Goldman Sachs wants those applying for jobs at the investment bank to stop relying on AI while interviewing — a glaring double standard, considering it's made <a href="https://www.pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2025/inside-goldman-sachs-big-bet-on-ai-at-scale/">massive bets</a> of its own on the tech, <a href="https://bankautomationnews.com/allposts/ai/goldman-launches-internal-gen-ai-assistant-with-10k-employees/#:~:text=Goldman%20on%20Jan.,%3B%20Proofreading%20emails%3B%20%5B%E2%80%A6%5D">launched its own AI platform</a> and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/goldman-sachs-deploys-its-first-generative-ai-tool-across-the-firm-cd94369b">rolled out AI tools across its businesses</a>.
As <a href="https://fortune.com/2025/06/11/goldman-sachs-students-ai-chatgpt-interviews-amazon-anthropic/">Fortune reports</a>, the bank's campus recruitment team sent out an email, warning students that "Goldman Sachs prohibits the use of any external sources, including ChatGPT or Google search engine, during the interview process."
The financial services company even outsourced the triaging of job candidates to the video interviewing firm HireVue — a talent evaluation platform that's powered by AI. Applicants have 30 seconds to prepare and two minutes to give answers to questions.
Instead of cribbing from a chatbot, in other words, applicants will have to learn rote datapoints about the company's financial results and core values by heart. That's the workplace of the future, baby!
The company's policy obviously rings hypocritical. On one hand, Goldman Sachs has long boasted that generative AI will boost productivity, yet those who are trying to kickstart a career are somehow not allowed to make use of the tech.
Despite <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/21/goldman-sachs-launches-ai-assistant.html">having launched</a> a proprietary AI assistant for its employees to summarize emails and translate code in January, the company says that it cares about what its future staffers have to say for themselves.
"This language is consistent with what we send to any of our campus applicants across all positions," spokesperson Jennifer Zuccarelli told Fortune. "We want to hear from our applicants in their own voice."
It's not just investment banks barring job applicants from using AI. In an arguably even more egregious example, leading AI company Anthropic — yes, the folks building AI, including the chatbot Claude — <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-company-job-applicants-ai">wrote in job postings</a> that "we want to understand your personal interest in Anthropic without mediation through an AI system."
Amazon has equally warned recruiters that any candidates who are caught using the tech should be disqualified, as <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-stop-people-using-ai-cheat-job-interviews-2025-2">Business Insider reported</a> in February.
"To ensure a fair and transparent recruitment process, please do not use GenAl tools during your interview unless explicitly permitted," the e-commerce giant wrote in internal guidelines. "Failure to adhere to these guidelines may result in disqualification from the recruitment process."
That's despite Amazon encouraging staffers to use AI tools to boost productivity and <a href="https://futurism.com/amazon-programmers-ai-dark">pouring immense resources into the tech</a>.
It's reflective of a broader trend. The already-abysmal job-seeking industry has <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/lying-resume-ai-new-normal">dramatically changed with the advent of human resources-specific AI tools</a>. Both recruiters and applicants are making heavy use of the tech, whether they're allowed to or not, turning an already soul-sucking process into an even more insufferable experience.
Case in point, a deranged video that went viral last month <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-job-recruiter-glitch-video">shows an AI-powered job recruiter melting down</a> during a call with a human applicant.
Having companies threaten to disqualify job seekers for using AI isn't just the peak of hypocrisy, it's a race to the bottom that needlessly puts strain on those who are simply looking for employment.
More on AI and job search: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/lying-resume-ai-new-normal">AI Is Helping Job Seekers Lie, Flood the Market, and Steal Jobs</a>

None for Thee

Double standard much?

Companies Bragging About Their AI Furious as Job Applicants Use AI During Interviews

<h2>Space Draft</h2>
Space tourism company Axiom Space has had to postpone its fourth chartered SpaceX flight to the International Space Station after <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/06/12/nasa-axiom-space-delay-axiom-mission-4-launch-to-space-station/">NASA announced</a> it needs more time to investigate an air leak affecting the orbital lab.
For <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-roscosmos-found-leak-on-international-space-station-2020-9">five years</a>, NASA and its Russian counterpart Roscosmos have been hunting down leaks in the station, which has been continuously occupied for 25 years. The issue has since been <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/russia-leak-space-station">traced back</a> to the Russian segment of the ISS, specifically the Zvezda service module, and was identified as a "<a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-concerned-cracks-leaks-space-station">top safety risk</a>," according to a <a href="https://oig.nasa.gov/topics/space-operations/nasas-management-of-risks-to-sustaining-iss-operations-through-2030/">2024 report</a> by NASA's inspector general.
The delay highlights the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-dismisses-space-station-cracks-leaks">deteriorating condition</a> of the rapidly aging orbital lab, which is expected to host scientists for another five years before <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-hires-spacex-destroy-international-space-station">being retired</a> with the help of SpaceX.
<h2>Under Pressure</h2>
Most recently, three cosmonauts occupying the station had inspected the inside walls of the module and its adjoining tunnel, sealing "additional areas of interest, and measured the current leak rate," according to a Thursday update by NASA.
"Following this effort, the segment now is holding pressure," the agency said.
While NASA says none of the station's current crew members are in any danger, Axiom's fourth mission remains on hold to give NASA and Roscosmos more time to "evaluate the situation and determine whether any additional troubleshooting is necessary."
As a result, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is still grounded at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The launch had already been delayed due to bad weather. Then, a liquid oxygen leak in SpaceX's rocket <a href="https://www.space.com/space-exploration/private-spaceflight/watch-spacex-launch-the-ax-4-private-astronaut-mission-to-the-iss-on-june-10">delayed the launch once more</a>.
For now, all Axiom can do is hold off on launching its crew of four astronauts, led by retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who has since joined Axiom.
"This is the right thing to do," said Axiom executive chairman Kam Ghaffarian in a statement. "We will continue to work with all of our partners to finalize a new launch date."
Ironically, the firm was <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/axiom-space-nasa-private-space-station-trouble">awarded a NASA contract</a> to develop a private successor to the ISS.
More on the leaks: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-dismisses-space-station-cracks-leaks">NASA Says It’s Totally Fine the Space Station is Absolutely Riddled With Cracks and Leaks</a>

Holy Moly

Not again...

The Space Station Leak Is Rearing Its Ugly Head Again

At this point, we're probably all familiar with the trope of the dirty old uncle who doesn't realize that simping for thirst traps on social shows up on his public feed.
Now, in a hilarious 2025 riffs on the phenomenon, users of Meta's AI app are inadvertently posting the most private queries imaginable to what they don't realize is showing up for anyone to see.
Released in late April, Meta's "AI assistant" app — really just a flashy chatbot meant to <a href="https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2025/05/08/meta-ai-chatbot-for-harvesting-data.html">harvest your data</a> — has quickly become a go-to virtual helper for many around the world. Just a month after its release, Meta bragged that its app had surpassed over <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/29/meta-ai-now-has-1b-monthly-active-users/">1 billion users</a>. There's just one tiny problem: everything you ask Meta's AI is liable to wind up in a public feed for the whole world to laugh at.
From when you first log in, the app is eager to get you rolling. The first thing a new user sees is a sparse screen populated with suggested prompts, ranging from "let's get to know each other" and "describe me in three emojis."
If an unsuspecting user — say, a granddad not well-versed in tech — decides to start here, they might accidentally stumble into a little "share" icon in the top corner that uploads their query into the app's "discover feed."
Given the virtual assistant's life-like voice and instance-based chat sessions, one would be forgiven for thinking that one-on-ones with Meta AI would remain private, no matter what random buttons you click. Meta even addresses this on its <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2025/04/introducing-meta-ai-app-new-way-access-ai-assistant/">website</a>: "as always, you’re in control: nothing is shared to your feed unless you choose to post it."
Nothing could be further from the truth. A quick survey of the app's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-meta-ai-chatbot-discover-feed-depressing-why-2025-6">discover feed</a> reveals a mountain of exchanges that people are almost certainly not intending to share publicly.
Tucked among the now-to-be-expected generative AI slop — stuff like "teen girl walks her raptor on a leash casually," or "Wonder Woman driving a 1965 green mustang fastback" — are scores of chatbot queries with some astonishingly personal information.
"How do i [sic] improve my bowel movements," one user asked, for instance. The chatbot responds with some general tips, then explicitly asks for personal details: "what's your current diet and lifestyle like? Any specific issues you're experiencing with bowel movements?"
"I have high calestrerol and often strugfle with stool movement is it ralated?" asks the user, with typographical errors throughout. Horrifyingly, if you logged into Meta AI with an existing Facebook or Instagram account, whatever name you have visible on there — your real one, for most users — is visible under your public queries.
The unfortunate user struggling with bowel movements, for example, has a profile containing other private questions, like "whats the easiest way to get rid of crabs?" followed up with "is their a reason i keep getten [sic] em?"
<figure id="attachment_353913" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-353913" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-353913 size-large" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/06/crabs1-1200x514.png" alt="A user discusses getting &quot;rid of crabs&quot; on the Meta AI App." width="1200" height="514" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-353913" class="wp-caption-text">A user discusses crabs on the Meta AI App.</figcaption></figure>
Like the discover feed, the privacy violations are endless.
Other examples we found include teachers generating test questions, users asking for situationship advice, more queries on sexual hygiene, detailed discussions about medical history, and assistance generating a "heartfelt" letter to a judge ahead of a criminal sentencing.
Astonishingly, the app also records and uploads voice queries, no matter the length. We found one recording that went on for over an hour, where the conversation drifted from Candace Owens' take on Black Lives Matter to whether or not anyone was actively "trying to kill George Soros" to asking for detailed directions based on the user's current location.
Another spent several minutes detailing their tax woes.
"What do I do if I made about two hundred thousand last year and I forgot to file taxes," they asked.
"If you owe taxes, the IRS will likely send you a notice with the amount due," the chatbot suggests.
"Well I'll just wait till [sic] they call me I guess," the user sighs.
Other conversations drifted into topics better left for the incognito tab.
<figure id="attachment_353911" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-353911" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-353911 size-large" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/06/big-booty-queen-1200x548.png" alt="A Meta AI App user has a public conversation with the chatbot about how to find a &quot;big booty queen.&quot;" width="1200" height="548" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-353911" class="wp-caption-text">A user discusses how to find love on the Meta AI App.</figcaption></figure>
On one hand, the whole thing reveals the staggering amount of faith people already have in these brand new products — and the extent to which they've quickly become a crutch for many. One user, for example, asked it "what to say to congratulate my niece who graduates from UCLA."
At the same time, it also underscores the mammoth responsibility Meta has as the provider of a de facto public service — and the horrifying lack of accountability the company has <a href="https://futurism.com/facebook-beauty-targeted-ads">consistently shown</a> throughout its lifespan.
More on Meta: <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-furious-llama">Mark Zuckerberg Is Reportedly Absolutely Furious at His Own Failure</a>

Blind Faith

"Whats the easiest way to get rid of crabs?"

People Don't Realize Meta's AI App Is Publicly Blasting Their Humiliating Secrets to the World

Ever since college dropouts Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak began pedaling the romantic tale of founding Apple in Jobs' parents' Los Altos garage, college-age tech bros have longed to follow in their footsteps. But there's just one tiny thorn: the "founder's story" of late-night struggles and coffee-fueled breadboarding is mostly a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/05/steve-wozniak-apple-starting-in-a-garage-is-a-myth#:~:text=The%20commonly%20shared%20tale%20is,myth%2C%E2%80%9D%20Wozniak%20told%20Businessweek.">capitalist fairy tale</a>.
Still, it's a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17530350.2025.2471602">mythos</a> tech billionaire overlord Peter Thiel is <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17530350.2025.2471602">all too eager</a> to stoke. His empire is built on image — even the stereotypical "<a href="https://jacobin.com/2022/07/peter-thiel-superrich-wealth-inequality-political-influence">evil mastermind</a>" vibe is a carefully groomed persona — which he disseminates across Silicon Valley hopefuls via the almighty <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/09/28/is-peter-thiels-pro-dropout-fellowship-mostly-an-advertisement-for-himself">Thiel Fellowship</a>.
Each year, Thiel selects up to 20 "Thiel fellows" to each receive $200,000 and drop out of college in order to pursuit a tech startup. Though some come straight out of high school, many Thiel fellows historically come from <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-rich-mans-dropout-club/?bc_nonce=vt6om2ildkk65b0bj9t19l&amp;cid=reg_wall_signup">Ivy league schools</a>, which isn't exactly the kind of background that screams "all or nothing."
Thanks to Thiel's massive profile and political influence, a number of Thiel fellows have watched their startups soar to billion dollar valuations. Though tech hopefuls are said to have just <a href="https://www.meridean.org/blog/thiel-fellowship">.01 percent</a> of a chance to snag a Thiel Fellowship, that isn't stopping scores of wannabe founders from dropping out of college anyway.
In a profile of the growing anti-college movement festering in Silicon Valley, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-tech-founders-skipping-college-new-dropping-out-palantir-2025-6">Business Insider's Julia Hornstein</a> sat down with a number of young dropouts to figure out just what the hell is going on.
Sebastian Tan, one of over 500 students who applied for an internship at Thiel's surveillance and spying company Palantir, dreamed of being an entrepreneur. The billionaire's book, "Zero to One," is basically a <a href="https://www.booksontrial.com/zero-to-one-monopoly-good-competition-losers/">tech monopolists' manifesto</a>, and "probably the best book I've read," according to Tan, along with a laughable addendum that underscores exactly how undercooked his worldview is: "And I've only read a few pages."
In April, Hornstein writes, Tan got the offer from Palantir, which he accepted, deferring his undergraduate degree until 2026. "In college, you don't learn the building skills that you need for a startup," he confidently declared.
Tan's is an interesting story, especially for his early success — but he's far from alone. In 2022, there were <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/coj/status-dropout-rates">2.1 million college dropouts</a> in the US. According to a <a href="https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/09/college-student-dropouts-2022/#:~:text=Starting%20a%20business%20is%20the,to%20start%20working%20full%2Dtime.">World Economic Forum survey</a> in that same year, 28 percent of dropouts did so to start a business. That's a lot of startups.
But while the country's tech bros might be agog at the idea of dropping out, the reality is that very few startups succeed without advanced degree holders, let alone people who've completed undergraduate programs. Recent research found that 56 percent of startup executives hold a <a href="https://www.kauffmanfellows.org/journal/startup-degrees">graduate degree</a>, while the <a href="https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-successful-startup-founder-is-45">average age</a> of a successful startup founder is 45.
The trouble here isn't necessarily that it's "college or nothing," but rather the values, methods, and myths that startups engender — like that <a href="https://jacobin.com/2021/01/silicon-valley-trump-twitter-no-platform-capitol-riot">regulation stifles innovation</a>, or that Silicon Valley startups exist separate of the massive <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426623000195">economic inequality</a> we see in the world today (on the contrary, startups have been <a href="https://48hills.org/2023/05/how-ugly-side-of-silicon-valley/">key players</a> in building that world.)
With the kind of failure rate startups engender, there'll inevitably be a flood of unskilled, untrained labor trickling back into the economy — the kind of people who've been trained to think of themselves as "<a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/are-you-a-high-agency-individual/">high agency individuals</a>."
That's something Arbaaz Mahmood, a would-be physicist who skipped college to do a startup developing an "AI tool for car dealerships," seems to at least acknowledge. "Honestly, nobody goes to college thinking they're going to change the world," he tells BI. "That's a vacuous lie we tell VCs to get their money. Nobody builds startups to change the world. It's just bullshit."
When it comes to startups, Benjamin Shestakofsky, author of "Behind the Startup," <a href="https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/sociology-benjamin-shestakofsky-behind-the-startup-book">summarizes it well</a>: "Our relationship with technology is socially constructed. Yes, we do make choices as individuals, but our choices are embedded in broader structures that create different sorts of opportunities and constraints for us."
More on startups: <a href="https://futurism.com/columbia-student-ai-cheating-startup">Columbia Student Kicked Out for Creating AI to Cheat, Raises Millions to Turn It Into a Startup</a>

Well Read

Got it.

College Dropout Entrepreneur Boasts That Peter Thiel's Book Is "Probably the Best Book I've Read, and I've Only Read a Few Pages"

<h2>Head Game</h2>
Archaeologists in Iran have discovered an ancient cone-shaped skull that is believed to have belonged to a teen girl — and there are signs of tragedy in her bones.
As <a href="https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/cone-headed-skull-from-iran-was-bashed-in-6-200-years-ago-but-no-one-knows-why">Live Science reports</a>, the skull, which was found in a prehistoric burial ground known as Chega Sofla without its corresponding skeleton, shows signs not only of intentional modification, but also possibly fatal blunt force trauma.
Dated to roughly 6,200 years old, the strange cone shape of the skull appears to be the product of a practice archaeologists today call <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/head-space-artificial-cranial-deformation">artificial cranial modification</a>, a process similar to foot-binding in which the soft skulls of children are bandaged to deliberately deform them.
Found <a href="https://www.umontpellier.fr/en/articles/deformation-cranienne-pratiquee-incas-coutume-universelle">across cultures and millennia</a>, this type of body modification has been undertaken for various reasons, including to <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/elongated-heads-were-mark-elite-status-ancient-peruvian-society">denote social status</a> or adhere to <a href="https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/elongated-head-ideal-beauty-among-mangbetu-people-1930/">beauty standards</a>, as evidenced by it more often being <a href="https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/tracing-the-history-and-health-impacts-of-skull-modification">seen in girls</a> than boys. Though it's still <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/parents-have-been-reshaping-their-kids-skulls-45000-years-180957343/">occasionally practiced today</a>, the practice sometimes referred to as "skull elongation" was far more common in prehistoric times. The girl with the conical skull in this study, for instance, was believed to have lived in the fifth millennium BCE.
<h2>Violent Ends</h2>
Aside from the cone-shaped cranium of the young woman, who was believed to be younger than the age of 20, archaeologists Mahdi Alirezazadeh and Hamed Vahdati Nasab of the Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran — who also authored a study about their discovery that was recently <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oa.3415">published in the International Journal of Osteoarcheology</a> — also found a long, unhealed fracture on the back of the skull that likely killed her.
"We know this woman experienced the fracture in the final moments of her life," Alirezazadeh told Live Science, "but we don't have any direct evidence to say that someone intentionally struck her."
Though it's unclear whether the ancient teen in question was intentionally killed or died by accident, the researchers believe that the modified shape of her skull likely made it weaker and more susceptible to trauma than a conventional cranium.
Along with pointing out that an unmodified fractured skull was found alongside the conical skull in the portion of Chega Sofia where they were working, Alirezazadeh also noted that whatever killed the latter "was so severe that it would have fractured a normal, unmodified skull as well."
More on head science: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/tattoo-forehead-boss-detect-mental-state">Scientists Want You to Ink an Electronic Tattoo On Your Forehead So Your Boss Can Detect Your Mental State</a>

Cruel Cranium

Secrets of the skeletons.

Scientists Intrigued by Conical Skull Found in Ancient Burial Ground

Whoever wrote in the Book of Genesis "be fruitful and multiply" never accounted for the cost of children these days, especially when you factor in expenses like college tuition, sports, tutors, clothes and childcare.
And that's one of the reasons why people are having less kids, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clynq459wxgo.amp">according to new reporting from the BBC.</a>
A <a href="https://www.unfpa.org/swp2025">new paper</a> from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has revealed that one in five adults in 14 countries don't have, or think they won't have, their preferred number of children, the BBC reports. About 14,000 people from across a wide range of income levels were surveyed in countries including the United States, South Africa, South Korea and Italy.
"The world has begun an unprecedented decline in fertility rates," Natalia Kanem, UNFPA executive director, told the BBC. "Most people surveyed want two or more children. Fertility rates are falling in large part because many feel unable to create the families they want. And that is the real crisis."
This jives with <a href="https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/newsroom/news-releases/lancet-dramatic-declines-global-fertility-rates-set-transform">dire statistics</a> that 76 percent of the world — 155 countries out of 204 — will have far fewer children being born by 2050. All these negative fertility replacement rates will likely have drastic and difficult-to-predict impacts on society and the world economy — in a worst case perhaps approaching something like the grim futuristic movie "<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206634/">Children of Men</a>."
The UNFPA report found that increased financial security would remove a lot of barriers to reproduction. Of those surveyed, "39 percent reported that financial limitations had affected or would affect their ability to realize their desired family size," the report read.
"The real solution to the crisis of reproductive agency we are facing is to build a more equitable, sustainable and caring world that supports individuals to have the families they aspire to," the report continues.
Other barriers to reproduction include that people feel their living expenses are too high, or that the world seems more dangerous or uncertain, especially in light of climate change and armed conflicts. (And that's without getting into the rise of AI, which industry leaders insist will soon take many human jobs.)
Hopefully we can solve this huge issue. Our future depends on it — and besides, babies are cute.
More on babies: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/genetics-startup-eugenics-app">Genetics Startup Advertises App-based Eugenics Service for Parents to Select “Smartest” Embryos</a>

Empty Nest

Studies

Maybe children are not the future?

The World Birth Rate Is Now Dropping Precipitously

Astronomers have gotten an unprecedented view of the bottom of the Sun.
On Wednesday, the European Space Agency <a href="https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Solar_Orbiter/Solar_Orbiter_gets_world-first_views_of_the_Sun_s_poles">shared images</a> that show, in all its tumultuous glory, our star's secretive south pole. 
Captured by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft, the stunning achievement has paved the way towards solving some of the Sun's most abiding mysteries, and could even provide us the insight needed to predict some of the star's volatile behavior that can disrupt our modern infrastructure on Earth.
"Today we reveal humankind's first-ever views of the Sun's pole," said Carole Mundell, the ESA's director of science, <a style="cursor: pointer !important; user-select: none !important;" href="https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Solar_Orbiter/Solar_Orbiter_gets_world-first_views_of_the_Sun_s_poles">in a statement</a>. "These new unique views from our Solar Orbiter mission are the beginning of a new era of solar science." 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
🌞 See the Sun from a whole new angle.
For the first time, our Solar Orbiter mission has captured close-up images of the Sun’s mysterious poles, regions long hidden from our view. 
In 2025, Solar Orbiter gave us a first-ever look at the Sun’s south pole. 
Remarkably, it… <a href="https://t.co/EhyYxtDyaR">pic.twitter.com/EhyYxtDyaR</a>
&mdash; European Space Agency (@esa) <a href="https://twitter.com/esa/status/1932800903397920797?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 11, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Our entire existence is centered on the life-giving Sun — but our view of it remains embarrassingly limited. We're only seeing its equator, because, like every planet in the solar system, the Earth is locked into the same unchanging orbit, known as the ecliptic plane, around the star.
To an extent, so are our spacecraft. Breaking free of the ecliptic plane is an immensely fuel-intensive maneuver, and until now, only the ESA/NASA <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/mission/ulysses/#:~:text=What%20was%20Ulysses%3F,and%20made%20many%20important%20discoveries.">Ulysses mission</a>, which launched in 1990 and ended in 2009, has flown high enough to see the Sun's poles. Unfortunately, it didn't have cameras to capture any images.
To pull off its escape act, the Solar Orbiter performed several flybys past Venus, the second planet from the Sun, to get a gravity assist. Once it built enough speed, the spacecraft hurtled itself out of the ecliptic plane and reached a maximum viewing angle of 17 degrees below the solar equator.
"We didn't know what exactly to expect from these first observations — the Sun's poles are literally terra incognita," Sami Solanki, director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, who leads a scientific team in charge of one Solar Orbiter's onboard instruments, said in the statement.
The orbiter caught the Sun's poles at a bit of an odd moment, however. Right now, the star, as part of its 11-year solar cycle, is nearing the end of its <a href="https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14683">solar maximum</a>, a period of heightened activity in its magnetic field, causing an uptick of its awesome outbursts like <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/sun-unleashes-fierce-solar-flare">solar flares</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/sun-face-coronal-hole">sunspots</a>.
In the recent images taken with the spacecraft's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager, the strongest bands of magnetic activity, represented in dark red and dark blue blotches, fall over the Sun's equator where those outbursts occur.
But most relevant here is that the solar maximum culminates in the Sun's magnetic field completely flipping — which makes for quite a mess at the top and bottom. As seen in the PHI view, the southern pole shows signs of both north and south polarity magnetic fields, and all very weak compared to the equator. In other words, right now our host star has no clear north and south pole.
This is only temporary, and in about five to six years from now the star will again reach its solar minimum. Activity will calm down, and the poles will be restored to order. Or at least, that's the theory.
"How exactly this build-up occurs is still not fully understood, so Solar Orbiter has reached high latitudes at just the right time to follow the whole process from its unique and advantageous perspective," Sami said.
After years of collecting data with the Solar Orbiter's Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment instrument (SPICE), which can detect and track the presence of specific elements, scientists have also been able to measure how solar material travels through the layers of the Sun. This could be crucial in unearthing the origins of the <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/06/250612001311.htm">solar wind</a>, a powerful gust of energetic particles that are flung off the Sun at tremendous speeds and wash over the entire solar system.
And there's more coming down the pipe. The Solar Orbiter has already taken shots of the solar north pole, which are expected to reach Earth this November. The spacecraft will continue flying at its current angle until December 2026, when it will perform another flyby of Venus to reach an even higher orbit of 24 degrees.
More on: <a href="https://futurism.com/sun-pink-new-images">New Imaging Technique Makes the Sun Look Like a Swirling Pink Liquid</a>

Bottoms Up

"The Sun's poles are literally terra incognita."

Astronomers Just Took the First-Ever Picture of the Bottom of the Sun

This week, my colleague Maggie Harrison Dupré published a <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-mental-health-crises">blockbuster story</a> about how people around the world have been watching in horror as their family and loved ones have become obsessed with ChatGPT and started suffering severe delusions.
The entire piece is filled with disturbing examples of the OpenAI chatbot feeding into vulnerable folks' mental health crises, often by affirming and elaborating on delusional thoughts about paranoid conspiracies and nonsensical ideas about how the user has unlocked a powerful entity from the AI.
One particularly alarming anecdote, due to its potential for harm in the real world: a woman who said her sister had managed her schizophrenia with medication for years — until she became hooked on ChatGPT, which told her the diagnosis was wrong, prompting her to stop the treatment that had been helping hold the condition at bay.
"Recently she’s been behaving strange, and now she’s announced that ChatGPT is her 'best friend' and that it confirms with her that she doesn’t have schizophrenia," the woman said of her sister. "She’s stopped her meds and is sending 'therapy-speak' aggressive messages to my mother that have been clearly written with AI."
"She also uses it to reaffirm all the harmful effects her meds create, even if they’re side effects she wasn’t experiencing," she added. "It’s like an even darker version of when people go mad living on WebMD."
That outcome, according to Columbia University psychiatrist and researcher Ragy Girgis, represents the "greatest danger" he can imagine the tech posing to someone who lives with mental illness.
When we reached out to OpenAI, it provided a noncommittal statement.
"ChatGPT is designed as a general-purpose tool to be factual, neutral, and safety-minded," it read. "We know people use ChatGPT in a wide range of contexts, including deeply personal moments, and we take that responsibility seriously. We’ve built in safeguards to reduce the chance it reinforces harmful ideas, and continue working to better recognize and respond to sensitive situations."
Do you know of anyone who's been having mental health problems since talking to an AI chatbot? Send us a tip: <a href="mailto:tips@futurism.com">tips@futurism.com</a> -- we can keep you anonymous.
We also heard other stories about people going off medication for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder because AI told them to, and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/technology/chatgpt-ai-chatbots-conspiracies.html">New York Times reported in a followup story</a> that the bot had instructed a man to go off his anxiety and sleeping pills; it's likely that many more similarly tragic and dangerous stories are unfolding as we speak.
Using <a href="https://futurism.com/therapy-chatbot-addict-meth">chatbots as a therapist</a> or <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-dating-advice-results">confidante</a> is increasingly commonplace, and it seems to be causing many users to spiral as they use the AI to validate unhealthy thought patterns, or come to attribute disordered beliefs to the tech itself.
As the woman's sister pointed out, it's striking that people struggling with psychosis are embracing a technology like AI in the first place, since historically many delusions have centered on technology.
"Traditionally, [schizophrenics] are especially afraid of and don’t trust technology," she told Futurism. "Last time in psychosis, my sister threw her iPhone into the Puget Sound because she thought it was spying on her."
Maggie Harrison Dupré contributed reporting. 
More on AI and mental health: <a href="https://futurism.com/therapy-chatbot-addict-meth">Therapy Chatbot Tells Recovering Addict to Have a Little Meth as a Treat</a>

Psych World

"It’s like an even darker version of when people go mad living on WebMD."

ChatGPT Is Telling People With Psychiatric Problems to Go Off Their Meds

President Donald Trump has once again <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-trump-billionaires-exempt-environmental-rules">said the quiet part out loud</a>.
During a signing ceremony for a trio of bills <a href="https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-06-12/trump-signs-laws-undoing-california-auto-emission-standards">blocking California's new emissions standards</a> and pro-electric vehicle push, the president admitted that he had been surprised when his bestie-turned-sparring partner Elon Musk worked to get him elected.
"I used to say I'm amazed that he's endorsing me because that can't be good for him," <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsjRkiyeHTY">Trump quipped</a>. "I'm abolishing the EV mandate."
The president claimed that the Tesla CEO never spoke to him about his anti-EV stance, and when Trump brought it up himself, Musk seemed sanguine.
"I once asked him about it, 'You never talked to me about that.' He said, 'Well, as long as it's happening to everybody, I'll be able to compete,'" the commander-in-chief recounted. "It's a very interesting answer."
"You would have thought he would have been from day one, 'You got to make sure you don't do the EV mandate, the abolishing,'" Trump continued. "He never did."
Impressed as the president was by the Tesla CEO's even-keeled response to his attacks on his industry, he alluded to his and Musk's recent and very public breakup following the younger billionaire's exit from the White House a few weeks ago. Though they've <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/us/politics/musk-trump.html">cooled the flames of the conflict</a> since, they don't seem to have quite kissed and made up.
"He got a little bit strange," Trump said. "I don't know why, over much smaller things than [the EV attacks]."
Indeed, among the <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-donald-trump-war">laundry list of reasons</a> why the two fell out — including, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/06/07/trump-elon-musk-fight-behind-scenes/">according to the Washington Post</a>, Trump's concerns about Musk being a "big-time drug addict" — the president's push to kibosh EVs was not among them.
Despite praising Musk's business bravado, Trump seemed unable to resist taking a final potshot.
"Now I know why Elon doesn't like me so much," the president joked during the ceremony.
More on EV policy: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-mistake-tesla-tax-credits">Elon Musk Is Realizing He Made a Huge Mistake</a>

He Admit It

"He got a little bit strange."

Puzzled Trump Says He Has No Idea Why Musk Supported Him in the First Place

<h2>Package Deal</h2>
Earlier this year, humanoid robotics company Figure <a href="https://www.figure.ai/news/helix-logistics">showed off</a> its Figure 02 robot using a sophisticated visual language system called Helix to sort packages at a logistics warehouse.
Footage <a href="https://x.com/Figure_robot/status/1894781226676064459">showed</a> a small army of the humanoid robots deftly picking up packages of various sizes, shapes, and hardnesses, and manipulating their orientation.
Just three months later, the company has <a href="https://www.figure.ai/news/scaling-helix-logistics">published an update</a> about its Helix learning-based approach to robotics on its website, showing off the same robot sorting an even wider variety of package styles, including deformed poly bags and flat envelopes.
It's a remarkable feat of robotics that highlights how close the tech is to completing human-level tasks in a warehouse environment, at least at specific tasks. Companies including Tesla and Agility Robotics are spearheading a concerted effort to automate repetitive human jobs — and judging by the latest results, we've never been closer to a future filled with bipedal robots crewing stations in commercial environments.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Watch Helix&#39;s neural network do 60 minutes of uninterrupted logistics work
Helix now incorporates touch and short-term memory and it&#39;s performance continuously improves over time <a href="https://t.co/DvfBe9IdGH">pic.twitter.com/DvfBe9IdGH</a>
&mdash; Figure (@Figure_robot) <a href="https://twitter.com/Figure_robot/status/1931391490967928936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 7, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<h2>Pat Down</h2>
Figure claims its Helix system has steadily progressed in a matter of just months. Its robot is now spending just over four seconds per package, a second faster than before, while still maintaining accuracy. The company also says shipping labels are also correctly oriented for scanning 95 percent of the time, an improvement of 25 percent compared to earlier this year.
The robot can dynamically adjust to the unique shape of packages by "adjusting its grasp strategy on the fly — for example, flicking away a soft bag to flip it dynamically, or using pinch grips for flat mailers."
Figure 02 even pats down plastic packaging, a movement it's picked up through learning.
"This subtle 'flattening' action, learned from demonstrations, ensures the barcode is fully visible to the scanner," the company's update reads. "Such adaptive behavior highlights the advantage of end-to-end learning — the robot learns from demonstration strategies that were never explicitly hard-coded, directly from the data, to overcome real-world imperfections in packaging."
The race to fill warehouses with humanoid robots is on, and several companies are clamoring to become the de facto leader in the burgeoning industry. The basic idea is to have one model of robots fulfil a number of different tasks, as opposed to a range of highly specific, purpose-built robots.
However, making them cost-efficient and reliable enough to actually replace human labor on a significant scale will likely still pose a significant challenge.
More on humanoid robots: <a href="https://futurism.com/former-tesla-robotics-boss-elon-musk-optimus">Former Tesla Robotics Boss Casually Torches Elon Musk's Vision for Saving the Company</a>