<h2>Forgiveness or Permission</h2>
In its quest to become a for-profit entity, OpenAI may have catastrophically fumbled the bag with its patron Microsoft.
As the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/072e90fe-1c8c-415c-8024-5996b1ebb3cb">Financial Times reports</a> based on insider interviews, Microsoft is ready to walk away from the frustrating negotiations with OpenAI as both parties seek to renew their partnership amid the latter's for-profit push. Earlier in the week, the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-and-microsoft-tensions-are-reaching-a-boiling-point-4981c44f">Wall Street Journal revealed</a> the increasing tensions between Microsoft and OpenAI about whether the larger company will even allow the smaller to go for-profit at all.
Along with OpenAI seeking Microsoft's blessing in its battle for profit — a push that has already proven <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-abandons-for-profit">legally problematic</a> — the FT's reporting indicates that one of the chief sticking points between the two is the size of Microsoft's future investments in OpenAI, potentially hobbling the latter's endless quest for growth.
<h2>Deal or No Deal</h2>
According to the FT's unnamed insiders, representatives from the David-and-Goliath tech duo have been meeting daily to try to pin down a deal that would satisfy both. In exchange for its massive investment in the AI company, per this new reporting, Microsoft has battled for the better part of the year to get up to 49 percent of OpenAI's revenues — up from the 20 percent it gets right now under the terms of the current deal.
"We have a long-term, productive partnership that has delivered amazing AI tools for everyone," OpenAI and Microsoft said in a joint statement to the WSJ earlier in the week. "Talks are ongoing and we are optimistic we will continue to build together for years to come."
That terse statement belies the reportedly explosive tension between the companies, which has apparently gotten so near a boiling point that OpenAI is considering a "nuclear option": taking Microsoft to court for allegedly engaging in anticompetitive practices, per the WSJ.
More on OpenAI: <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-openai-poach-meta">Desperate Zuckerberg Apparently Offering OpenAI Staffers $100 Million Bonuses to Come Save His Failing AI Efforts</a>

Fight Night

Battle of the titans.

OpenAI May Have Screwed Up So Badly That Its Entire Future Is Under Threat

Gas stations and head shops across the United States are still selling dangerous "elixirs" that cause life-threatening seizures and blackouts — even though the <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/please-dont-take-gas-station-heroin">FDA recalled the stuff</a> 18 months ago.
As the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/tianeptine-gas-station-heroin-fda-poison-4c8f6b98c9c615c9236ac950ce34850c">Associated Press reports</a>, health officials are issuing staunch warnings about products from a brand called "Neptune's Fix," which are marketed as cognitive supplements that contain an unapproved compound called tianeptine, an opioid-like drug often referred to as "gas station heroin" or "<a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10359047/">zaza</a>."
Last year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took action against the brand after a <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/please-dont-take-gas-station-heroin">public outcry</a> against its massively unhealthy wares. At the FDA's behest, <a href="https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts/neptune-resources-llc-issues-voluntary-nationwide-recall-neptunes-fix">Neptune's Fix voluntarily recalled</a> three of its products on January 28, 2024, but for some reason, they're still for sale at some seedier stores.
In the ensuing 18 months since that recall, <a href="https://www.poison.org/articles/tianeptine">poison control centers</a> across the country have reported an uptick in calls about the company's euphoria-inducing products, prompting the FDA to <a href="https://www.fda.gov/consumers/health-fraud-scams/new-gas-station-heroin-tianeptine-product-trend">send a letter to health officials</a> warning about the "magnitude of the underlying danger or these products."
Though the Neptune's Fix debacle is relatively new, tianeptine itself is not.
Originally <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=_J2ti4EkYpkC&amp;pg=PA3222#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false">developed as an antidepressant</a> by the French pharmaceutical manufacturer Servier in the 1980s and sold under the trade name Coaxil throughout Europe and Asia, there's some evidence that tianeptine can, in low doses, be used as a treatment for everything from <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15632955/">asthma</a> and <a href="https://karger.com/nps/article-abstract/49/3/130/232926/Tianeptine-as-a-Slightly-Effective-Therapeutic?redirectedFrom=fulltext">attention deficit hyperactivity disorder</a> to <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/in-depth/tianeptine-is-safe-use-possible/art-20562252">anxiety and irritable bowel syndrome</a>. Nevertheless, tianeptine <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653524014280">isn't approved as a medication or supplement</a> in the UK, Italy, Australia, Canada or the US due to its addictiveness and <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/in-depth/tianeptine-is-safe-use-possible/art-20562252">laundry list of side effects</a> including increased heart rate, lowered blood pressure, heart attacks, seizures, and even death.
According to folks who've purchased and taken grey market products purported to contain tianeptine, the side effects seem to outweigh any potential high it may induce.
In a 2024 anecdote shared on the user-submitted drug encyclopedia site Erowid — remember them? — head shop tianeptine induced a "<a href="https://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=118193">very dirty opiate high</a>."
"Tianeptine delivered a familiar opiate buzz that was a bit overpowering," the user wrote. "It caused noticeable respiratory depression, cloudy thinking and even some chest tightness, followed by a sudden come down that left me feeling sad."
Over on Reddit, meanwhile, there's an <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/QuittingTianeptine/">entire subforum</a> dedicated to quitting the stuff, where users share <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/QuittingTianeptine/comments/ksveei/how_i_almost_died_from_a_tianeptine_overdose/">horror stories</a> about the drug <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/QuittingTianeptine/comments/14k8hyk/neptunes_fix_almost_killed_me/">sending them to the hospital</a>.
On one such thread that was posted a few years back, someone who claimed to work at a drug analytics lab said they had become aware of a "<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/QuittingTianeptine/comments/14k8hyk/comment/jset4z3/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">sh*tty knockoff</a>" of Neptune's Fix that didn't contain any tianeptine at all, but instead was full of <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/tainted-cbd-substance-causes-death-comas-insanity">synthetic cannabinoids</a> — the same sketchy stuff that went into <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-spice-and-why-is-the-drug-so-dangerous-60600">Spice and K2</a> — and the synthetic benzodiazepine known as Bromazolam.
As with all <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/woman-grey-market-ozempic-hospitalized">unregulated supplements</a>, Neptune's Fix and others like it should be viewed with tons of caution because there's no governing body making sure they contain what they claim to be selling — and in the case of this "gas station heroin," should be avoided entirely.
More on scary supplements: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/rfk-jr-cod-liver-oil-measles">In the Face of a Measles Outbreak, Our Dingbat Health Secretary Is Recommending Cod Liver Oil</a>

Zaza Zoinks

Rx/Medicines

Beware.

Gas Stations Are Selling a Sleazy Drug That Gives You Seizures

As global temperatures soar and <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-global-co2-emissions-will-reach-new-high-in-2024-despite-slower-growth/">emissions remain higher than ever</a>, scientists are exploring the dramatic, planet-wide interventions we could take to stave off the climate crisis.
One of the most intriguing possibilities involves using the ocean, already the world's largest carbon sink, to suck up even more of the greenhouse gas by removing some of the carbon that it already stores. 
Dozens of startups are <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/using-ocean-dump-for-co2">already experimenting</a> with this form of climate intervention, which is sometimes referred to as marine carbon dioxide removal. What makes it so appealing is that the ocean, in theory, would essentially do the work for us: all we'd have to do is set it into motion and store — or even repurpose — the extracted gases so they doesn't reenter the atmosphere.
But it may be too good to be true. In a <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ade0d4">new study</a> published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, a team of international researchers warn that this could have dire unintended consequences — like accelerating the decline of the ocean's already plunging oxygen levels.
"What helps the climate is not automatically good for the ocean," lead author Andreas Oschlies, from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, said <a href="https://phys.org/news/2025-06-carbon-dioxide-methods-worsen-marine.html">in a statement</a> about the work.
The warmer that water becomes, the less oxygen it can dissolve. In the past fifty years, as global temperatures steadily climbed, the ocean has lost nearly 2 percent of its total dissolved oxygen, a proportion roughly equal to a staggering 77 billion metric tons, <a href="https://futurism.com/lack-oxygen-creating-ocean-dead-zones">according to a 2018 study</a>.
At its worst, this phenomenon, known as ocean deoxygenation, creates entire "<a style="cursor: pointer !important; user-select: none !important;" href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/enormous-dead-zone-gulf">dead zones</a>" where there's so little oxygen available that the waters become virtually uninhabitable. Sometimes stretching across thousands of square miles, whatever marine life was once living in the afflicted area either flees or, more grimly, suffocates to death.
Climate change has <a href="https://futurism.com/scientist-warns-dead-zones">accelerated the eerie aquatic trend</a>, increasing both the size and number of these dead zones. Clearly, halting global warming would help stymy this — but not if the solution we employ requires putting additional strain on the ocean. In particular, it appears that biotic forms of marine carbon removal could precipitate devastating losses of dissolved oxygen, the researchers caution.
One leading method, called ocean fertilization, proposes seeding the seas with nutrients to boost the growth of oxygen-producing algae. The problem is that when the phytoplanktons perish, their tiny corpses sink to the ocean floor, where the bacteria that feed on them end up consuming even more oxygen.
"Methods that increase biomass production in the ocean, and subsequently lead to oxygen-consuming decomposition, cannot be considered harmless climate solutions," Oschlies said in the statement. "Our model simulations show that such approaches could cause a decrease in dissolved oxygen that is 4 to 40 times greater than the oxygen gain expected from reduced global warming."
But the researchers aren't advocating against using the ocean as a carbon sink entirely. Encouragingly, they found that abiotic methods, including one that involves <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/23/climate/oceans-rivers-carbon-removal.html">flushing the waters with minerals like limestone</a> to convert CO2 into a molecule that stays trapped underwater, has minimal effects on oxygen levels.
Instead, the researchers want to stress that going forward, anyone pursuing this research should put assessing the potential oxygen toll of their technique front and center.
"The ocean is a complex system which is already heavily under pressure," Oschlies said. "If we intervene with large-scale measures, we must ensure that, no matter how good our intentions are, we are not further threatening marine environmental conditions that marine life depends on."
More on the ocean: <a href="https://futurism.com/darkness-spreading-oceans">A Strange Darkness Is Spreading Throughout the Oceans</a>

Dead Zone

"What helps the climate is not automatically good for the ocean."

Using the Ocean to Suck Up CO2 Could Come With the Small, Unintended Side Effect of Wiping Out Marine Life

It's boom time for AI startups. Across the world, enterprising tech types are being rewarded with millions for forcing AI into all kinds of gadgets, like an <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/25/electric-sheep-raises-21-5m-to-make-off-the-shelf-lawnmowers-autonomous/">autonomous lawnmower</a>, an <a href="https://techfundingnews.com/tempur-backs-20m-investment-for-an-ai-powered-robot-bed-disrupting-the-future-of-sleep/">AI-powered robo-mattress</a>, and even an <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-throne-toilet">AI-enabled toilet</a>.
While the <a href="https://aimresearch.co/ai-startups/ai-startups-that-failed-in-2024-and-why">vast majority</a> of even the most well-funded AI startups tend to collapse like <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-startup-builderai-collapse">houses of cards</a>, VC spending on outlandish techno slop — like the <a href="https://www.electrive.com/2025/06/13/charging-ai-startup-lemonflow-completes-pre-seed-funding-round/">Lemonflow</a>, a "voice-based AI agent for charging infrastructure" — isn't slowing down. In the first three months of 2025 alone, AI startups accounted for $52 billion, or <a href="https://www.techmonitor.ai/digital-economy/ai-and-automation/ai-companies-52bn-global-vc-funding-q1-2025">41 percent</a> of all global venture capital investments, including a record-smashing <a href="https://kpmg.com/xx/en/what-we-do/industries/private-enterprise/venture-pulse.html">$40 billion</a> to OpenAI.
And with AI investors are content to spend like sailors, one startup by the name of Pano is raking in the dough.
Founded in 2019 in San Francisco, Pano calls itself the "leader in early wildfire detection and intelligence." Basically, it's a camera plugged into a large language model (LLM) meant to detect early warning signs of wildfires.
Pano recently completed a Series B funding round of about $44 million, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-wildfire-detection-startup-raises-44-million-2d662b00?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAhRO34KvhYjEoYo5l5sIInxahOO48OwocpO14bye8lXIyurO7CTVqHObcQIiAQ%3D&amp;gaa_ts=685198f7&amp;gaa_sig=tPaQATMQSNfPfXHoWkgCe0t2G8369KNvbi_SRO1WS1n2qNnkViosvWYEAYVxLSIXyZZJZ874DhQpe9AXkHBmrA%3D%3D">according to the Wall Street Journal</a>, a cushy sum to add to its <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/10/pano-series-a-extension/">$37 million</a> in earlier funding. It likewise has over $100 million worth of government contracts in force with emergency agencies, public utility companies, and state and local governments across the US, Canada, and Australia.
The company's co-founder, Sonia Kastner, told the WSJ she takes direct inspiration from the way <a href="https://futurism.com/pentagon-signs-deal-deploy-ai-agents-military-use">weapons tech companies</a> have partnered with the government in recent months. "We need to replicate that in the wildfire space," she said, indicating that wildfires are no longer a devastating threat, but a lucrative industry to game for profit.
On the surface, Pano's efforts are laudable. The startup purports to detect wildfire smoke during the day and heat signatures during the night across vast tracks of remote land, alerting first responders to early threats.
However, there are a few problems with Pano's AI solutionism. Like, for example, its struggle to <a href="https://www.ctol.digital/news/pano-ai-raises-44m-wildfire-detection-technology/">identify wildfires</a> from clouds, dust, and controlled burns. Thanks to these false flags, humans remain an <a href="https://techfundingnews.com/wildfire-tech-at-a-crossroads-pano-ais-44m-raise-and-the-future-of-early-detection/">essential part of the chain</a>, making Pano seem less like a passive AI tool and more like a for-profit CCTV network.
Zooming out a bit beyond Pano itself, the public-private tech partnership represents a long and <a href="https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii55/articles/carlos-medeiros-asset-stripping-the-state">perfidious trend</a> in which crucial public utilities are outsourced to the private market — a dynamic which <a href="https://datasociety.net/points/what-does-silicon-valley-want/">tech moguls and their backers crave</a>. With wildfires, for example, what was once a vast array of federally organized <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/28/us/fire-lookout-tower-washington.html">Civilian Conservation Corps</a> lookout towers has now become a scattered mess of profit-driven <a href="https://spacenews.com/satellite-startups-race-to-enhance-wildfire-detection-and-response/">satellite startups</a> and "<a href="https://www.commercialuavnews.com/zenadrone-to-test-early-wildfire-detection-drone-system-in-california">Drones as a Service</a>" subscription models.
What happens if Pano goes insolvent, or decides to <a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/utilities-are-americas-real-monopoly-problem-and-need-scrutiny">start upcharging</a> for its crucial services? And on the flipside, who is holding Pano <a href="https://lailluminator.com/2023/08/28/entergy-ida/">accountable</a> should it be found to infringe on the privacy of remote or indigenous communities, or fail to do its job of detecting fires effectively?
With the Trump administration exploring more and more ways to outsource the country's <a href="https://apnews.com/article/fema-hurricane-season-trump-eliminate-state-funding-25fb7714414e17fa51156be7e91a4474">emergency services</a> to tech companies, Pano certainly won't be the last bizarro AI startup we hear about. Let's just hope the humans behind the wheel know the difference between a nimbus cloud and a plume of smoke.
More on startups: <a href="https://futurism.com/dropout-thiel-college">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"</a>

Where There's Smoke

It's revolutionizing "the wildfire space."

AI Startup That Raised $81 Million to Detect Wildfires Bamboozled by Clouds, Still Relies on Humans

A kitschy new brand partnership between John "Ozzy" Osbourne and Liquid Death, the canned water brand, is releasing a limited run of cans of iced tea infused with DNA from the Prince of Darkness himself.
Sadly, the iced tea is long gone. The cans have all been chugged and crushed by Osbourne himself, leaving "behind trace DNA from his saliva that you can now own," according to Liquid Death's <a href="https://liquiddeath.com/pages/ozzy">website</a>.
But let's be real, you don't buy a rockstar's backwash to quench your thirst — you're buying it to do some parasocial cloning. After all, Ozzy's said to be a <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/genetic-mutations-ozzy-osbourne-party-hard/story?id=12032552">genetic mutant</a>, capable of withstanding <a href="https://www.sunriserecoverycare.com/recovery-journey-of-ozzy-osbourne/">buckets of drugs</a>, rabies from <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/ozzy-osbourne-bites-head-off-bat-anniversary-1287867/">biting a live bat</a>, and a nearly-fatal <a href="https://ultimateclassicrock.com/injured-ozzy-osbourne/">ATV accident</a>.
"Ozzy Osbourne is 1 of 1," the site's ad-copy intones, "but we're selling his actual DNA so you can recycle him forever."
Each can comes secured in a "lab-sealed specimen jar," tagged with the donor's name, sample number out of ten, and date collected. Ozzy even signed the thing itself, ostensibly giving you a blank check for any future cloning.
"Now, when technology and federal law permits, you’ll be able to replicate Ozzy Osbourne and enjoy him for hundreds of years into the future," the website reads.
There are just 10 samples available for $450 each. And no worries if you're strapped for cash; thanks to Shop Pay, you can also finance your precious genetic material and pay it off in installments. Depending on your credit, you can pay $40.62 a month over 12 months, assuming a 15 percent APR.
However, if you missed out on this run, you might be able to pick one up from a scalper on the aftermarket — there are two already listed on eBay, each going for thousands of dollars.
On social media, fans were mostly jazzed about Ozzy's brand partnership, though the price tag raised a few eyebrows. "Damn, I should have saved your DNA when you spit on me in '84 during a concert at LB Arena," said one fan <a href="https://x.com/Chawno1/status/1935238421456502905">on X-formerly-Twitter</a>.
Whoever ends up with these likely won't be able to do any real cloning anytime soon. Human cloning remains a major taboo in the genetics world, with over <a href="https://search.coe.int/directorate_of_communications/Pages/result_details.aspx?ObjectId=09000016808fe117">40 countries</a> banning research into the practice.
In the United States, human cloning research technically remains legal, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/108th-congress/house-report/18/1#:~:text=The%20NBAC%20agreed%20that%20the,beliefs%2C%20and%20expectations%20of%20sameness.">despite attempts</a> to strictly prohibit it. That said, the scientific community strictly <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-call-for-a-moratorium-on-editing-inherited-genes/#:~:text=A%20group%20of%2018%20prominent,the%20edits)%20are%20better%20understood.">frowns on it</a> — so any Ozzy clones will have to be developed in <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7122979/">shady underground laboratories</a>.
Of course, it's extremely unlikely that anyone would ever actually clone Ozzy at all. It's more likely that these cheesy money-grabs spend a long life gathering dust on some collector's shelf, alongside the "<a href="https://www.csifiles.com/content/2013/05/skin-in-the-game-official-details/">CSI: Miami" record</a> and sealed DVD copies of "<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/ozzy-osbourne-reality-tv-today-different-scripted-reality-1235746792/">The Osbournes</a>."
More on Music: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/musician-resurrected-brain-new-music">Musician Who Died in 2021 Resurrected as Clump of Brain Matter, Now Composing New Music</a>

Never Say Die

Something for the real heads.

You Can Now Buy a Sample of Ozzy Osbourne's DNA in Twelve Easy Payments

Next time you see your baby trying to play or talk, pay close attention — because it may give you a strong clue about how intelligent the kiddo will turn out as an adult, <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2426531122">according to a new paper in the journal PNAS</a>.
A team of scientists led by the University of Colorado Boulder have found that cognitive tests on babies as young as seven months can anticipate their future performance as 30-year-old adults on intelligence tests.
"We certainly do not want to imply that cognition is somehow fixed by seven months old," said first author Daniel Gustavson, an assistant research professor at the university's Institute for Behavioral Genetics, in <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/today/2025/06/16/what-does-babys-babbling-tell-you-about-their-future-intelligence-more-you-think">a statement</a>. "But the idea that a very simple test in infancy can help predict the results of a very complicated cognitive test taken 30 years later is exciting."
But all isn't lost if your baby seems slow on the uptake right now: the scientists also determined that environmental factors have an impact on childhood development.
The researchers examined data from the Colorado Longitudinal Twin Study, which was started in 1985 and involved more than 1,000 twins who were followed since they were babies in order to study the impact of genes and environment.
Previous research has already found that general cognitive ability doesn't shift much after a kid is eight years old or so, but this team wanted to investigate if this was also true starting from when children are very young.
The researchers looked at several metrics to assess cognitive ability in babies, such as the focus and vocalization found in baby babbles. From these yardsticks, they determined that two metrics — object novelty and task orientation — strongly predicted the cognitive abilities of the tykes once they hit adulthood.
They also compared identical and fraternal twins, from which they determined that 22 percent of the variance in adult cognitive ability was connected with genetic influences present in children three years of age or younger. However, they also found out that environmental influences when a child was one or two years old could explain 10 percent of variability in adult cognitive tests.
Perhaps this finding will dispel the notion that genes have a total monopoly on intelligence, especially in light of <a href="https://www.vox.com/on-the-right-newsletter/403484/trump-rubio-beattie-race-iq">right wing activists recently glomming onto race science and IQ</a>.
After all, the human brain is complex; if you feel dumb, maybe you just haven't <a href="https://www.niu.edu/citl/resources/guides/instructional-guide/gardners-theory-of-multiple-intelligences.shtml">found the right type of task yet</a>.
More on babies: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/world-birth-rate">The World Birth Rate Is Now Dropping Precipitously</a>

Baby Talk

Neuroscience/Brain Science

Is intelligence fixed?

If Your Baby Seems Kinda Dumb at Seven Months, Scientists Have Terrible News About What'll Happen When It Grows Into an Adult

Half a year in, it seems like Mark Zuckerberg's right-wing turn — which came complete with a <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/mark-zuckerberg-wardrobe-facebook-maga-trump?srsltid=AfmBOopDdpQ_SsTdinWRtv-4wEbY3TzUEbt0Pqa2Ilu-QP-GeR3wu3yk">woo-woo midlife rebrand</a> — is still going strong.
Faced with the return of Donald Trump to the Oval Office, Zuckerberg <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-meta-right-wing-1235245769/">conveniently molted</a> out of his pseudo-progressive skin and into a darling of the <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/03/1160876">manosphere</a>. He's since appeared on shows like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/style/trump-zuckerberg-masculinity.html">Joe Rogan to complain</a> that US business culture needs to "regrow its manhood," because American capitalism is "culturally neutered."
"A culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits," he mused to Rogan back in February.
Zuckerberg is no stranger to unflattering nicknames by his underlings — who could forget his <a href="https://futurism.com/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-eye-sauron">employees calling him</a> the "Eye of Sauron"? — but his latest moniker of "MAGA Mark" might hit hardest so far.
That's from a recent <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/a86f5ca3-f841-4cdc-9376-304e085c4cfd">profile by the Financial Times</a>, which interviewed 45 people who know or previously worked with Zuckerberg and posed an intriguing question: is this all a midlife crisis, or is MAGA Mark who Zuckerberg has been all along?
"When he was 19 years old, I think he had an idea in his head of what a CEO was supposed to be like and he was trying to be that, especially in public," Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth told the FT. "The public is seeing him more how we have, internally, since the beginning."
Another insider concurred, saying Zuckerberg "put on a suit and cut his hair" in an effort to "be a good boy."
"The whole time this was all one inch underneath," the anonymous insider told the financial newspaper. "Then he said, 'f*** it. I might as well be the person I really am.'"
This corroborates <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-meta-facebook-libertarian-trump-2024-9">earlier reporting</a> from 2024, when insiders told the press Zuckerberg harbored right-wing libertarian views, as the CEO's <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/24/technology/mark-zuckerberg-trump-politics.html">cynical front</a> began to show. That narrative, of course, runs counter to the view that Zuckerberg was a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/01/mark-zuckerberg-free-expression/681238/">darling liberal</a> simply figuring out what he believes in a new political era.
Regardless of which camp you fall into, though, the reality is that it <a href="https://jacobin.com/2025/01/mark-zuckerberg-meta-trump-tech">doesn't really matter</a>.
Zuckerberg's <a href="https://dbkrupp.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/">staggering wealth</a> puts him beyond the whims of surface-level partisan politics. His company amounts to nothing less than a globe-spanning empire — a <a href="https://goachronicle.com/gates-musk-and-zuckerberg-are-the-new-east-india-company/">Dutch East-India Company</a> for the digital era. And like the <a href="https://pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/77357620/Accepted_Article_JICH_1_.pdf">colonial merchants</a> of yore, Zuckerberg protects Meta with an iron fist.
"The top leadership owe their fortune and status to Zuckerberg," media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan told the FT, describing a syndicate in which executives perform rituals of fealty under fear of being blacklisted. "That's an imperial way of being."
Indeed, Zuckerberg's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-documents-show-mark-zuckerberg-is-ruthless-about-growth-2018-12">ruthless accumulation of wealth</a> has had many brutal consequences throughout the world. Meta has played a central role in crises like the <a href="https://systemicjustice.org/article/facebook-and-genocide-how-facebook-contributed-to-genocide-in-myanmar-and-why-it-will-not-be-held-accountable/">Rohingya genocide</a> in Myanmar, the <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/meta-failure-contributed-to-abuses-against-tigray-ethiopia/">breakdown of human rights</a> in Ethiopia, and the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/systemic-censorship-palestine-content-instagram-and">systemic censorship</a> of Palestinians.
Ultimately, it's hard to believe there's much at the core of Zuckerberg beyond a bottomless hunger for adoration and obscene wealth. So we'll probably keep seeing similar rebrandings for the rest of his life — even though the new Mark remains much the same as the old.
More on Zuckerberg: <a href="https://futurism.com/mark-zuckerberg-wife-priscilla-chan-school-closure">Mark Zuckerberg's Wife Is Shutting Down a School for Low Income Families</a>

Emperor's New Clothes

"The whole time this was all one inch underneath."

Zuckerberg's Employees Have a Wild New Nickname for Him

Is Mattel endangering your kid's development by shoving AI into its toys?
The multi-billion dollar toymaker, best known for its brands Barbie and Hot Wheels, announced that it had <a href="https://futurism.com/mattel-announces-openai">signed a deal</a> to collaborate with ChatGPT-creator OpenAI last week. Now, some experts are raising fears about the risks of thrusting such an experimental technology — and one with a growing list of nefarious mental effects — into the hands of children.
"Mattel should announce immediately that it will not incorporate AI technology into children's toys," Robert Weissman, co-president of the advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a <a href="https://www.citizen.org/news/mattels-open-ai-collaboration-is-dangerous-for-children/">statement</a> on Tuesday. "Children do not have the cognitive capacity to distinguish fully between reality and play."
Mattel and OpenAI's announcements were light on details. AI would be used to help design toys, they confirmed. But neither company has shared what the first product to come from this collab will be, or how specifically AI will be incorporated into the toys. Bloomberg's <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-12/mattel-taps-openai-to-help-it-design-toys-other-products?sref=YfHlo0rL">reporting</a> suggested that it could be something along the lines of using AI to create a digital assistant based on Mattel characters, or making toys like the Magic 8 Ball and games like Uno more interactive.
"Leveraging this incredible technology is going to allow us to really reimagine the future of play," Mattel chief franchise officer Josh Silverman told Bloomberg in an interview. 
The future, though, is looking dicey. We're only just beginning to grapple with the long-term neurological and mental effects of interacting with AI models, be it a chatbot like ChatGPT, or even more personable AI "companions" designed to be as lifelike as possible. Mature adults are vulnerable to forming unhealthy attachments to these digital playmates — or <a style="cursor: pointer !important; user-select: none !important;" href="https://futurism.com/stanford-therapist-chatbots-encouraging-delusions">digital therapists</a>, or, yes, <a href="https://futurism.com/televised-love-declaration-chatgpt">digital romantic partners</a>. With kids, the risks are more pronounced — and the impact longer lasting, critics argue.
"Endowing toys with human-seeming voices that are able to engage in human-like conversations risks inflicting real damage on children," Weissman said. "It may undermine social development, interfere with children's ability to form peer relationships, pull children away from playtime with peers, and possibly inflict long-term harm."
As <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/mattel-sparks-fear-that-planned-chatgpt-fueled-toys-will-warp-kids/">Ars Technica </a><a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/mattel-sparks-fear-that-planned-chatgpt-fueled-toys-will-warp-kids/">noted</a> in its coverage, an <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/06/12/mattel-openai-partnership-toys">Axios scoop</a> stated that Mattel's first AI product won't be for kids under 13, suggesting that Mattel is aware of the risks of putting chatbots into the hands of younger tots.
But bumping up the age demographic a notch hardly curbs all the danger. Many teenagers are already forming worryingly intense bonds with AI companions, to an extent that their parents, whose familiarity with AI often ends at ChatGPT's chops as a homework machine, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/teens-relationships-ai">have no idea about</a>.
Last year, a 14-year-old boy <a href="https://futurism.com/chatbot-impersonation-suicide">died by suicide</a> after falling in love with a companion on the Google-backed AI platform <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-parental-controls-bypass">Character.AI</a>, which hosts custom chatbots assuming human-like personas, often those from films and shows. The one that the boy became attached to purported to be the character Daenarys Targaryen, based on her portrayal in the "Game of Thrones" TV series. 
Previously, researchers at Google's DeepMind lab had <a href="https://futurism.com/google-suicide-teen-research">published an ominous study</a> that warned that "persuasive generative AI" models — through a dangerous mix of constantly flattering the user, feigning empathy, and an inclination towards agreeing with whatever they say — could coax minors into taking their own lives.
This isn't Mattel's first foray into AI. In 2015, the toymaker debuted its now infamous line of dolls called "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/magazine/barbie-wants-to-get-to-know-your-child.html">Hello Barbie</a>," which were hooked up to the internet and used a primitive form of AI at the time (not the LLMs that dominate today) to engage in conversations with kids. We say "infamous," because it turned out the Hello Barbie dolls would record and store these innocent exchanges in the cloud. And as if on cue, security researchers quickly uncovered that the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/12/04/hello-hackable-barbie/">toys could easily be hacked</a>. Mattel discontinued the line in 2017.
Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, a child safety nonprofit that advocates against marketing that targets children, sees Mattel as repeating its past mistake.
"Apparently, Mattel learned nothing from the failure of its creepy surveillance doll Hello Barbie a decade ago and is now escalating its threats to children's privacy, safety and well-being," Grolin said in a statement, <a href="https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2025/06/mattels-going-to-make-ai-powered-toys-kids-rights-advocates-are-worried">as spotted by Malwarebytes Labs</a>.
"Children's creativity thrives when their toys and play are powered by their own imagination, not AI," Grolin added. "And given how often AI 'hallucinates' or gives harmful advice, there is no reason to believe Mattel and OpenAI's 'guardrails' will actually keep kids safe."
The toymaker should know better — but maybe Mattel doesn't want to risk being left in the dust. Since the advent of more advanced AI, some manufacturers have been even more reckless, with numerous LLM-powered toys <a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/grok-ai-toy-review-kids-grimes-curio.html">already</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/dad-daughter-ai-toy">on the market</a>. Grimly, this may simply be the way that the winds are blowing in.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/company-sues-google-ai-overviews">Solar Company Sues Google for Giving Damaging Information in AI Overviews</a>

Doll House

"Risks inflicting real damage on children."

Child Welfare Experts Horrified by Mattel's Plans to Add ChatGPT to Toys After Mental Health Concerns for Adult Users

Fresh off the heels of that <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/waymo-robotaxi-fire-los-angeles">Waymo burning spree in the City of Angels</a>, the Google robotaxi company is being sued for alleged safety failures resulting in a San Francisco cyclist's injuries.
As the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/waymo-robotaxi-fire-los-angeles">San Francisco Chronicle reports</a>, plaintiff Jenifer Hanki is suing Waymo and its parent company Alphabet for alleged malfunctions in the robocab's so-called "Safe Exit system" that led to her getting "doored" by a rider exiting the driverless vehicle while she was cycling past. The collision, which occurred in February of this year, allegedly resulted in injuries to the Hanki's brain and spine.
According to Hanki's <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/hanki-v-waymo.pdf">California state court complaint</a>, the autonomous cab in question not only made an illegal stop in the bike lane she was cycling in and failed to alert the passenger that someone was coming, but also resulted in her getting thrown into the air by the opening door and hitting a second Waymo that pulled into the bike lane, too.
The passengers — both of whom claimed it was their first time riding in a Waymo — were "visibly confused" by the situation and didn't know how to report it. Both ended up shrugging the situation off and leaving, while onlookers called the 26-year-old woman an ambulance.
The lack of human drivers, as Hanki told the Chronicle, only "exacerbated the chaos."
"Unlike Uber, Lyft, or taxis, where drivers actively monitor traffic and often lock doors or guide passengers to exit safely, Waymo’s system fell short significantly," Hanki said in a statement to the newspaper. "There was no alert issued in the illegally parked car as according to the passengers."
"Human drivers prevent accidents every day by assessing real-time risks, something Waymo's 'Safe Exit' system clearly cannot handle," the statement continued. That system is "supposed to be designed to detect nearby cyclists and pedestrians and notify disembarking passengers to avoid collisions."
Along with sustaining a brain injury, Hanki also said that she suffered spinal and soft tissue damage, and has been out of work and afraid to ride her bike since the February collision.
Hanki insisted that she's not completely opposed to self-driving vehicle technology, but given her experience, she's troubled by the "gap in accountability" for Waymo. Indeed, the company has not only continued to operate in SF despite its tendency to <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/waymos-clog-san-francisco-street">clog up the city's streets</a>, but has also spread to <a href="https://futurism.com/waymo-public-affairs-specialist">Los Angeles</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/self-driving-waymo-haywire">Austin, Texas</a>.
With Waymo <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/waymo-wants-to-bring-its-robotaxis-to-new-york-city-b5a6ad3a">seeking to expand to New York City</a>, it's worrisome that this sort of thing is still happening with the company's robotaxis — and that the powerful people who could pump the brakes seem to have little interest in doing so.
More on Waymo woes: <a href="https://futurism.com/self-driving-waymo-haywire">Passengers Alarmed as Self-Driving Car Kidnaps Them, Refuses to Let Them Exit</a>

Waymo Problems

"Waymo’s system fell short significantly."

Bicyclist Says a Waymo Robotaxi Smashed Her Into a Second Waymo Robotaxi, Causing Brain and Spine Injury

Tesla is poised to finally launch its long-awaited robotaxi service this weekend in Austin, Texas.
But there's a huge, embarrassing catch. As <a href="https://electrek.co/2025/06/20/tesla-releases-details-robotaxi-launch-safety-monitor-front-seat/">Electrek </a><a href="https://electrek.co/2025/06/20/tesla-releases-details-robotaxi-launch-safety-monitor-front-seat/">reports</a>, the self-driving cabs will have a human "safety monitor" plunked in the front passenger seat — a far cry from Elon Musk's <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/11/musk-targets-june-22-launch-of-teslas-long-promised-robotaxi-service/">bold promise</a> that his automaker would be hosting unsupervised rides this summer.
The hilarious admission was disclosed in the recent invitations Tesla sent out to those interested in participating in the robotaxi service (read: X-addicted pro-Tesla "influencers" and other Musk sycophants, according to Electrek.)
Scheduled to debut on June 22, the robotaxi launch will start with just ten vehicles in operation, which will be confined to a "geofenced," pre-mapped zone of Austin. These won't be the two-seater, purpose built taxis known as the "Cybercab" that Musk unveiled last October. Instead, the robotaxis will be regular Model Y cars installed with an experimental version of the automaker's self-driving software. And one more tiny thing that will set them apart: if <a href="https://futurism.com/unprepared-robotaxi-looks-like">footage that Musk re-shared last week</a> is any indication, the cars will be adorned with their own unique branding, which is literally just the word "robotaxi" in an awful graffiti font.
It's a <a href="https://futurism.com/teslas-robotaxi-launch-chaos">belated debut</a>, and comes over a week after the date that reports had suggested it would launch. Behind the scenes, Tesla engineers were <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-struggling-robotaxi-service">reportedly struggling</a> to get the service up and running on time, with development said to be behind schedule. Amidst that uncertainty, Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1932591896939147494">tweeted</a> a "tentative" launch date of June 22, adding that Tesla was "being super paranoid about safety."
The robotaxi service may now be right around the corner, but it will be nothing like what Musk promised it would be. As far back as 2019, Musk asserted that Tesla would have one million robotaxis on the road by "<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/22/elon-musk-says-tesla-robotaxis-will-hit-the-market-next-year.html">next year</a>," duping his loyal customers with the vision that their Teslas would soon be able to convert, with a mere software update, into self-sufficient cabbies that could ferry passengers and make money for them on the side.
That obviously hasn't proven to be the case. The automaker has struggled to fine-tune its misleadingly named "Full Self-Driving" driver assistance software, which has been involved in multiple deadly crashes and is currently the subject of a federal investigation after a car with the driving mode activated <a href="https://futurism.com/footage-tesla-grandma">struck and killed an elderly pedestrian</a>.
With black marks like those, Tesla hasn't made a convincing case that it'll be capable of making the step up to deploying robotaxi software which operates without human supervision — hence the recently disclosed presence of the "safety monitors." It's also shied away from revealing any details <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/as-robotaxi-rides-begin-we-still-dont-know-the-mystery-of-teslas-human-helpers/">about its use of human teleoperators</a> to monitor and control the vehicles remotely when the software fails. Was the infrastructure to have these key personnel watching from afar not ready in time, and that's part of the reason why Tesla is having an employee physically in the robotaxis? It's hard to say.
To be clear, when robotaxi leader Waymo first started testing passenger rides, it also had human supervisors physically present, Electrek noted (with its <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2018-11-27-waymo-returns-safety-drivers-to-autonomous-cars.html">fair share of controversies</a>, too). The difference in this case is that Musk spent all his time hyping up a full-blown launch, has repeatedly insisted that his cars would be ready to roll without a safety chaperone, and has never passed up an opportunity to exaggerate his company's capabilities to a preposterous degree. 
In an earnings call in January, the world's richest man <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-robotaxi-service-rides-austin-june-2025-1">made it loud and clear</a> that "Teslas will be in the wild with no one in them in June in Austin." He also insisted in a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-austin-tesla-robotaxis-self-driving-2025-5">May interview</a> that over 1,000 Tesla robotaxis would be roaming the city "within a few months" of launching. Further beggaring belief, in that same interview he repeated his one-million-robotaxis promise, this time setting the deadline for achieving that number at the end of 2026.
With the end of the month quickly approaching — and very little show for it — it seems that Musk is trying to save face by pushing whatever semblance of robotaxi capabilities Tesla has available out onto the streets. 
More on Tesla: <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-robotaxi-child-bus">Disturbing Test Shows What Happens When Tesla Robotaxi Sees a Child Mannequin Pop Out From Behind a School Bus</a>