Elon Musk's father Errol is once again <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musks-dad-transphobic">sounding off about his billionaire son</a> — and as usual, he has <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-father-worried">nothing nice to say</a>.
In an <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/elon-musk-says-he-is-stepping-down-from-the-trump-administration-13376239">interview with England's Sky News</a>, the elder Musk heaped on the criticism when asked to describe his famous spawn's political prowess.
"He's not a very good conversationalist," the patriarch said. "He's not a very good politician at all."
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
&quot;He&#39;s not a very good conversationalist. He&#39;s not a very good politician at all&quot;
Elon Musk&#39;s father, Errol Musk describes his son to <a href="https://twitter.com/skygillian?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@skygillian</a>, as well as the &quot;swimming pool&quot; of politics
Latest ➡️ <a href="https://t.co/lcEY84fHs8">https://t.co/lcEY84fHs8</a>
📺 Sky 501 and YouTube <a href="https://t.co/vIM5Pbs8iV">pic.twitter.com/vIM5Pbs8iV</a>
&mdash; Sky News (@SkyNews) <a href="https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1927840326456168919?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 28, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-dad-emerald-mine">former emerald miner</a> went on to say that Musk doesn't have the "gift of gab" and suggested that he tried to warn his son against going into politics, which he bizarrely characterized as a bottomless "human swimming pool" in which nobody, including Winston Churchill or Donald Trump, can stay afloat.
Notably, the Sky interview aired just before the younger Musk announced that his time as a "<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1927877957852266518">special government employee</a>" in the United States was up. Soon after, the father — with whom <a href="https://people.com/human-interest/who-is-errol-musk-elon-musk-father/">Musk has been estranged</a> since learning that he'd <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-dad-stepdaughter">impregnated his step-sister</a> — told GB News that his son and Trump still have a "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgvIaLTk0LM">good relationship</a>."
During his Sky interview, the older Musk also argued with broadcaster Gillian Joseph, a Black woman, about whether or not a so-called "white genocide" is taking place in South Africa, his and Elon's home country.
When Joseph pointed out that a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/us/politics/trump-south-africa-white-farmers-congo-fact-check.html">recent videos Trump shared</a> purporting to show attacks against white farmers in SA was actually filmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo and taken out of context, Musk — who's shared fond memories of how "<a href="https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-black-servants-growing-south-africa-father-2048190">well-run</a>" the country was during apartheid — kept insisting that was "not true."
"Where's the evidence?" Joseph asked, as the elder Musk kept repeating "no, no, no" and spoke over her. Coincidentally, his billionaire son gave an extremely similar performance when speaking at Bloomberg's Qatar Economic Forum earlier in the month when reporter Joumanna Bercetche had the audacity to not laugh at <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-delaware-judge-activist">one of his dumb jokes</a>.
For all their animosity, it seems Elon and Errol have a lot in common when it comes to being <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-dms-women-have-his-babies">weird with women</a>. Maybe the apple doesn't fall far from the emerald mine.
More on the younger Musk: <a href="https://futurism.com/sense-elon-musk-desperation">You Can Suddenly Sense Elon Musk's Desperation</a>

Odd Parents

"He's not a very good politician at all."

Elon Musk’s Dad Slams His Son's Whimpering Failure at Politics

It's December of 2015, and the Green Bay Packers are <a href="https://uwmpost.com/sports/packers-lions-recap-the-miracle-in-motown">up against the wall</a>. They've lost their last three games, and their early-season momentum is feared dead in the water.
The Detroit Lions, a longtime rival, only need to stop one last play on the 39-yard line to keep their two-point lead and take home the win.
The snap comes, and Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers scrambles down the field while his faithful receivers scutter for the endzone. From 61 yards, the quarterback makes his final throw, a pass that meets a leaping Richard Rodgers to give Green Bay the touchdown, winning the game and ultimately saving the season.
It's safe to say Tesla is in a similar spot: the losses are mounting, the future looks dim, and the team is down to their last pass. Sadly, Elon Musk is no Rodgers.
Ten years after the "Miracle in Motown," the electric vehicle company's stock has plummeted by <a href="https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2025-05-27/tesla-board-stock-elon-musk-pensions">25 percent</a> in just six months, thanks to <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tesla-sales-europe-plunge-backlash-protests-elon-musk/">horrid global sales</a>, a portfolio many investors see as <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/devpatnaik/2025/05/12/teslas-meltdown-why-innovation-portfolios-matter/">crusty and dated</a>, and perhaps above all, the <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-rally-nazis-holocaust">alienating behavior</a> of its own chief executive.
Mere months into Musk's disastrous stint as federal spending czar, the prediction that "Tesla will soon collapse" is no longer a fringe opinion held by <a href="https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/will-tesla-survive.342637/">forum dwellers</a>, but a serious charge levied by <a href="https://medium.com/predict/tesla-is-about-to-collapse-0e7010c22cae">political commentators</a>, <a href="https://archive.is/nrM5b">stock gurus</a>, and <a href="https://archive.is/nrM5b">former Tesla executives</a> alike.
Fortunately for any foolhardy shareholders keeping the faith, Elon Musk has promised to rollout Tesla's autonomous robotaxi service in Austin, a product <a href="https://banyanhill.com/could-robotaxis-save-elons-tesla/">some analysts predicted</a> could soon make up 90 percent of Tesla's profits.
Unfortunately for those investors, Musk has given Tesla a <a href="https://www.jalopnik.com/1872703/elon-musk-tesla-robotaxi-launch/">self-imposed deadline</a> of June 12th to make it all happen — meaning we're two weeks away from seeing whether or not the rubber hits the road. So where is the company at on its self-driving cabs?
Well, the self-driving vehicles about to land in Austin streets are blowing past school buses into child crash dummies, if that's any indication.
According to a <a href="https://fuelarc.com/tech/test-shows-self-driving-tesla-blowing-school-bus-stop-signs-to-run-over-child-sized-dummies-raising-concerns-about-planned-robo-taxi-rollout-in-2-weeks/">FuelArc analysis</a> of a school bus test, Tesla's latest iteration of "full self-driving" software failed to detect flashing red school bus stop signs (and in turn failed to stop at the parked bus), detected child-sized pedestrians but failed to react, and made no attempt to brake or evade the adolescent crash dummies as the car drew closer.
FuelArc notes that <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1hidacp/teslas_fsd_13_now_stops_for_school_buses/">school bus recognition</a> only hit self-driving Teslas in December of 2024. Keep in mind, these vehicles have been on public roads, albeit with drivers behind the wheel, since <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/21/tesla-car-autopilot-self-driving-car">October of 2015</a> — just months before Rodger's now-infamous Hail Mary.
It's obvious that the robotaxi is <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20250529175828/https://www.tesla.com/careers/search/job/c-software-engineer-teleoperation-optimus-robotaxi-227959">nowhere near ready</a>, which is probably why Tesla is scrambling to hire <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20250529175828/https://www.tesla.com/careers/search/job/c-software-engineer-teleoperation-optimus-robotaxi-227959">remote operators</a> to drive its vehicles ahead of the looming June deadline.
This ought to be the "Miracle in Motown" moment for Telsa – but the quarterback doesn't even have the ball, and the receivers are nowhere to be found.
More on Tesla: <a href="https://futurism.com/self-driving-tesla-swerves-off-road-crashes">Self-Driving Tesla Suddenly Swerves Off the Road and Crashes</a>

Ave Maria

It's gonna take a miracle.

The Clock Is Ticking on Elon Musk's Hail Mary to Save Tesla

In the cash grab for patients eager to get on GLP-1 weight loss drugs like Ozempic, startups are getting so sloppy that their marketing materials look like unintentional parody.
Consider MEDVi, an online prescription hub for GLP-1s. The company wants you to know that it's "serious" about helping you lose weight, according to its website, which entreats visitors to join "50,000+ MEDVi patients" who have turned to the service for weight loss help. That help, it says, comes in the form of "personalized care" and "highly effective weight loss medications," which it characterizes later as "doctor-approved." At a subscription starting price of under $200 with "no insurance required," it adds, it's a "budget-friendly" semaglutide option.
To drive its sales pitch home, MEDVi's website is packed with images of happy-looking, smiling people; the women in the smoothed-over pictures each wear sports bras in trendy colors, while the grinning men are decked out in T-shirts. There's also a slew of alleged customer success stories, which the company claims are from actual MEDVi patients.
"Sometimes you have to see it to believe it," reads a blurb of copy, alongside a series of bef0re-and-after weight loss photos. "GLP-1 medication can be life-changing and improves mood, sleep, energy and longevity. Photos, testimonials and results are from MEDVi patients."
Except, we couldn't help but notice, none of these alleged patients are real. Each image in the smiling, sports-bra'd crowd appears to have been generated from scratch using AI — and the before-and-after photos, more insidiously, are eerily convincing deepfakes, seemingly generated by lifting existing images of real people from across the web and using AI to alter their faces.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-352528 size-full" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/05/Futurism-Standard-30.png" alt="A collection of images of AI-generated men and women wearing trendy sports bras and T-shirts. Overhead, text reads that the website is marketing GLP-1 weight loss medications and personalized medical care, which it claims are effective and low-cost. Underneath the AI-generated picture are logos of news publishers including The New York Times, Bloomberg, Fortune, and others." width="1200" height="888" />
MEDVi's site represents layers of sophisticated trickery that, while previously much more difficult, have been made incredibly accessible through easy-to-use text and image generators and deepfake tools. As profiteers race to flood the web with disorienting AI-powered content, including around buzzy products like GLP-1 meds, the eternal advice to not believe everything you read — and now, everything you see — online is now more urgent than ever.
We first came across MEDVi in a deeply mangled digital advertisement found at the foot of a local news article showcasing a clearly AI-generated image of a box of Ozempic. To say nothing of the fact that the image used looks absolutely nothing like a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/semaglutide-wegovy-ozempic-weight-loss-healthcare-airlines-economy-productivity-2023-11">real box of Ozempic</a>, the AI-drawn box is covered with AI artifacts like twisted, gibberish letters, and includes a legume-like logo bearing no resemblance to the real logo used by Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/novo-nordisk-cuts-guidance-as-copycat-versions-of-ozempic-hit-sales-53df8b8a">which features an Apis bull</a>.
"Solution fo [sic] injection," reads one prominent piece of text on the ersatz box, while another claims that the package contains a "solutån [sic] for injection in pre-filled pen."
"O)zenpic," reads a garbled and incorrectly-spelled Ozempic logo on the side of the box.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-352501 size-full" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/05/Futurism-Standard-29.png" alt="An ad promising to deliver GLP-1 drugs &quot;Ozempic, Wegovy or Mounjaro&quot; at a low price. The ad's image is of a clearly AI-generated box of Ozempic, which amounts to poor AI slop." width="1200" height="909" />
Intrigued by the blatancy of the ad's AI slop even in the heavily scrutinized world of pharmaceuticals, we decided to explore further.
Upon clicking the link, we were greeted by the website's first round of AI-generated people — who, though almost convincing, bear signs of AI-generation, like oddly-smooth curls and ears that blend mysteriously into the side of their head.
Just underneath these images, MEDVi includes a rotating list of logos belonging to websites and news publishers, ranging from health hubs like Healthline to reputable publications like The New York Times, Bloomberg, and Forbes, among others — suggesting that MEDVi is reputable enough to have been covered by mainstream publications.
Forbes, we found, did include MEDVi in a roundup of "<a href="https://archive.is/vwrhP">Best Weight Loss Injections Of 2025</a>," where it earned a "very good" rating of "9.4." The article appeared in Forbes Health, and includes a disclaimer noting that the page's content was "created independently from the Forbes Health Editorial team."
But otherwise, there was no sign of MEDVi coverage in the New York Times, Bloomberg, or the other outlets it mentioned. The only other remotely mainstream news coverage we could find of the company was in an US Weekly article from earlier this month, titled "<a href="https://archive.is/L2Mcc">6 Affordable GLP-1 Solutions After the FDA Bans Generic Medications</a>" that also circulated on Yahoo. (Both the Forbes Health and US Weekly articles were affiliate content, meaning they were created outside of normal editorial channels, and the outlets earn money when readers click the links on the page.)
Perhaps nothing about MEDVi's site, though, is as egregious as its alleged patient before-and-after images.
Under text telling possible customers that the "results speak for themselves," MEDVi features side-by-side pictures of three purported patients: "Sandra K," "Michael P," and "Melissa C."
Contrasted with the stock photo-esque images featured elsewhere on the page, these images looked much less uncanny. Their bodies had more distinct, lifelike details, and objects and lettering seen in the background looked genuine. And when we dug through web searches to see if the images existed elsewhere, we realized that's because the photos of dramatic weight loss were indeed real. At least, from the neck down.
What appears to have happened is that the sloperators behind MEDVi took images that had already been floating around the web for years, and used AI-powered deepfake tech to convincingly alter their faces.
Take the side-by-side images of "Michael P," who MEDVi claims lost 48 pounds over just five months. We were able to find the original image in a <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-6343109/Revealing-photos-happens-alcohol.html">Daily Mail article from 2018</a> — before semaglutide was even approved for weight loss purposes — that featured before-and-after photos of people who quit drinking, which was itself based on an undated <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190125063811/https://www.boredpanda.com/before-after-quit-drinking/?cexp_id=13374&amp;cexp_var=27&amp;_f=featured">Bored Panda article</a> of "Before &amp; After Pics That Show What Happens When You Stop Drinking."
Per Bored Panda and the Daily Mail, the man in the original picture is a Redditor who posts fitness and sobriety content under the username u/iDoneDo. The Daily Mail article timestamps the Redditor's weight loss journey as occurring between 2016 and 2017, which we confirmed by finding u/iDoneDo's original Reddit post.
That ages the image to long before the GLP-1 craze kicked off — and before AI started to fill the web with synthetic and deepfaked content.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-352521 size-full" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/05/3.png" alt="Two side-by-side images of an inspirational before-and-after weight loss journey. The images on the right is the original before-and-after; the ones on the left have been digitally altered to obscure the original poster's face." width="1200" height="753" />
Web searches for the other alleged patients yielded similar results: inspirational weight-loss imagery that's drifted around the web for years, and altered to disguise the actual people in the images as fake MEDVi customers.
To bolster its feigned legitimacy, MEDVi's site flaunts a lineup of doctors — full names and headshots included — that the startup claims to have partnered with.
"MEDVi physicians are here to guide you every step of the way," reads the webpage, "bringing both their expertise and genuine care to keep you supported.
When we searched for their names and images of these doctors, we discovered that they were, in fact, real medical professionals with LinkedIn pages, personal websites, and clear work histories. But to our surprise, these searches also returned yet another sketchy website for GLP-1 drugs. This one is called NuHuman, and offers a similar service, though it seems to be targeted specifically at the Chicago area. NuHuman's website is also crawling with AI slop, though once again features the same lineup of very real doctors.
We contacted each doctor to ask if they could confirm their involvement with MEDVi and NuHuman. We heard back from one of those medical professionals at the time of publishing, an osteopathic medicine practitioner named Tzvi Doron, who insisted that he had nothing to do with either company and "[needs] to have them remove me from their sites."
We also reached out to MEDVi, which didn't respond. When we tried to reach out to NuHuman with the site's listed email, the message bounced back.
We did <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/telehealth/comments/1i0fk89/medvi_fraudulent_and_deadly/">find some Reddit comments</a>, though, warning other netizens to steer clear of MEDVi, claiming serious allegations of possible HIPPA violations, shady billing practices, and even damaged vials of seemingly bogus drugs causing physical harm.
AI is making the web weirder and muddier than ever. And though MEDVi promises that "sometimes you have to see it to believe it," in our burgeoning AI-powered web, that's no longer the case.
More on AI slop: <a href="https://futurism.com/slop-farmer-ai-social-media">Slop Farmer Boasts About How He Uses AI to Flood Social Media With Garbage to Trick Older Women</a>

Slop Watch: GLP-1 Edition

It's stealing photos of real people and passing them off as its own patients.

This Sleazy GLP-1 Prescription Site Is Using Deepfaked "Before-and-After" Photos of Fake Patients, and Running Ads Showing AI-Generated Ozempic Boxes

As an institution, the Pentagon has come to be known for many things over the years — its <a href="https://www.levernews.com/is-the-pentagon-hiding-war-crimes/">transparency</a>, its <a href="https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2025/05/how-a-pentagon-contractor-built-a-global-empire-and-a-massive-tax-evasion-scheme/">generosity</a>, its <a href="https://freedom.press/the-classifieds/the-pentagon-papers/">cunning</a>. Consistency is not one of them.
SpaceX, a private company with a valuation of over <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/11/spacex-valuation-surges-to-350-billion-as-company-buys-back-stock.html">$350 billion</a>, is currently coasting off billions of dollars in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/spacex-ula-expected-clinch-multibillion-dollar-contract-key-pentagon-launch-2025-04-04/">Pentagon launch programs</a>. Based on contracts in force in 2025, the company will now carry out the <a href="https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/spacex-military-contracts-space-force-satellites-china/">majority of</a> US military space launches until at least 2036.
But in the wake of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's latest <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-starship-improvements-failure">disastrous Starship failure</a> — the company's third in a row — some are wondering if we weren't better off when space flight wasn't beholden to the whims of a few billionaires, but as a national project under NASA.
"Weren't we NOT blowing up rockets, like, 50 years ago," asked The Verge features editor Sarah Jeong <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/sarahjeong.bsky.social/post/3lq735kva5c2d">on social media</a>. "Also weren't we like 'ah yeah that was a fail' when the rocket fell apart instead of calling it a 'partial success,'" she asked, referencing <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1927531406017601915">Musk's insistence</a> that the latest explosion, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/spacex-rocket-explosion-illustrates-elon-musks-successful-failure-formula-2023-04-20/">as usual</a>, was a "big improvement."
"I understand the part about the 'cost-savings by outsourcing to theoretically nimbler private sector' and the 'cuts to NASA' but also," Jeong pondered, "the rockets keep exploding. Didn't they used to not explode."
Both NASA and SpaceX have different objectives — NASA to investigate (<a href="https://monthlyreview.org/2008/02/01/who-really-won-the-space-race/">and militarize</a>) air and space, SpaceX to <a href="https://www.spacex.com/humanspaceflight/mars/">colonize Mars</a> for the glory of <a href="https://fee.org/articles/spacex-is-giving-an-open-demonstration-of-crony-capitalism/">corporate capitalism</a> — making direct comparisons tricky. Still, there are some objective differences in the way both agencies pursue their goals that are worth looking into, especially as the US government maintains a financial obligation to both.
As UChicago tech policy scholar <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/uche.bsky.social/post/3lq7aqygxpc2g">Uchenna Andrew Offorjebe pined</a> on Bluesky, "NASA was not allowed to fail in the same ways that SpaceX does."
While failure can be the name of the game when it comes to spaceflight innovations, it's fair to say SpaceX would crumble under the <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/uche.bsky.social/post/3lq7aqygxpc2g">immense pressure</a> put on NASA by the US government throughout the Cold War.
Contrary to popular belief, throughout the 1960s, the years of the famous Apollo program, polls fluctuated from 45-60 percent in favor of cutting of Congress's <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0265964603000390">spending on NASA</a>. Though cold warriors in Washington didn't always follow the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0265964611000725">will of the public</a>, they still maintained intense scrutiny of NASA's budget, even as the agency put men on the Moon.
In 1965, for example, NASA was forced to appeal to Congress for funding for projects like its solid-fuel rocket program — the propulsion system now undergirding the nation's <a href="https://www.aerospaceutah.org/history-of-intercontinental-ballistic-missiles-icbms-at-hill/">ICBM arsenal</a> — when Defense budget examiners gutted support for NASA's joint rocket programs. The reason wasn't some earth-shattering <a href="https://futurism.com/spacex-starship-exploding-major-setback">launch catastrophe</a>, but NASA's inability to "quantify the noneconomic benefits of space exploration," according to <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/sp-4102.pdf">NASA historian Arnold Levine</a>.
This Pentagon withdrawal was despite US President Lindon Johnson's <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/1965.pdf">congressional space report</a>, where he called 1965 the "most successful year in our history." (This was the year of the US's first <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/history/60-years-ago-gemini-iii-americas-first-two-person-flight/#:~:text=On%20March%2023%2C%201965%2C%20the,NASA">two-man spaceflight</a>, the first <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission/gemini-iv/">American spacewalk</a>, first <a href="https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/15-december-1965/#:~:text=During%20its%20fourth%20orbit%2C%20Gemini,had%20rendezvoused%20in%20Earth%20orbit.">orbital rendezvous</a>, and a <a href="https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/capsule-gemini-vii/nasm_A19680273000">new record</a> set for longest duration of a manned spaceflight, among other achievements.)
SpaceX is under no such scrutiny by Pentagon budget hawks, even as it becomes integral to <a href="https://spacenews.com/spacexs-expanding-role-in-u-s-defense/">US Defense agencies</a>. Judging by Musk's own metrics — not just reaching Mars, but building a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/technology/elon-musk-spacex-mars.html#:~:text=To%20reach%20Mars%2C%20SpaceX%20has,she%20plays%20for%20a%20crowd.">million-person colony by 2044</a> — the private company is lagging way behind its childlike ambitions.
In the meantime, it's burning through about $1.5 billion a year on the joint Starbase and Starship program alone, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musk-spacex-starbase-texas-26d03f6d?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAhBpnir8YMq1C-jNMux-0UGWpegkjwHrU7D05DIv7aDA0jDdQCzxAfEAa8pGAw%3D&amp;gaa_ts=683866fd&amp;gaa_sig=IU-IF2nENrbu5VeI3SjmVEWmLcDNrAKNWOeUC3UXRSZUo5cOnQMdB_MAxlmRXH88BNJobw5bncvmQ7XdcAYY2A%3D%3D">according to the Wall Street Journal</a>.
Though SpaceX is currently profitable thanks almost entirely to <a href="https://www.inc.com/chloe-aiello/how-elon-musk-leaned-on-starlink-to-achieve-profitability-at-spacex.html">Starlink</a>, a subscription-based satellite internet service, the company's future <a href="https://wlockett.medium.com/spacex-will-fail-7bc3022e5bea">hinges on Starship</a>. Without a viable Starship, the company's $1.6 billion in <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/markets/stocks/TSLA/pressreleases/32622064/musks-spacex-starship-faces-another-setback-with-latest-launch-failure/">outstanding debt</a> will only grow as the launch debris piles up.
When that happens, the Pentagon's contracts will likely ensure that SpaceX is <a href="https://www.vox.com/defense-and-security/381664/musk-putin-spacex-pentagon-starlink">too big to fail</a> — great news for Musk, bad news for US taxpayers, and a curious contradiction in a supposedly free-market system.
More on SpaceX: <a href="https://futurism.com/former-nasa-astronaut-elon-musk-mars-15-years">Former NASA Astronaut Says Elon Musk Has No Idea What He's Talking About</a>

Failure Is An Option

"The rockets keep exploding. Didn't they used to not explode?"

If NASA Had Blown Up This Many Rockets, The Government Would Have Cancelled the Space Program

Last week, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. released a controversial "Make America Healthy Again" Commission report.
The report was <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/america-healthy-again-just-not-175302831.html">already criticized</a> for blaming the decline in Americans' health woes on discredited scapegoats such as <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/cell-phones-fact-sheet">cell phone radiation</a> and the "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/05/22/maha-health-nutrition-toxins-trump/">overmedicalization of kids</a>."
Now it turns out the report was also relying on some extremely questionable sources to back up its claims — and quite possibly the sloppy use of generative AI.
As the Allbritton Journalism Institute's education organization, NOTUS, <a href="https://www.notus.org/health-science/make-america-healthy-again-report-citation-errors">found in its investigation</a>, many of the report's citations are riddled with errors. Some don't appear to exist at all.
While there's no definitive proof that Kennedy's department made use of generative AI, the results certainly bear all of the hallmarks of AI chatbots like ChatGPT.
We've already come across countless examples of AI-hallucinated citations ending up in important documents, from law firms being caught <a href="https://futurism.com/law-firms-fine-ai-slop-court">passing around bogus AI slop</a> to <a href="https://futurism.com/professor-chatgpt-scientific-paper-errors">scientific literature riddled with references</a> to papers that don't exist. Like Kennedy, the White House has <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-admin-accused-ai-executive-orders">also been accused</a> of using AI to draft Donald Trump's storm of executive orders.
The MAHA Commission report is, to put it lightly, extremely sketchy. According to NOTUS, of the more than 500 studies and other sources listed in the document, at least seven don't exist. Other citations include broken links — yet another <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/06/chatgpt-is-hallucinating-fake-links-to-its-news-partners-biggest-investigations/">hallmark sign of AI hallucinations</a> — while others misstate conclusions.
Epidemiologist Katherine Keyes, whose name was listed on a seemingly nonexistent study on anxiety in adolescents that was cited by the report, told NOTUS that the "paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with."
"We’ve certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that coauthor group, or with that title," she said.
Two other citations, which allegedly were "broadly illustrative" of how direct-to-consumer drug ads lead to more ADHD and antidepressant prescriptions for kids, were also completely made up, NOTUS found.
Other citations included grossly overgeneralized conclusions.
"It is a tremendous leap of faith to generalize from a study in one Medicaid managed care program in Texas using 2011 to 2015 data to national care patterns in 2025," pediatric pulmonologist Harold Farber, whose study was cited in the report, told NOTUS.
It's an especially troubling development, considering the Trump administration's broader war against science, undermining <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/papers-covid-vaccines-children">long-established evidence</a> like the effectiveness of vaccines and <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/nobel-winning-scientist-researchers-fleeing-us-trump">gutting important scientific funding</a>.
The situation has gotten so bad, a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00938-y">Nature poll</a> revealed last month, that the <a href="https://futurism.com/majority-scientists-considering-fleeing-america">majority of scientists</a> are now considering leaving the United States.
Kennedy, who is severely underqualified for his role as secretary of health, <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/health-secretary-rfk-jr-medical-advice">admitted</a> during a recent appearance before Congress that nobody "should be taking advice, medical advice from me."
The noted anti-vaxxer has directed health authorities to investigate <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/government-study-nonexistent-link-vaccines-autism">nonexistent links between vaccines and autism</a> and repeatedly refused to acknowledge the effectiveness of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) shot amid a <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/measles-cases-slowing-us/story?id=122221061">devastating and preventable measles outbreak</a>.
In other words, the apparent use of generative AI for a 73-page commission report is just the tip of the iceberg, showcasing a baffling degree of carelessness and a desire to push an agenda that isn't built on any credible scientific evidence.
"AI is useful for many things," science communicator Joe Hanson wrote in a <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/drjoehanson.bsky.social/post/3lqd2ewtxjs2w">post on Bluesky</a>. "Making or guiding government policy is not one of them!"
"Seems like the kind of thing someone might do if they were interested in publishing propaganda to support a particular agenda rather than letting science guide their health policy," he <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/drjoehanson.bsky.social/post/3lqd2gnvvek2w">added</a>.
More on Kennedy: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/health-secretary-rfk-jr-medical-advice">Trump's Crackpot Secretary of Health Admits That Literally Nobody Should Be Taking Medical Advice from Him</a>

Scientific Meth

Pure slop.

RFK Jr's "Make America Healthy Again" Report Cites Studies That Don't Exist, in Clear Sign of AI Generated Slop

With car sales <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-horrible-new-sales-data-tesla">cratering</a> worldwide, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is <a href="https://futurism.com/sense-elon-musk-desperation">desperately</a> looking for alternative areas of growth.
Apart from <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-robotaxi-launch-mess">preparing to launch</a> a fleet of autonomous "Cybercab" robotaxis, the billionaire has promised that an army of <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-unveils-new-humanoid-robot">Optimus humanoid robots</a> could soon be roaming factory floors, heralding a revolution in manufacturing.
At least, that's his grandiose vision. Earlier this week, Musk <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-elon-musk-said-about-robotics-robotaxi-optimus-media-blitz-2025-5">told CNBC</a> that the carmaker will have "thousands of Optimus robots working in Tesla factories by the end of this year, beginning this fall," a characteristically ambitious timeline that's likely far removed from reality.
But even the company's own former executives have some serious doubts about a fleet of bipedal robots as Tesla's saving grace.
As the EV maker's first Optimus lead, Chris Walti, who left the firm in 2022, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/teslas-first-optimus-lead-doubts-about-elon-musks-robot-dream-2025-5">told Business Insider</a>, humanoid robots simply don't make any sense in such a setting.
"It's not a useful form factor," he said. "Most of the work that has to be done in industry is highly repetitive tasks where velocity is key."
The human form "evolved to escape wolves and bears," Walti added. "We weren't designed to do repetitive tasks over and over again. So why would you take a hyper suboptimal system that really isn't designed to do repetitive tasks and have it do repetitive tasks?"
The little we've seen of Tesla's progress on its Optimus robot has left something to be desired. During Musk's showy "We, Robot" event in October, the company had the mechanoids converse with and pour drinks for eventgoers. As analysts <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-robots-remotely-controlled-analyst">later confirmed</a>, the robots were being remotely controlled by human workers.
A separate clip shared by Musk early last year, which purported to show an Optimus robot folding a shirt, was also <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-video-optimus-robot-shirt">revealed to be the result of similar trickery</a>, with a nearby technician operating it from mere feet away.
Trump's baffling trade war could also put a major damper on Tesla's ambitions to build humanoid robots, with Musk <a href="https://futurism.com/musk-trump-robot-legion">complaining</a> that steep tariffs against China could seriously rattle supply chains.
Instead of investigating whether spindly-legged humanoid robots can take over jobs at a car factory, Walti founded a company called <a href="https://mytra.ai/">Mytra</a> that aims to use flat, rectangular robots to move pallets in warehouses — bodies far removed from those of humans, but specialized to a specific task.
Humanoid robots are an engineering problem that's "multiple orders of magnitude" more difficult to solve than self-driving cars, Walti told BI.
And considering Tesla still <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-executive-fsd">has a long way to go</a> to fulfill Musk's <a href="https://futurism.com/video-elon-musk-promising-self-driving-cars">decade-long promise</a> of realizing a car that can fully drive itself, a fully autonomous Optimus robot would, by that logic, be a very long way off.
Humanoid robots are "kind of a ninth-inning robotics problem, and we're in the third inning," Walti told BI.
More on Optimus: <a href="https://futurism.com/musk-trump-robot-legion">Musk Says Trump Preventing Him From Building Legion of Robots</a>

Shots Fired

"It's not a useful form factor."

Former Tesla Robotics Boss Casually Torches Elon Musk's Vision for Saving the Company

Artificial intelligence could wipe out half of all entry-level white collar jobs — if Anthropic cofounder Dario Amodei is to be believed, at least.
Speaking <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/ai-jobs-white-collar-unemployment-anthropic">with Axios</a> this week, Amodei claimed that the type of AI his company is building will have the capacity to unleash "unimaginable possibilities" onto the world, both good and bad.
Unsurprisingly, the billionaire tech entrepreneur has white collar job loss at the top of his mind.
Amodei foresees the labor crisis unfolding in four steps. First, companies like OpenAI, Google, and Amodei's own Anthropic will work toward large language models (LLMs) that can "meet and beat human performance with more and more tasks."
As this happens, the government, anxious about China and widespread labor turmoil, will do nothing to "regulate AI" or warn the public about its potential. Your average worker, "unaware of the growing power of AI and its threat to their jobs," has no idea what's going on.
Suddenly, "almost overnight," businesses flip a switch and replace humans with LLMs en masse. "The public only realizes it when it's too late," Amodei told Axios.
To drill his point home, the CEO came up with some mind-boggling hypotheticals, like a world where "cancer is cured, the economy grows at 10 percent a year, the budget is balanced — and 20 percent of people don't have jobs."
"We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming. I don't think this is on people's radar," Amodei bloviated.
It's worth asking why — if the tech tycoon truly believes what he says — he doesn't pull the plug on Anthropic altogether and dedicate his time and resources to fighting what he's framing as a terrifying threat to the economy. This isn't a fringe opinion held by some obscure tech blogger, but by the helmsman of a <a href="https://www.emarketer.com/content/tale-of-two-startups--anthropic-perplexity">$30-40 billion</a> AI company.
Rather than argue that the benefits of an epoch-changing LLM outweigh the risks — a simple enough copout — Amodei says that critics should consider "what happens if [he's] right."
But digging a little deeper than Anthropic's AI-hype, it's tough to imagine a world where the mogul's vision bears fruit.
Sure, by <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/11/26/1107346/the-way-we-measure-progress-in-ai-is-terrible/">their own benchmarks</a>, companies are theoretically developing "better" LLM models as time goes on. But those newer models are also growing increasingly prone to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/technology/ai-hallucinations-chatgpt-google.html">hallucinations</a>, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/05/sycophantic-ai/682743/">sycophancy</a>, and <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-chatbots-summarizing-research">generalization errors</a>. And that's without getting into the law of diminishing returns; today's best AI is <a href="https://futurism.com/time-workers-save-ai-jobs">barely making a dent</a> in workplace efficiency, and gains may start coming more and more slowly.
While Amodei — who has a financial and political interest in selling the narrative of an all-powerful AI future — might think that human-level LLMs are right around the corner, most serious computer science researchers <a href="https://www.techpolicy.press/most-researchers-do-not-believe-agi-is-imminent-why-do-policymakers-act-otherwise/">disagree</a>.
If anything, it's tech industry bigwigs like Amodei — not China or the common worker — goading regulators into inaction by pedaling nightmare scenarios just like this one. Convinced of the mortal danger posed by AI, US lawmakers have been all too eager to hand tech corporations the power to <a href="https://www.techpolicy.press/most-researchers-do-not-believe-agi-is-imminent-why-do-policymakers-act-otherwise/">self-regulate</a>.
And many workers, in contrast to Amodei's proselytizing, are at least somewhat aware of the threats the AI industry represents. The CEO's perception here is telling, as automation anxiety is most highly felt by <a href="https://www.techpolicy.press/most-researchers-do-not-believe-agi-is-imminent-why-do-policymakers-act-otherwise/">vulnerable populations</a> who already face discrimination in the lower rungs of the labor market. (But those <a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s43681-024-00502-w.pdf">minority, working class people</a> are likely the ones who will bear the brunt of AI-fueled <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11636303/">job displacement</a>.)
To the extent that AI is currently impacting labor at all, it's the <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-hype-america-financial-ruin">hype surrounding it</a> — not some remarkable property of the tech itself — convincing corporations to <a href="https://futurism.com/klarna-openai-humans-ai-back">lay people off</a>. If Amodei wanted to uncover the source of AI labor disruptions happening right now, he only needs to find his closest mirror.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-startup-builderai-collapse">A Billion Dollar AI Startup Just Collapsed Spectacularly</a>

The Platform & The Pauper

"I don't think this is on people's radar."

CEO of Anthropic Warns That AI Will Destroy Huge Proportion of Well-Paying Jobs

President Donald Trump has responded to billionaire and former number-one ally Elon Musk, after he heavily criticized the White House's so-called "big, beautiful bill."
Over the weekend, Musk <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-disappointed-by-trump-big-beautiful-bill-doge/">told CBS News</a> that he's "disappointed" by the price tag of the tax and spending bill, arguing that it "increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing."
"I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful," he added, "but I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion."
It was a once-rare but increasingly common moment of public disagreement between the two ultra-public figures, who had stood side by side during the contentious election last year when Trump ultimately retook the White House.
Asked about Musk's reaction to the bill, which would indeed raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion, Trump offered a word salad response.
"We have to get a lot of votes, we can't be cutting — we need to get a lot of support," the president told reporters on Wednesday, as <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/28/donald-trump-response-elon-musk-tax-bill-comments/83901171007/">quoted by </a><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/28/donald-trump-response-elon-musk-tax-bill-comments/83901171007/">USA Today</a>, arguing that the bill would've lost momentum with deeper proposed cuts. "I'm not happy about certain aspects of it, but I'm thrilled by other aspects of it."
It's a particularly notable inflection point for Musk, who announced that he would be stepping away from his role as a "special government employee" after months of implementing <a href="https://futurism.com/children-starving-death-elon-musk-cut-food">disastrous</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/government-fires-nuclear-specialists-hires-back">chaotic</a> cost-cutting measures with the help of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
"The DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government," he <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1927877957852266518">tweeted</a> Wednesday evening.
But the White House seemed eager to move on after the increased friction with Musk. His "off-boarding will begin tonight," a White House official <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/elon-musk-leaving-trump-administration-white-house-official-confirms-2025-05-29/">confirmed to Reuters</a> hours earlier.
However, given the power Musk has accrued in the White House, it's unlikely the billionaire will simply vanish from the scene. As his tweet suggests, his influence will likely be felt for a long time to come.
Where all of this leaves Musk's relationship with the president is hard to read. Trump has been left with the cleanup job and is looking to codify some of DOGE's catastrophic budget cuts. He's expected to <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/trump-budget-doge-npr-pbs-usaid-congress">send a whopping $9.4 billion rescissions package</a> to Congress next week, proposing deep cuts to USAID — which has already been <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-conflict-interest-shutting-down-usaid">gutted by DOGE</a> — and the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, which formed NPR and funds PBS.
Musk's departure from the White House will come to the relief of many, <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-officials-calling-musk-crazy-uncle-elon">including Republican lawmakers</a> in Washington, DC, <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-too-late-save-tesla">and investors</a> in his ailing carmaker Tesla.
The mercurial CEO's embrace of far-right ideals and his tenure in the government cutting federal funding have proven to be incredibly damaging to Tesla's brand, <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-horrible-new-sales-data-tesla">sending sales off a cliff</a> worldwide.
Trump, for his part, could certainly do with a whole lot less of Musk, whose <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-associated-press-poll-popularity">popularity has tanked</a>, dragging down the administration's favorability with him.
After all, the president is certainly <a href="https://futurism.com/tech-stocks-trump-tariffs">fully capable of sowing mayhem</a> all by himself — without a tempestuous billionaire whispering in his ear and rebuking him in public.
More on Elon Musk: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-ghosted-huge-company-meeting">Elon Musk Just Ghosted a Huge Company Meeting</a>

Oval Office

The girls are fighting.

Trump Responds to Elon Musk's Attack

Elon Musk is doing his very best to rehabilitate his damaged image. DOGE and all that government twaddle is behind him, he <a href="https://futurism.com/sense-elon-musk-desperation">insists</a>. He's going to be working closely at his businesses again, instead of <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-doge-dismal-failure">chainsawing</a> federal agencies and <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-responds-humiliated">getting screamed at</a> by Trump cabinet members. He's <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-giving-up-politics">done with politics</a> — or spending loads of money on it, anyway. There's robotaxis to roll out and Mars-settlement-shaped bridges to sell.
But if this is his comeback tour, it's started in pretty much the worst way possible.
On Tuesday, Musk was nowhere to be seen at a highly anticipated talk he was supposed to give about SpaceX's plans for colonizing the Red Planet, <a href="https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-flaked-on-his-big-mars-talk-heres-what-he-mightve-been-doing-instead-2000608216">Gizmodo </a><a href="https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-flaked-on-his-big-mars-talk-heres-what-he-mightve-been-doing-instead-2000608216">reports</a>, leaving legions of his fans and spaceflight nerds — not to mention the thousands of SpaceX employees gathered at the company's Starbase headquarters in Texas for the occasion — hanging. 
No explanation was given (though he did fire off some tweets in the interim, albeit at nowhere near his typical spambot levels of frequency). But his truancy might have something to do with his Starship megarocket — an indispensable part of Musk's grand vision of "making life multiplanetary" and <a style="cursor: pointer !important; user-select: none !important;" href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-spacex-sperm-seed-mars-colony">spreading his seed</a> across the cosmos — <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-starship-improvements-failure">exploding for the umpteenth</a> time during its latest flight test that same day.
Musk's pontification sesh was originally scheduled for 1 PM EST. Then it was pushed back to 1:10 PM, and then to 1:15, and finally, 9 PM, according to Gizmodo, with that last time block coming in after Starship's flight test, which was slated for 7:30 PM that evening. 
When Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1927411187827790164">announced</a> that his speech was postponed until after the Starship test, noted science communicator Scott Manley <a href="https://x.com/DJSnM/status/1927414723085017098">asked</a> in the replies, perhaps presciently: "Is this going to have contingency elements that depend on the outcome of the flight?"
Looks like the answer to that was, "no."
To be fair to the centibillionaire multi-hyphenate, his plans quite literally blew up — or experienced a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" — in his face. It's understandable why he wouldn't want to wax about his future interplanetary dominion when his rocket that's supposed to make that happen lay in ruins. (Before the launch, Musk boasted that there's was an "80 percent chance" that his engineers had solved key issues related to the spacecraft's heat shield tiles.)
In actuality, the Starship prototype, dubbed Ship 35, spun out of control and broke apart as it made a nasty, uncontrolled reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. Then, in an all too familiar final act, the Starship exploded somewhere over the Indian Ocean, putting it out of its misery. Around 40 minutes earlier, the Starship's Super Heavy booster also blew up before it could complete its landing burn.
"Lot of good data to review," Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1927531406017601915">wrote in a tweet</a> made at the near-exact time he was supposed to be giving his talk after the several delays.
A new date for the Mars talk hasn't been announced.
More on Elon Musk: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-horrible-new-sales-data-tesla">Elon Musk Just Got Some Horrible New Sales Data About Tesla</a>

Time Mismanagement

Is something wrong?

Elon Musk Just Ghosted a Huge Company Meeting

Scientists have created contact lenses that they claim allow people to see in the dark with the help of infrared light, an invention that could allow colorblind people to see colors again, or spies to relay secret information via flashes of infrared light.
As detailed in a <a href="https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)00454-4">paper</a> published in the journal Cell, the contacts don't even require an external power source to turn infrared light into visible light.
Experiments involving both mice and humans have shown that the lenses allow the wearer to perceive multiple infrared wavelengths — even when participants closed their eyes.
"Our research opens up the potential for non-invasive wearable devices to give people super-vision," said senior author and University of Science and Technology of China neuroscientist Tian Xue in a <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1084046?">statement</a>.
Beyond allowing wearers to see in the dark, the contacts could even be used to receive data wirelessly.
"There are many potential applications right away for this material," Xue added. "For example, flickering infrared light could be used to transmit information in security, rescue, encryption or anti-counterfeiting settings."
The invention uses nanoparticles to turn portions of the infrared light spectrum, which lie just beyond what the human eye can detect, into visible wavelengths.
In tests, human participants wearing the contacts could detect flashing Morse code-like infrared signals.
"It's totally clear cut: without the contact lenses, the subject cannot see anything, but when they put them on, they can clearly see the flickering of the infrared light," Xue explained. "We also found that when the subject closes their eyes, they’re even better able to receive this flickering information, because near-infrared light penetrates the eyelid more effectively than visible light, so there is less interference from visible light."
Building on their invention, the researchers fine-tuned the nanoparticles to make different infrared wavelengths appear as different colors, allowing participants to differentiate between them.
As a result, the researchers propose that contact lenses could help color-blind people distinguish between different colors.
"By converting red visible light into something like green visible light, this technology could make the invisible visible for color blind people," Xue said.
The contacts aren't perfect just yet, and aren't able to capture fine details. It's also a little hazy whether the lenses allow wearers to see anything illuminated by infrared illumination, or simply the light source itself; we reached out to the team with questions, and we'll update if we hear back.
However, by relying on glasses that sit further away from the retina, the team hopes to improve their performance.
"In the future, by working together with materials scientists and optical experts, we hope to make a contact lens with more precise spatial resolution and higher sensitivity," said Xue in the statement.
More on seeing in the dark: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/people-blind-infrared-camera">New Device Lets People Who Are Blind "See" in Infrared</a>