Last month, Aurora Innovation became the first company to operate a fully driverless semi truck service on American highways.
And by "fully driverless," we mean that no one — not a soul — was sitting in the driver's seat as the autonomous truck performed its first official delivery, barreling down a stretch of Texas's Interstate 45 with its 25,000 pound haul of frozen treats in tow. 
There was, in fact, zero human supervision. At least, not unless your idea of supervision is a man lounged in the back of the truck's cabin, watching YouTube videos on his phone, as the other suckers on the road were probably focused on not falling victim to one the country's most noted <a href="https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2025/03/10/how-deadly-has-i-45-been-over-the-years/">motorist death traps</a>.
"I may be in the truck, but I'm just a passenger," wrote Aurora CEO Chris Urmson <a href="https://aurora.tech/newsroom/aurora-delivers-my-ride-in-the-first-self-driving-commercial-truck">in a writeup</a> about his backseat experience during the truck's inaugural haul. "I'm passing the time by chatting with our team, drafting this blog, and watching YouTube."
Urmson considered the feat to be a "watershed moment." Already, Aurora's total of two driverless trucks in operation have logged more than 1,200 driverless miles performing real deliveries along I-45, with plans to expand its fleet to 20 big rigs by the end of the year, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/business/driverless-semi-trucks-aurora-innovation.html">New York Times reported</a>. Unlike human drivers, the trucks don't have to follow the 11-hour daily driving limit. And they are, Aurora insists, most definitely safe.
"We have something like 2.7 million tests that we run the system through," Urmson told the NYT.
Aurora's trucks are considered to have Level 4 autonomy on the SAE scale, meaning that they can fully drive themselves under limited conditions and don't require a human to take over. For comparison, consumer self-driving features like Tesla's — which are technically driver assistance systems — are generally Level 2. Robotaxis, like the ones Waymo offer, are Level 4.
Cracks are beginning to show, though, and that gloating about being fully driverless proved to be short-lived. Less than three weeks after Aurora launched its service, the startup <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/05/19/aurora-driverless-truck-human-driver">announced</a> that it was putting a human supervisor back in the driver's seat. No more YouTube videos for Mr. Urmson.
This was done at the request of Paccar, the manufacturer of the Peterbilt trucks that Aurora outfitted its systems on. It's hazy why. In a <a href="https://aurora.tech/newsroom/updating-our-driverless-operations">blog post</a> we assume was not composed from the back of one of its trucks, Urmson only shared that it was "because of certain prototype parts in [Paccar's] base vehicle platform," without explaining further.
In its <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/05/19/aurora-driverless-truck-human-driver">coverage</a>, Axios cited a <a href="https://www.bleeckerstreetresearch.com/research/aurora-innovation-aur">short-seller's report</a> which suggested that Aurora and Paccar didn't see eye-to-eye about the timing of the driverless operations; in fact, the Peterbilt logo was removed in some of Aurora's photos used to commemorate its launch.
Corporate intrigue aside, truckers are concerned about the dangers posed by Aurora semis' — not to mention the clear threat to their livelihoods. 
"It's potentially disastrous from a safety perspective," John Samuelsen, head of the Transport Workers Union of America, told the NYT.
"My initial thought is: It's scary," echoed veteran trucker Angela Griffin, who worried that the trucks wouldn't be able to handle chaotic traffic and challenging weather conditions.
Griffin recalled how misting rain confounded the AI-powered scanners on her own truck. Indeed, Aurora's fleet is designed only to operate during the day in clear weather conditions. That's why the human supervisors are there: to take over if things get wet.
Philip Koopman, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon, said that Aurora has been more diligent about safety than its competitors, but highlighted a distressing lack of government regulation. And there's no telling, he emphasized, how the vehicles will react to unexpected obstacles.
"This technology is really good at things it's practiced, and really bad at things it has never seen before," Koopman told the NYT. "From a safety point of view, nobody knows how it's going to turn out."
More on self-driving: <a href="https://futurism.com/self-driving-tesla-swerves-off-road-crashes">Self-Driving Tesla Suddenly Swerves Off the Road and Crashes</a>

Hands and Guilt Free

"I may be in the truck, but I'm just a passenger."

Trucking Company Deploys Self-Driving 18-Wheeler Where Human Employee Can Chill Out and Watch YouTube Videos in the Back as It Bombs Down the Highway

OpenAI's new partnership with famed iPhone designer Jony Ive has the rumor mill churning — and the latest may give you a guffaw.
According to supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Ive and Altman's secretive <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/sam-altman-openai-wearable-device">AI companion device</a> — news of which <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/what-sam-altman-told-openai-about-the-secret-device-hes-making-with-jony-ive-f1384005">leaked to the Wall Street Journal</a> last week — may look a lot like an iPod shuffle, but worn on a string around your neck, like a preposterous AI-inflected statement necklace.
"The current prototype is slightly larger than [Humane's] AI Pin, with a form factor as compact and elegant as an iPod Shuffle," Kuo said in a lengthy X post shortly after <a href="https://openai.com/sam-and-jony/">OpenAI announced</a> that it was purchasing io, Ive's hardware company. "The design and specifications may change before mass production."
Per the analyst's research, "one of the intended use cases is wearing the device around the neck," and although it won't have any screens, it may "have cameras and microphones for environmental detection," which could well jibe with Altman's claim in the employee call announcing the project that the device will be "fully aware" of its surroundings.
To us, this product sounds like a yassified version of <a href="https://futurism.com/humane-ai-pin-dumpster-fire">Humane's disastrous AI pin</a>, which itself was the size of a smart watch face and sucked so comprehensively that <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/more-people-returning-humane-ai-pin">more people returned the $700 disaster</a> than purchased it, forcing the company into a <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/18/humanes-ai-pin-is-dead-as-hp-buys-startups-assets-for-116m/">speedy total collapse</a>.
As such, Kuo's take isn't exactly optimistic for OpenAI.
"In my view, one of OpenAI's motives for announcing its collaboration with Jony Ive now is likely to shift market focus from [Google's recent I/O conference]," the Apple analyst wrote. "Google’s ecosystem and AI integration, showcased in the I/O keynotes, pose a challenge that OpenAI currently struggles to address. As a result, OpenAI is leveraging a new narrative to redirect attention."
(There are a few other things OpenAI may want to redirect market attention away from as well, including <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-chatgpt-sycophant">ChatGPT's very public woes</a> and warning signs of yet another leadership shakeup after Altman announced that he was <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/sam-altman-openai-applications-ceo">creating a new "CEO" position</a> that reports directly to him, which will <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com/post/3loofpbej6k2a">offload much of his own work</a> onto that new executive, <a href="https://openai.com/index/leadership-expansion-with-fidji-simo/">Instacart's Fidji Simo</a>.)
Looking at the bigger picture, Kuo noted that OpenAI's still-unconfirmed new AI gadget is part of a broader trend towards so-called "physical AI," which he described as "AI integrated real-world" — another sign that OpenAI is now following the herd instead of leading it.
"While the success of the Jony Ive-OpenAI partnership remains uncertain," the researcher mused, "it clearly aligns with this trend."
Kuo then went on to cite programming pioneer Alan Kay, who famously said that "people who are really serious about software should make their own hardware."
It is indeed a big step for OpenAI to be making its own devices — though at first bluff, there's nothing terribly impressive about a derivative form factor that looks like an iPod Shuffle.
More on wearables: <a href="https://futurism.com/wearable-cheating">New Wearable for Exceptionally Pathetic Men Detects When Their Wife Is Cheating</a>

Futile Devices

This is not going to be the game-changer Sam Altman is clearly expecting. 

You May Laugh When You Hear What OpenAI's Top Secret AI Gadget Allegedly Looks Like

<h2>Dark Lord's Spy</h2>
Scientists say they've developed a ludicrously keen-eyed laser device that can read the text in a book from a whopping 0.85 miles away.
As detailed in a <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.180201">new paper</a> published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the team used interferometry, a commonly used technique in the world of astronomy that uses superimposed waves of light to create interference patterns, to develop the spy system.
However, instead of combining waves of radiation, light, or sound, the team used the information collected by multiple light detectors to measure variations in intensity, a technique known as intensity interferometry. They then used this data to compile an image of a distant object.
Put simply, researchers applied a technology that space observatories use to a ground-based laser system to zoom across vast distances — with promising and somewhat creepy results.
<h2>Read the Zoom</h2>
The team from the University of Science and Technology of China used eight infrared laser beams fired across a distance to reconstruct a visual of the target. They found that the system was sensitive enough to detect the shape of individual letters a mere three millimeters across, even from a vantage point nearly a mile away.
While intensity interferometry was first demonstrated in the mid-1950s to measure the diameters of distant stars, the researchers believe that the same technique could still be used in the presence of an atmosphere, which can lead to scrambled light wavelengths.
Instead of relying on a light source, like a star's radiation, the team used laser beams to illuminate distant objects. By splitting the laser into eight beams, the team made any perturbations in interference more observable, allowing them to still make out shapes, despite the presence of an atmosphere.
The team found that a single laser beam would have a far inferior resolution compared to eight beams.
In terms of possible applications of their research, the team proposes that it could be used to identify pieces of space debris by shining laser light on them.
The team is hoping they can further improve the system by harnessing the power of AI algorithms to interpret distant shapes more accurately.
"The new work represents a significant technical advancement in imaging distant objects that do not emit their own light," Sorbonne University optics researcher Shaurya Aarav, who wasn't involved in the research, <a href="https://physics.aps.org/articles/v18/99">told Physics Magazine</a>.
More on interferometry: <a href="https://futurism.com/darpa-requests-plans-large-bio-mechanical-space-structures">DARPA Requests Plans for "Large Bio-Mechanical Space Structures"</a>

Tele-Scoping

Enhance!

Alarming Spy Device Can Read Text in an Open Book From Nearly a Mile Away

Fresh on the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global/2025/jan/06/nick-clegg-meta-resignation">heels from his exit from Meta</a>, former Facebook executive <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/meta-illicit-drug-investigation">Nick Clegg</a> is defending artificial intelligence against copyright holders who want to hold the industry accountable.
As the <a href="https://www.thetimes.com/article/9481a71b-9f25-4e2d-a936-056233b0df3d">Times of London reports</a>, Clegg insisted during an arts festival last weekend that it's "implausible" to ask tech companies to ask for consent from creators before using their work to train their AI models.
During a speech at the Charleston Festival in East Sussex — which was, ironically enough, meant to promote his new book titled "How To Save The Internet" — Meta's former global affairs vice president initially said that it was "not unreasonable" that artists may want to "opt out of having their creativity, their products, what they’ve worked on indefinitely modeled."
But he then went on to suggest that those same artists are getting greedy.
"I think the creative community wants to go a step further," Clegg then charged. "Quite a lot of voices say 'you can only train on my content, [if you] first ask.' And I have to say that strikes me as somewhat implausible because these systems train on vast amounts of data."
"I just don’t know how you go around, asking everyone first," Clegg said during a speech to promote his new book, ironically titled "How to Save The Internet," that took place at this year's Charleston Festival in East Sussex, England. "I just don’t see how that would work."
The former deputy prime minister then added that if AI companies were required only in Britain to gain permission to use copyright holders' works, "you would basically kill the AI industry in this country overnight."
Clegg's comments came amid a fiery debate in England about AI and copyright, spurred on by a recent Parliament vote on an amendment to the UK government's data bill, which would have required companies to tell copyright holders when their work was used had it not been <a href="https://grahamlovelace.substack.com/p/ai-transparency-campaigner-scores">struck down in the House of Commons</a> last week.
His stance also put him in opposition to Paul McCartney, Elton John, Dua Lipa, and hundreds of other artists who called on the British government to "<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DJeIE2ximB6/?hl=en">protect copyright in the age of AI</a>," as Sir Elton put it in an Instagram post.
Unfortunately, it seems that Parliament's lower house agreed with Clegg's sentiments and not the artists' — but history will show who was on which side of the AI wars.
More on AI and copyright: <a href="https://futurism.com/meta-copyrighted-books-no-value">Meta Says It's Okay to Feed Copyrighted Books Into Its AI Model Because They Have No "Economic Value"</a>

And How

"I just don’t know how you go around, asking everyone first."

Legendary Facebook Exec Scoffs, Says AI Could Never Be Profitable If Tech Companies Had to Ask for Artists' Consent to Ingest Their Work

Scientists are intrigued after spotting a highly unusual celestial object lurking at the very edge of our solar system.
It's possible the trans-Neptunian object, dubbed 2017 OF201, is large enough to qualify as a dwarf planet, making it an "<a href="https://sihaocheng.github.io/">extreme 'cousin' of Pluto</a>," according to Institute for Advanced Study postdoc Sihao Cheng, who coauthored a <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.15806">yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper</a> on the findings.
The discovery was also <a href="https://earthsky.org/space/new-minor-planet-found-in-the-distant-solar-system-2017-of201/">confirmed</a> by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center last week, lending it an aura of growing credibility.
It's a particularly intriguing finding, again bolstering the case that the area of our solar system past the orbit of Neptune is far busier than previously thought. Astronomers have long <a href="https://futurism.com/hidden-planet-deep-solar-system">suggested the existence of a ninth planet</a>, dubbed Planet X or Nine, whose immense gravitational pull could be causing trans-Neptunian objects in the region to <a href="https://futurism.com/new-object-beyond-neptune-found-orbiting-the-sun-backwards">act unusually</a>.
However, the latest findings could challenge the hypothesis, suggesting 2017 OF201, among other objects, could be causing the strange behavior instead.
Cheng and his colleagues used advanced computational models to hone in on the mysterious object's unusual trajectory. 2017 OF201 is an outlier thanks to its enormous size and immense distance from the Sun.
"The object's aphelion — the farthest point on the orbit from the Sun — is more than 1600 times that of Earth's orbit," said Cheng in a <a href="https://phys.org/news/2025-05-extreme-cousin-pluto-dwarf-planet.html">statement</a> about the research. "Meanwhile, its perihelion — the closest point on its orbit to the sun — is 44.5 times that of Earth's orbit, similar to Pluto's orbit."
Thanks to its extreme orbit, it takes the planetoid a whopping 25,000 Earth years to complete a journey around the Sun.
How it got out there remains a bit of a mystery.
"It must have experienced close encounters with a giant planet, causing it to be ejected to a wide orbit," said coauthor and Princeton PhD Eritas Yang in the statement.
The team proposes that 2017 OF201 went through a series of complex maneuvers to end up in its unusual trajectory.
"There may have been more than one step in its migration," Cheng explained. "It's possible that this object was first ejected to the Oort cloud, the most distant region in our solar system, which is home to many comets, and then sent back."
The findings could challenge the Planet Nine hypothesis since 2017 OF201 isn't part of the observed clusters of objects that "cluster in specific orientations," as coauthor and Princeton graduate student Jiaxuan Li said.
These clusters have been found to have <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2022ApJS..259...54H/abstract">strange gravitational characteristics</a>, orbiting at a very different angle than the solar system's planets.
Intriguingly, there could be plenty of other weird "cousins" of Pluto in the far reaches of the solar system. But spotting them could prove extremely difficult.
"2017 OF201 spends only one percent of its orbital time close enough to us to be detectable," Cheng said. "The presence of this single object suggests that there could be another hundred or so other objects with similar orbit and size; they are just too far away to be detectable now."
"Even though advances in telescopes have enabled us to explore distant parts of the universe, there is still a great deal to discover about our own solar system," he added.
More on Planet Nine: <a href="https://futurism.com/hidden-planet-deep-solar-system">Scientists Say They May Have Spotted a Huge Hidden Planet Deep in Our Solar System</a>

Pluto's New Buddy

It's absolutely enormous.

Scientists Detect Mysterious Object in Deep Solar System

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>