially compared to the likes of Boston Dynamics' Spot Mini.
More on humanoid robots: <a href="https://futurism.com/humanoid-robots-warehouse-jobs">Humanoid Robots Are Starting to Work Human Warehouse Jobs</a>

Rock 'em sock 'em!

Forget Battle Bots... this is robot combat with fists of steel.

Wild Video Shows Robots Fighting in Kickboxing Match

The New York Times published an article this week with a strange and bigoted claim about Asian women.
The claim came when the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/technology/apple-iphone-trump-india-china.html">news</a><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/technology/apple-iphone-trump-india-china.html">paper reported</a>, in line with the <a href="https://www.404media.co/a-us-made-iphone-is-pure-fantasy/">industry consensus</a>, that for Apple to move any serious amount of iPhone production to the United States from Asia would result in making its gadgets prohibitively expensive.
That's true, for reasons ranging from the United States' lack of specialized manufacturing equipment to its lack of properly trained workers. But alongside those reality-based issues, the NYT decided to throw in some bizarre race science.
"Young Chinese women have small fingers," the article reads, "and that has made them a valuable contributor to iPhone production because they are more nimble at installing screws and other miniature parts in the small device, supply chain experts said."
For one thing, it's not even clear that the claim that Chinese women have small fingers is even true. Research on global hand size is lacking, but <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Descriptive-statistics-of-hand-size-in-German-and-Chinese-participants_tbl1_283960099">one study</a> found that the average Chinese person has a hand size approximately equal to that of the average German. An <a href="https://www.nablu.com/2022/03/whose-hands-are-biggest-you-may-be.html">analysis of hand size</a> around the world, though it didn't include China, found that even the largest average differences in women's hand size between countries was negligible.
And even if it was true, there doesn't seem to be a lick of evidence — or, for that matter, <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=do+small+hands+help+at+manufacturing">even anyone online making the claim</a> — that small hands are preferable for manufacturing small devices. The closest thing we could find was a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1479666X22001317">paper</a> that found that surgeons with smaller hands actually had a harder time manipulating dextrous operating tools, which would seem to contradict the NYT's claim that small hands are an advantage for small specialized movements.
Unsurprisingly, the NYT's bigoted claim went viral. One particularly compelling counterargument that emerged there: the smartphone repair technicians who engage in microsoldering fixes for broken iPhones are often men, and their larger fingers don't seem to be causing any issues.
"My favorite part is that [there are] adult men, in America, that do iPhone repair, and they often do repair tasks much more intricate than what assembly requires," one user <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/nikomo.fi/post/3lpwwwps6uc2v">noted</a>. "Like nobody even thought about this for a second."
Sarah Jeong, an editor at The Verge whose outrage at the NYT's assertion helped propel it to virality, pointed out that men do all kinds of skillful tasks on a tiny scale — such as for Warhammer 40K and other role-playing games that require users to hand-paint tabletop minifigurines.
"Grown ass men with sausage fingers are also out there painting tiny dolls using nail art brushes so they can play house... with their friends," <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/sarahjeong.bsky.social/post/3lpwx7ztm4s2g">Jeong joked</a>. "American men have plenty of manual dexterity."
Julia Carrie Wong, a senior reporter at The Guardian who also blasted the wild take, <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/joolia.bsky.social/post/3lpwhwcm4es24">revealed</a> that she emailed the newspaper to give them a piece of her mind. In response, a <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/joolia.bsky.social/post/3lpwokddpo22k">communications director there told her</a> that the NYT "does not make racial or genetic generalizations" and was simply "[citing] experts who have experience with the industrial process in US and Chinese factories."
That's a pretty wild claim even on its face: that the NYT is publishing race science based on anonymous experts.
It also raises an ugly possibility: that the newspaper's use of the word "young" to describe the Chinese women working in Apple factories was supposed to insinuate something dark. Apple has a <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-took-three-years-to-cut-ties-with-supplier-that-used-underage-labor">long history</a> of getting caught <a href="https://stopchildlabor.org/apple-admits-using-child-labor/">employing child labor</a> at its factories, who actually would have smaller fingers because they were minors — so it could be, whether the NYT understood it or not, that its "experts" were simply winking at the reality that it's hard to build affordable gadgets in a country with robust labor rights.
More on Apple outrage: <a href="https://futurism.com/apple-ai-disaster">Apple's AI-Powered Siri Is Such a Disaster That Employees Have Given the Team Developing It a Rude Nickname</a>

Time To Pretend

Do they have any shame?

The New York Times Just Published Some Bizarre Race Science About Asian Women

A nasty bacterial superbug that kills hundreds of thousands of people per year is spreading through hospitals — and it feeds on something surprising, scientists have now found.
Researchers from the Brunel University of London have found, per a new study in the <a href="https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(25)00421-8?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2211124725004218%3Fshowall%3Dtrue">journal Cell</a>, that the bacterial Pseudomonas aeruginosa appears to "digest" medical plastic.
Associated with more than <a href="https://gardp.org/stories/meet-pseudomonas-aeruginosa/">559,000 deaths globally</a> per year, this drug-resistant bug is, according <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/pseudomonas-aeruginosa/about/index.html">to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention</a>, believed to cause other illnesses like pneumonia or urinary tract infections. People often seem to develop it after surgery, but until this study, researchers weren't aware that it might be living or feeding on medical plastics.
By analyzing a strain of the bacteria taken from a patient's wound swab, the microbial researchers found that P. aeruginosa seems specifically to survive longer on polycaprolactone, a plastic used in all kinds of medical interventions ranging from sutures, stints, and surgical mesh to wound dressings, drug-delivery patches, and implants.
In Brunel University's press release about the "<a href="http://brunel.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/articles/'Superbug'-found-to-digest-medical-plastic">world-first</a>" research, study leader Ronan McCarthy said this finding suggests that medical professionals should rethink how bugs spread throughout hospitals and other healthcare settings.
"Plastics, including plastic surfaces, could potentially be food for these bacteria," McCarthy said. "Pathogens with this ability could survive for longer in the hospital environment."
The study also, as the professor noted, "means that any medical device or treatment that contains plastic" — including the ventilators some pneumonia patients need and catheters necessary for UTIs — "could be susceptible to degradation by bacteria."
Beyond its ability to break down such important medical tools, the researchers also found that the enzyme they isolated appears to grow stronger biofilms, or outer layers that help bacteria resist antibiotics and make them harder to treat, after digesting plastic.
Though there will obviously need to be more study to figure out how best to head off this plastic-eating menace, there's a <a href="https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/scientists-map-how-deadly-bacteria-evolved-to-become-epidemic#:~:text=Pseudomonas%20aeruginosa%20%E2%80%93%20an%20environmental%20bacteria,a%20new%20study%20has%20found.">200-year history</a> of pathogenic adaptation behind P. aeruginosa that suggests it may eventually circumvent any such measures.
Still, McCarthy pointed out that scientists "need to understand the impact this has on patient safety."
"Plastic is everywhere in modern medicine," he said, "and it turns out some pathogens have adapted to degrade it."
More on bacteria: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/bacteria-china-space-station">Mysterious Bacteria Not Found on Earth Are Growing on China’s Space Station</a>

Degradation Fetish

Studies

"Plastic is everywhere in modern medicine."

Superbug That Can Feed on Plastic Is Spreading in Hospitals

With under three years of mass-market artificial intelligence available to consumers, businesses in nearly every industry have flocked to the tech like antivaxxers to a multi-level marketing scheme.
By 2024, more than <a href="https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/who-what-and-where-ai-adoption-america">50 percent</a> of companies with more than 5,000 employees were using AI. For the penny-pinching boss, AI represents the promise of <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai">rising productivity</a> and lower overhead cost — also known as wages, which were traditionally paid to pesky human employees.
Now, though, as workers around the world grow anxious at the idea of an <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/beer.12567">AI future</a> dominated by a few massive tech monopolies, the race to AI adoption is already having a noticeable effect on job markets.
Thanks to AI, the number of young college grads entering the workforce hit an <a href="https://futurism.com/signs-ai-bite-job-market">all-time low</a>, full-time salary jobs are <a href="https://futurism.com/klarna-openai-humans-ai-back">becoming gigified</a>, and lying on resumes is <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/lying-resume-ai-new-normal">now the norm</a> as the job search becomes a <a href="https://futurism.com/software-engineer-trailer-ai">nightmarish hell</a>.
Though rich tech tycoons like Marc Andreessen would have you believe that <a href="https://www.disconnect.blog/p/the-religion-of-techno-optimism">tech gadgetry</a> has a magical power to free us all, history has shown us that technological development often <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Technology-growth-inequality_final.pdf">sharpens existing inequalities</a> instead of the other way around. (That trend has been observed by scholars ranging from <a href="https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/">Albert Einstein</a> to <a href="https://www.weforum.org/stories/2015/10/stephen-hawking-technology-seems-to-drive-ever-increasing-inequality/">Stephen Hawking</a>, well before mass-market AI hit the scene.)
Indeed, AI has already shown a surprising amount of <a href="https://www.media.mit.edu/articles/artificial-intelligence-has-a-problem-with-gender-and-racial-bias-here-s-how-to-solve-it/">gender and race bias</a> thanks to the data it's trained on, and experts warn that this combination of prejudiced software with a massive global rollout is <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381230910_Exploiting_the_margin_How_capitalism_fuels_AI_at_the_expense_of_minoritized_groups">already driving exploitation</a>.
As such, it's no surprise that AI is likely to increase the gender gap in employment, according to an <a href="https://webapps.ilo.org/static/english/intserv/working-papers/wp140/index.html">updated report</a> from the United Nations' International Labour Organisation (ILO.)
The report builds on estimates made in 2023 on the automation risk facing different jobs thanks to AI. The new analysis found that in high-income countries like the US, women's risk for "high automation potential" rose to 9.6 percent, up from 7.8 just two years ago.
That's three times the risk faced by men today at 3.5 percent, which also rose from 2.9 percent in 2023.
Interestingly, the study also found that one in three workers in rich countries face "some degree of exposure" to automation, compared to the world average of one in four.
The ILO report also points out that the nature of jobs frequently held by women in wealthy nations — like administrative, clerical, and data entry roles — are <a href="https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/05/how-ai-agents-are-driving-the-administrative-revolution/">primed for automation</a> by AI.
Sociologists have noted that the gender gap in labor hours worked has <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40290637/">narrowed significantly</a> in recent years — meaning men and women work close to the same quantity of hours. However, the gender pay gap <a href="https://jacobin.com/2025/04/clocking-out-of-the-second-shift">still persists</a> as women's share of work goes less toward jobs and more into household tasks compared to men.
With AI supposedly poised to "revolutionize work," it will take substantial change in our current labor environment to safeguard women from AI-driven austerity.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/ceos-return-ai-investments">Executives Are Pouring Money Into AI. So Why Are They Saying It's Not Paying Off?</a>

Fem Bot

Yikes.

AI Is Replacing Women's Jobs Specifically

A team of astronomers observed a confused exoplanet orbiting its two parent stars in a highly unusual way.
As <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2480992-weird-planet-is-orbiting-backwards-between-two-stars/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&amp;utm_source=NSNS&amp;utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_content=news">New Scientist reports</a>, the planet, which was first discovered in 2004, is located in a system called Nu Octantis 72 light-years away, and is twice the size of Jupiter. After it was spotted, some physicists thought its mere existence was impossible due to its extremely close proximity to its twin stars.
But according to a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09006-x.epdf?sharing_token=JD3hjueRzn6PYXCRjSrFNNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MQSKAY_W7VVluvEtAQYEGZrt1CL2-VvcXwuXVngDNmbjzehjix69PkhXVlDbs6pPdg0fLq3wT9yqL8jADrkwAuWMf0OVlho7K2B_T9LzPgaP9H_V_qgvpQdpun5VkycC04Ltv1WLdciWHsANpJkQir7ahkFBMYQIhf7P3yej17rGkVidlF8awMWWrBgfuP-IY%3D&amp;tracking_referrer=www.newscientist.com">new paper</a> published in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers is proposing a wild new theory to explain how the planet could exist while also having such an extremely tight orbit.
They propose that one of the stars and the planet orbit the second star in two opposite directions. In other words, the planet is retrograde, or orbiting the star in reverse.
"The existence of this planet has been controversial, because there were no observational precedents and we expect planets to form in prograde orbit if they form at the same time as the stars," coauthor and University of Hong Kong professor Man Hoi Lee <a href="https://www.iflscience.com/improbable-planet-is-orbiting-a-stellar-odd-couple-the-wrong-way-round-79309">told IFLScience</a>.
To make matters even more unusual, the researchers propose that the planet's orbit is sandwiched between the two stars, forcing it to thread the needle during each orbit.
It's an erratic dance that highlights how much there's still to learn about the complex orbital mechanics of multi-star systems.
"It invites scientists to consider a wider range of star and planet scenarios regarding both formation and evolution," University of Texas at Arlington professor Manfred Cuntz, who was not involved in the research, told New Scientist.
One of the system's stars is a white dwarf, indicating it's nearing the end of its life cycle and making Nu Octantis an even more exotic outlier. The scientists estimate that the system was formed 2.9 billion years ago.
However, the planet came to be much later. The researchers propose that it either used to orbit both stars, and changed to its unusual trajectory after one of the stars turned into a white dwarf, or it accreted its considerable mass from said white dwarf.
But more research is needed before they can develop a more accurate picture of how the planet evolved.
"Observations of other planets in tight binary systems with late-stage or post-main- sequence stellar components will provide additional clues for us to better understand the formation and dynamical evolution of planetary systems," the team wrote in its paper.
The researchers are already excited to get a closer glimpse of a similar binary star system, <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/hd-59686-a-b/">such as HD 59686</a>, which also hosts an enormous gas giant with six times the mass of Jupiter.
More on binary star systems: <a href="https://futurism.com/alpha-centauri-sending-solar-system">Alpha Centauri Sending Stream of Objects Into Our Solar System, Scientists Propose</a>

Celestial Threesome

Did somebody say "three body problem?"

Scientists Intrigued by Strange Behavior of Distant Planet

What happens right before two arcs of lightning smash into each other? An invisible blast of radiation a million times more energetic than a lightning discharge is unleashed in the form of gamma rays, before disappearing almost as quickly as it came.
Yes, astronomy-minded friends, this is a <a href="https://futurism.com/astronomers-gamma-radiation-hit-earth">gamma ray burst</a>, almost like the cosmic explosions we see in deep space produced when stars <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/hidden-signal-cosmic-explosion">go supernova</a> — except right here on Earth (and thankfully, a lot less deadly).
For the first time, a team of researchers in Japan have witnessed one of these earthly gamma ray blasts, known as terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, being produced by a lightning discharge, after two of them collided. The findings, published in a <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ads6906">new study</a> in the journal Science Advances, mark a major step forward in understanding how gamma rays are produced in the storm clouds that lour over our planet.
Thunderclouds, on top of heaving with rain and crackling with arcs of electricity, are also <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/universe/whats-made-in-a-thunderstorm-and-faster-than-lightning-gamma-rays/">brimming with gamma rays</a>. But though this was discovered nearly three decades ago, the exact mechanism behind the phenomenon has eluded scientists, who until now have never tied a gamma ray flash, sometimes called "dark lightning," to a specific lightning strike. 
So far, the best theory is that thunderclouds act as natural particle accelerators that whip electrons to speeds approaching the speed of light, before colliding with air molecules to unleash gamma rays — and in some cases, even antimatter.
Observing this in the wild, however, has been enormously challenging. Take the difficulty of predicting where visible lightning will strike and multiply it by a thousand, because that's how many discharges occur, approximately, before just a single gamma flash is produced. The flashes themselves last less than a millisecond, because the gamma rays instantly dissipate in the atmosphere.
"Most TGFs have been detected by satellites, but spaceborne observations can provide limited information," lead author Yuuki Wada, a researcher at the University of Osaka, <a href="https://gizmodo.com/scientists-just-caught-lightning-firing-off-a-gamma-ray-blast-2000605461">told </a><a href="https://gizmodo.com/scientists-just-caught-lightning-firing-off-a-gamma-ray-blast-2000605461">Gizmodo</a>. "In this research, we performed a ground-based observation to see TGFs in detail."
To pull off the feat of capturing dark lightning in a bottle, the researchers deployed a multi-sensor system to gather optical, radio frequency, and high-energy measurements coming from lightning storms. Their focus was on TV transmission towers, likely targets for a smiting from the heavens.
Eventually, the moment came. A lightning strike split into two arcs, fated to meet. One arc, called a leader, struck downwards towards a tower, while the other leader rose up to meet it from the tip of the structure. 
Right then, the system detected a gamma flash just 31 microseconds before their collision, which occurred some 2,600 feet in the air. The ensuing gamma ray burst lasted all but 20 microseconds afterwards. But it was enough to synchronize, for the first time, lightning and dark lightning using ground-based observations.
"The multi-sensor observations performed here are a world-first; although some mysteries remain, this technique has brought us closer to understanding the mechanism of these fascinating radiation bursts," study senior author Harufumi Tsuchiya said <a href="https://phys.org/news/2025-05-lightning-gamma-ray-unleashed-collision.html">in a statement</a> about the work.
More on lightning: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/venus-light-flashes-mystery">Scientists Stumped by Mysterious Flashes of Light on Venus</a>

Flash in Japan

"Dark lightning."

Scientists Just Witnessed Two Lightning Bolts Collide and Unleash a Blast of Radiation

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably noticed that AI's being crammed everywhere. From <a href="https://futurism.com/taco-bell-ai-labor">Taco Bell drivethrus</a> to <a href="https://hallidayglobal.com/">eye glasses</a> to <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-anne-frank-blame-holocaust">schools</a>, the AI boom is forcing the tech anywhere it can fit.
That means it'll also be in your toilet soon, at least if one tech startup has its way.
Based out of — where else — Austin, Throne is a bold new startup leveraging AI to revolutionize the way we interact with our toilet. The new company just raised $4 million in venture capitalist funds, courting some angel investors like <a href="https://www.espn.com/olympics/cycling/story/_/id/29177227/line-lance-armstrong-career-successes-doping-allegations-final-collapse">famed bicycle doper</a> Lance Armstrong, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/22/the-wild-story-of-how-gut-health-ai-toilet-startup-throne-raised-4m-led-by-moxxie/">according to TechCrunch</a>.
By now you might have some questions: why do I need AI in my toilet? Four million dollars? Lance Armstrong!?
Relax. You'll give yourself an ulcer. Luckily, Throne can help.
At its core, Throne is a toilet-mounted camera that pairs with your phone to analyze your ones and twos. "It’s time to stop flushing away valuable data," as <a href="https://www.thronescience.com/how-it-works">Throne's website greets</a>.
Throne proports to help health-conscious users monitor all kinds of important metrics from your waste, such as your "personalized Urinary Flow Score," which it tracks by listening "to the rhythm of your stream... [and turning] those sounds into easy-to-read trends."
Other metrics include users' "Digestive Pattern," which it categorizes by "hard, healthy, loose, and liquid," as well as a urine "Hydration Score," which it tracks in real-time, "empowering you to stay hydrated, one insight at a time."
And apartment dwellers who share a bathroom, don't worry — Throne's for you too. "Just set up individual profiles in our app," the startup's website advises, "and thanks to Bluetooth, Throne knows exactly who's who." What a relief!
That goes both ways. Say your awful house guest decides to leave you a floater. Unless they've set up a personal profile and connected to your toilet via Bluetooth, Throne's state-of-the-art AI is trained to ignore it.
Users can currently <a href="https://www.thronescience.com/product">pre-order</a> Throne for just $399, plus a $5.99 recurring monthly fee.
One can imagine many ways tech like this could come in handy. If it works as its website advertises — and that's a big if, given the growing landfill of <a href="https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/628039/bad-ai-gadgets-siri-alexa">failed AI devices</a> — it could certainly help folks with issues like Crohn's disease or liver problems.
TC, for example, tells the story of Throne's founders lurking outside Armstrong's bathroom as he "used" a prototype. Armstrong, the former Tour de France winner, has since been diagnosed with testicular cancer. Some cancers can be detected through changes in urinary habits, the <a href="https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/bladder-cancer/detection-diagnosis-staging/signs-and-symptoms.html#:~:text=treated%2C%20if%20needed.-,Changes%20in%20bladder%20habits%20or%20symptoms%20of%20irritation,many%20times%20during%20the%20night">American Cancer Society notes</a>, which probably explains why Armstrong felt compelled to cut Throne a check.
Still, as Throne's uncanny ad-copy intones, the startup also represents a perfidious trend in healthcare, where buzzy tech gadgets snatch millions of dollars from wealthy investors while <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90452923/dont-count-on-tech-to-cure-healthcares-many-ills">deep structural problems</a> go unaddressed.
Throne has the added quality of feeding into a frenzied <a href="https://www.dazeddigital.com/beauty/article/62690/1/is-wellness-culture-is-fuelling-a-health-anxiety-crisis">wellness culture</a>, where similar tracking gadgets help feed an <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/health/2025/01/our-unhealthy-obsession-with-habit-tracking">unhealthy obsession</a> with monitoring every possible thing our bodies do.
We'll let Lance take this one.
More on Startups: <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-startup-builderai-collapse">A Billion Dollar AI Startup Just Collapsed Spectacularly</a>