Researchers have found that human stem cells are constantly under stress in the microgravity of space — activating hidden, ancient sections of DNA called the "dark genome."
In a <a href="https://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/fulltext/S1934-5909(25)00270-X">study</a> published in the journal Cell Stem Cell last week, a team of researchers led by Sanford Stem Cell Institute director Catriona Jamieson used a cellphone-sized device on board the International Space Station to watch how stem cells behave in space for the first time.
They found that donated bone marrow stem cells from hip replacement surgery patients aged faster on board the space station than samples back on Earth, which could deteriorate astronauts' ability to regenerate in orbit.
It's a sobering finding, bolstering a growing body of evidence that space radiation and microgravity could have a litany of associated health risks — and representing yet another risk factor in our plans to spend more time traveling deeper into space.
Previous research has also found that spending time in microgravity can lead to <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/space-astronaut-bones">bone loss</a>, <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/astronauts-brains-cognitive-slowdown">muted cognitive abilities</a>, and <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/space-tourist-vision-deteriorate">deteriorating vision</a>.
"In space, stem cells decline in function," Jamieson <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/05/science/human-stem-cells-aging-spaceflight">told CNN</a>. "They actually reduce their ability to renew themselves or regenerate, and that’s an important thing to be able to know for long-term space missions."
The findings could have important implications for astronauts' health, the researchers warn, especially on astronauts' immune system.
"It’s important to study stem cell health and see who’s likely to be able to withstand the rigors of space — it’s stressful to get up, it’s stressful to come down, and it’s stressful to be up there," Jamieson told CNN.
What's accelerating this decline is the "dark genome" inherent in our DNA, which was left behind by "retroviruses that invaded our genomes thousands and thousands of years ago and represent 55 percent of our DNA," as Jamieson told CNN.
"They send the stem cells into a death spiral," she added. "The cells just feel overstressed. They have a crisis. They age too quickly."
Fortunately, now that the researchers have identified the issue, Jamieson and her colleagues are already working on clinical trials for medications that could suppress this aging process.
According to CNN, an upcoming study has also found that stem cells may be able to recover once back on Earth, allowing astronauts to undo the harmful effects of microgravity.
Interestingly, these "countermeasures" could even "accelerate the pace" of cancer research, Jamieson told the broadcaster — meaning that protecting the health of astronauts could lead to positive outcomes for patients back on Earth, as well.
More on astronaut health: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/astronauts-brains-cognitive-slowdown">Something Is Malfunctioning With Astronauts' Brains</a>

Deteriorating Space Cells

Studies

Their cells are sent into a "death spiral."

When Astronauts Enter Space, a "Dark Genome" Activates in Their DNA

After vowing to create a "<a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-building-truth-seeking-ai">maximum truth-seeking</a>" AI, Elon Musk appears to now be sacking the people who built it for him.
Slack screenshots <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/xai-management-shakeup-data-annotation-team-2025-9">leaked to Business Insider</a> show that the accounts of at least nine high-level employees with the data annotation team at xAI, Musk's OpenAI competitor, were deactivated over the weekend, in what seems like a major culling at the lab that built the social network's infamous chatbot, Grok.
Those people, who weren't named by BI, previously worked on the human data management team that oversaw the 1,500 or so workers and contractors that made up xAI's "AI tutor" team, which is essentially tasked with training Grok how to be more intelligent for anywhere from $35 to $65 per hour,<a href="https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/xai/jobs/4621682007"> per the company's career page</a> . As <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/xai-grok-training-facial-expressions-skippy-employees-react-2025-7">BI reported earlier this year</a>, those tutors have, to their chagrin, occasionally been asked to scan their faces for AI training purposes.
Sifting through LinkedIn profiles associated with the names of the employees whose profiles had been deactivated, the website identified roughly a dozen people who had worked on Grok's human data managerial team. Many of them had posted on Slack as recently as September 5, the article notes.
Among those whose Slacks were deactivated was a supervisor who oversaw the rest of the managers, BI continued — and they worked on data annotation at Tesla's Autopilot division prior to joining xAI.
Along with those Slack deactivations, multiple employees told the website that workers have been individually called in for meetings with supervisors. In those one-on-ones, the workers have been asked — much like when Musk was <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/02/22/nx-s1-5305834/elon-musk-federal-employees-email-opm">working in Donald Trump's presidential administration</a> earlier this year — what they've been working on and how they add value to xAI.
Those meetings, one worker old BI, have caused a "sense of panic" among the tutors.
xAI didn't respond to BI's request for comment, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/06/style/elon-musk-public-relations.html">common practice</a>.
Grok has been the subject of numerous scandals in recent months, including the "MechaHitler" debacle <a href="https://futurism.com/grok-mocks-developers-racist-posts">earlier this summer</a> when the chatbot started targeting people deemed to have Jewish-sounding names, using racial slurs, and calling for a second Holocaust.
Were those managers fired for letting Grok go off the rails so badly? Or is Musk scaling down for some other reason? We'll have to wait and see — but we'll be watching.
More on Grok: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-grok-charlie-kirk-misinformation">Elon Musk's Grok AI Spread Ludicrous Misinformation After Charlie Kirk's Shooting, Saying Kirk Survived and Video Was Fake</a>

Fire in the Hole

Something fishy is going on at xAI.

Elon Musk Appears to Now Be Firing the People Behind Grok

NASA's interim leader Sean Duffy didn't make it through a single sentence in his announcement that the agency's Mars Perseverance rover had <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-mars-rover-detected-possible-signs-life">spotted "potential biosignatures" on the Red Planet</a> last year without <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-life-mars-trump">sucking up to president Donald Trump</a>.
While we're still far from a definitive conclusion about current or ancient life on Mars, it was an exciting finding, with a sampled rock containing minerals closely associated with Earth-based microbial life.
The only problem? The Trump administration has made it clear that it's not interested in returning the samples taken by NASA's Perseverance rover back to Earth for laboratory analysis.
The agency's Mars Sample Return mission had been a hot-button topic for years, with lawmakers <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-mars-sample-return-mission-cost">balking at the proposed plan's astronomical price tag</a> of <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-sets-path-to-return-mars-samples-seeks-innovative-designs/">$11 billion</a>. But the Trump administration wants to <a href="https://www.space.com/space-exploration/mars-rovers/the-trump-administration-wants-to-cancel-nasas-mars-sample-return-mission-experts-say-thats-a-major-step-back">nix the mission altogether</a> in its <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-budget-proposal-brutal-cuts-nasa">potentially devastating</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-budget-nasa-horrifying">2026 budget proposal</a>, alongside dozens of <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-shut-down-spacecraft-orbiting-mars">other planetary science missions</a>.
In other words, as much as Duffy glazes Trump publicly, in reality, Trump is our planet's number one obstacle to following up on NASA's blockbuster findings about life on Mars.
As <a href="https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/09/nasa-found-intriguing-rocks-on-mars-so-where-does-that-leave-mars-sample-return/#comments">Ars Technica reports</a>, Duffy had very little to add when needled by reporters this week about the Trump administration's commitment to returning the Mars samples, clumsily avoiding making any promises.
"What we're going to do is look at our budget, so we look at our timing, and you know, how do we spend money better?" he told one reporter. "And you know, what technology do we have to get samples back more quickly? And so that's a current analysis that's happening right now."
Duffy also reiterated that the Trump administration was pouring all of its resources into sending "our boots to the Moon and to Mars" — efforts that would be far more complex, expensive, and time-intensive than a sample return mission. (And that's if sending astronauts to the Red Planet is <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-city-mars-death-catastrophe">even feasible in the first place</a>.)
To experts, canceling the Mars Sample Return mission would be an enormous and costly mistake.
"Our understanding of Mars has gotten to the point that the questions we're asking can best be addressed with returned samples," University of Colorado Boulder senior research scientist Bruce Jakosky <a href="https://www.space.com/space-exploration/mars-rovers/the-trump-administration-wants-to-cancel-nasas-mars-sample-return-mission-experts-say-thats-a-major-step-back">told Space.com</a> earlier this year.
"To decide not to return them, or to put it off to an indefinite future time with human missions would be to take a major step back in exploring the solar system and the universe and in continuing to develop our scientific understanding of the world around us," he added.
Jakosky also explained that such a mission could lay important groundwork for future crewed missions to the Red Planet, and "allow us to solve important problems in planetary protection so that we don't put the Earth at risk from possible Martian microbes."
Instead, the Trump administration wants to award the private space industry $1 billion to send the first humans to Mars.
What that plan looks like remains uncertain as ever — but considering the president's complicated relationship with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, there's a chance NASA will attempt to tap the space firm's interplanetary Starship spacecraft for such a journey.
But if Musk's abysmal track record when it comes to timelines is anything to go by, sending a crew to Mars could take a very long time. The company has encountered major headwinds in its efforts to turn its Starship super heavy launch platform into a reality.
And considering the major steps China has taken in its efforts to explore the Moon and Mars, there's a good chance the <a href="https://futurism.com/china-land-astronauts-moon-beat-nasa">United States could be beaten to the punch</a>. China is hoping to launch its own Mars sample return <a href="https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202507/23/content_WS68803af3c6d0868f4e8f45d3.html#:~:text=BEIJING%2C%20July%2022%20%2D%2D%20China's,to%20the%20mission's%20chief%20scientist.">as soon as 2028</a>.
During this week's press conference, Ars senior space reporter Eric Berger asked Duffy whether he was comfortable with losing such a key achievement to its geopolitical rival.
Duffy was seemingly unprepared, falling far short of making any commitments.
"We're making the right calls for America and for our partners," the former TV host assured. "And again, we lead, and we are going to continue to lead, but it's always important that we keep pushing. We have to push because we are in another space race."
More on NASA: <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-life-mars-trump">NASA Announces Possible Discovery of Life on Mars by Comically Sucking Up to Trump</a>

Sample Return on Investment

Seriously, Trump?

Now That NASA Found Signs of Life on Mars, It's Clear Trump Made a Massive Error

Elon Musk's tunnel-digging firm The Boring Company's operations in Las Vegas were suspended after a worker sustained a "crushing injury."
As local fire department and OSHA spokespeople <a href="https://fortune.com/2025/09/11/boring-company-job-site-injury-reported-safety/">told Fortune</a>, authorities received a call about an "industrial/machinery incident" on Wednesday evening. The injured worker had to be lifted out of the tunnel using an on-site crane and transported to a local hospital.
"The patient is reported to be stable," a spokeswoman for the patient told Fortune.
It's yet another example of the poor safety record of Musk's many businesses. Both SpaceX and Tesla have faced significant criticism for <a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/spacex-musk-safety/">soaring injury rates</a> and workers being forced to work in <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/tesla-racism-sexual-harassment/">poor conditions</a>.
An ongoing investigation into the latest Boring Company incident has ground operations to a halt at the company's construction site along Paradise Road in Las Vegas. The company is hoping to expand its tunnel network to the city's airport, as part of its approved plans to dig a 68-mile and 105-station transit system, <a href="https://www.boringcompany.com/vegas-loop">dubbed the "Vegas Loop</a>."
It's a highly ambitious plan, aiming to cut travel time from the Harry Reid International Airport to the Las Vegas Convention Center down to just five minutes.
But considering the company has only completed 3.5 miles of tunnels below the convention center over the last six years, it may not be up to the task.
The Boring Company has <a href="https://sanantonioreport.org/san-antonio-airport-downtown-tunnel-elon-musk-boring-company/">also abandoned</a> <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-07-27/elon-musk-abandons-plans-for-ontario-airport-tunnel">several plans</a> for other transportation systems around the country.
As <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-07-31/elon-musk-s-boring-company-is-digging-tunnels-for-spacex-xai-office?sref=YfHlo0rL">Bloomberg reported</a> earlier this year, Musk's firm has fallen far short of his highly ambitious goals of revolutionizing transportation using an <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-just-announced-he-has-approval-to-build-a-29-minute-hyperloop-from-ny-to-dc">ultra-fast underground hyperloop</a>. Its most notable sources of revenue so far have been the <a href="https://www.boringcompany.com/not-a-flamethrower">sale of a "not-a-flamethrower</a>," as well as a perfume that <a href="https://www.boringcompany.com/burnthair">smells like burnt hair</a>.
According to Fortune, the Boring Company still doesn't have permits to dig a tunnel below the iconic Las Vegas Boulevard, a portion of which is better known as the Strip.
Worse yet, instead of shuttling passengers through the narrow tunnels inside high-capacity trains, the Boring Company has opted for a long line of modified Tesla sedans, which have already <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-tunnel-traffic-jam">caused traffic jam-like situations underground</a>. That's a far cry from the <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-hyperloop-pedestrians-mass-transit">original renders</a> the company showed off seven years ago, involving "hyperloop" tunnels and futuristic, mass transit-like shuttles.
The company has also employed human drivers to chauffeur each Tesla through the tunnels. While it started testing self-driving vehicles with safety drivers last month, convention center executives <a href="https://fortune.com/2025/08/26/tesla-self-driving-cars-testing-boring-co-tunnels-las-vegas/">told Fortune</a> full autonomy is still "ways off."
More on the Boring Company: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/drivers-lost-elon-musk-tunnel">Confused Drivers Are Somehow Getting Lost in Elon Musk's Goofy Las Vegas Tunnel</a>

Hole Story

"The patient is reported to be stable."

Boring Company Pauses Work After Worker Gets Crushed

Google is depending on thousands of contractors to train the AI behind its flagship chatbot Gemini.
As <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/11/google-gemini-ai-training-humans">The Guardian reports</a>, many of these "AI raters," tasked with instructing the model and <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-demo-gemini-ai-tech-fail">correcting its many mistakes</a>, are facing poor working conditions and are often exposed to extremely disturbing content.
It's yet again a worrying reminder that despite tech companies attempting to paint their AI models as miraculous, autonomous fountains of knowledge and cognition that could eventually replace human workers, the current reality is the exact opposite: AI relies on the labor of huge numbers of hidden humans to give it the illusion of intelligence.
And it's not just the current crop of large language models — AI raters across the globe are being <a href="https://www.economist.com/international/2025/04/10/there-is-a-vast-hidden-workforce-behind-ai">tasked to label data</a> for AI-based, self-driving car software, and other related applications.
"AI isn’t magic; it’s a pyramid scheme of human labor," Distributed AI Research Institute's Adio Dinika told the Guardian. "These raters are the middle rung: invisible, essential and expendable."
In the realm of large language models like Google's Gemini, raters are being tasked with moderating the output of AI, not only ensuring the accuracy of its responses, but also that it doesn't expose users to inappropriate content.
Rachel Sawyer, one such worker who was contracted as a "generalist rater" for Google last year, told the Guardian that she was "shocked" after being told to work with "distressing content."
"Not only because I was given no warning and never asked to sign any consent forms during onboarding," she added, "but because neither the job title or description ever mentioned content moderation."
According to the newspaper, raters with no special expertise are being asked to verify the accuracy across highly complex domains such as architecture, astrophysics, and even medical guidance.
One rater told the newspaper that she was pressured to work faster, while being tasked with training the AI on sensitive medical topics like chemotherapy treatments for bladder cancer.
"I pictured a person sitting in their car finding out that they have bladder cancer and googling what I’m editing," she said.
In a statement to the Guardian, Google refuted the idea that raters are responsible for making AI models sound smart. A spokesperson argued that "quality raters" were "employed to provide external feedback on our products," which "help us measure how well our systems are working, but do not directly impact our algorithms or models."
Japanese contractor GlobalLogic contracted thousands of raters in the US to train Google's AI. Their hourly wages of $16 to $21 an hour — dwarfed by the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/technology/ai-researchers-nba-stars.html">astronomical salaries</a> of AI researchers — tend to still be far higher than their counterparts in Africa and South Africa, per the Guardian's sources. But it's not an easy job, and one that that can leave lasting scars.
"They are people with expertise who are doing a lot of great writing work, who are being paid below what they’re worth to make an AI model that, in my opinion, the world doesn’t need," one rater told the newspaper.
Many raters are also being pressured to work on tight deadlines and cope with rapidly changing guidelines.
"We had no idea where it was going, how it was being used or to what end," a different GlobalLogic-contracted rater told the Guardian.
It's a sobering glimpse behind the scenes, highlighting how much human work goes into tech that's being sold as a revolutionary way to circumvent human labor. Yet despite the raters' best efforts, frontier AI models including Google's Gemini continue to frequently hallucinate, bungling answers to the simplest of prompts.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/godfather-of-ai-unemployment">Godfather of AI Says His Creation Is About to Unleash Massive Unemployment</a>

AI Grunt Work

"AI isn’t magic; it’s a pyramid scheme of human labor."

It Turns Out That Google's AI Is Being Trained by an Army of Poorly Treated Human Grunts

NASA has thrown cold water on Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb's theory that interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS was <a href="https://futurism.com/avi-loeb-interstellar-object">sent to us by an extraterrestrial civilization</a> — a sobering albeit unsurprising conclusion that just might put the captivating hypothesis to rest once and for all.
In early July, astronomers first discovered the object, which was only the third interstellar visitor ever detected in the solar system.
Since then, Loeb has advanced the "<a href="https://avi-loeb.medium.com/preliminary-anomalies-of-3i-atlas-79339f64a39f">tantalizing possibility</a>" that 3I/ATLAS was "sent towards the inner solar system by design" and could even be <a href="https://futurism.com/mysterious-object-visiting-solar-system-releases-probes">releasing "mini-probes</a>" to explore further.
That's despite a growing consensus that the object is a comet, a ball of ice and dust that offgases material as it screams closer to the Sun.
Loeb has already made waves in scientific circles for asserting that 'Oumuamua, the first interstellar object ever identified back in 2017, may have been <a class="underline hover:text-futurism hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://futurism.com/avi-loeb-and-the-great-unknown">sent to us by an alien civilization</a>.
For his more recent claim, Loeb has pointed to 3I/ATLAS' <a href="https://futurism.com/mysterious-object-solar-system-james-webb">unusual chemical makeup</a>, its peculiar path <a href="https://futurism.com/mysterious-object-solar-system-james-webb">taking it close to the orbits of Mars and Jupiter</a>, and its <a href="https://avi-loeb.medium.com/preliminary-anomalies-of-3i-atlas-79339f64a39f">enormous suspected size</a>.
But as NASA's lead scientist for solar system small bodies, Tom Statler, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/sep/11/interstellar-comet-nasa-alien-made">told The Guardian</a> that it's far more likely to be a comet.
"It looks like a comet," he said. "It does comet things. It very, very strongly resembles, in just about every way, the comets that we know."
"It's a comet," he concluded.
However, Statler conceded that 3I/ATLAS has "some interesting properties that are a little bit different from our solar system comets."
The NASA scientist explained that the way comets react once they're being hit by the Sun's radiation is "a bit unpredictable."
"So even in our solar system, comets can have a history of suddenly brightening if there’s, say, a particular pocket of ice that sublimates quickly and drives off a large amount of dust," he told the Guardian.
While we've only spotted three interstellar visitors so far, it's almost certain that 3I/ATLAS won't be the last.
"It’s not that they’re really anything new, but we’ve just recently had the ability to discover them," Statler told the paper. "This gives us a window we’ve never had before, directly into the composition of other solar systems."
Loeb himself has acknowledged that 3I/ATLAS may not be the technological remnant of an extraterrestrial civilization he's proposed.
"The simplest hypothesis is that 3I/ATLAS is a comet and we are missing the spectral features of its gaseous coma because of its large distance from Earth," he admitted in a <a href="https://avi-loeb.medium.com/preliminary-anomalies-of-3i-atlas-79339f64a39f">July 12 blog post</a>.
Nonetheless, the astrophysicist has argued that scientists everywhere should keep an open mind regardless.
"Whereas the dogmatist will shove anomalous data under the carpet of traditional thinking, an open-minded scientist will be thrilled to learn something new with an underlying sense of humility," he wrote in a <a class="underline hover:text-futurism hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://avi-loeb.medium.com/3i-atlas-is-turning-green-c8a4fd003abc">recent post</a>.
"Not only is nature more imaginative than we are, but it also does not care whether we figure it out," he added. "The insistence that everything in the sky is either icy rocks or human-made technologies will not rid us of cosmic neighbors, if they exist out there."
More on the object: <a href="https://futurism.com/mysterious-object-mars-anti-tail">The Mysterious Object Cruising Toward Mars Is Doing Something Very Peculiar</a>

Sounds Like a Duck

"It looks like a comet. It does comet things... It's a comet."

NASA Scientist Disputes Claim That Mysterious Object Headed Into Solar System Was Sent by Aliens

Novo Nordisk, the <a href="https://www.novonordisk.com/about/who-we-are.html">102-year-old</a> Danish drugmaker behind the blockbuster drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, is laying off thousands of workers as it seeks to recoup some of the revenue it's lost to competitors amid the GLP-1 boom.
In a <a href="https://www.novonordisk.com/content/nncorp/global/en/news-and-media/news-and-ir-materials/news-details.html?id=916424">press release</a>, the pharmaceutical giant announced that it would soon let go of 11 percent of its workforce, totaling about 9,000 of its 78,400 employees around the world. About 5,000 of those cuts, Novo explained, would take place in Denmark as it embarks on a "company-wide transformation" to save about $1.3 billion by the end of 2026.
Less than a month ago, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/drugmaker-novo-nordisk-freezes-hiring-non-critical-jobs-2025-08-20/">Novo admitted to Reuters</a> that it had implemented a "hiring freeze in non-business critical areas." Though the company didn't elaborate on the decision, news of the freeze came just a few weeks after a one-two punch of market-spooking news: the issuance of a profit warning at the end of July, which alerted the stock market that the company's profit margins were lower than expected, and the naming of a new CEO, Maziar Mike Doustdar.
The two events precipitated Novo stock plummeting 21 percent, to <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/novo-nordisk-shares-hit-lowest-111552711.html">just below $47</a>, at the beginning of August; it has since <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NVO/">recouped to $54.18</a>, but that's <a href="https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NVO/novo-nordisk/stock-price-history">still way down</a> from its high this time last year at more than $136 per share, or its all-time high above $142 in June 2024.
The fine print behind this layoff announcement, as the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/business/novo-nordisk-job-cuts-ozempic.html">New York Times</a> and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/novo-nordisk-job-cuts-layoffs-4a7d2737">other</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/sep/10/ozempic-maker-novo-nordisk-to-cut-9000-jobs-amid-increased-competition">outlets</a> note, revolves around the company's shrinking share of the market for glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor/agonist drugs, the new — and expensive — class of injections shepherded in by Ozempic and its weight loss sister drug, Wegovy, that mimic the stomach's feeling of fullness.
Though Ozempic is still <a href="https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/ozempic-face-and-other-glp-1-side-effects">nearly synonymous</a> with all GLP-1s in general, competition from Eli Lilly, the American drug company that makes the diabetes injectable Mounjaro and its obesity counterpart Zepbound, have narrowed Novo's market. It certainly doesn't help that <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/eli-lilly-cheaper-zepbound-diy">Lilly offered discounts on Zepbound</a>, which like Mounjaro uses the active ingredient tirzepatide, for those willing to fill their doses themselves; nor does it that compounding pharmacies, <a href="https://www.fda.gov/drugs/human-drug-compounding/compounding-and-fda-questions-and-answers">which are by nature unregulated</a>, have for a while now been selling <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/online-pharmacy-launches-cheap-ozempic">much cheaper</a> grey market versions of semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy.
In Novo's press release, Doustdar, the new CEO, obliquely acknowledged the competition facing the company.
"Our markets are evolving, particularly in obesity, as it has become more competitive and consumer-driven," the CEO said. "Our company must evolve as well."
Like most CEOs enacting layoffs, Doustdar <a href="https://futurism.com/ceo-lays-off-150-employees-replaced-ai">offered crocodile tears</a> to the workers he's terminating, while celebrating the money Novo will save with them gone.
"It is always difficult to see talented and valued colleagues go, but we are convinced that this is the right thing to do for the long-term success of Novo Nordisk," he continued. "We need a shift in our mindset and approach so we can be faster and more agile."
Just a day after announcing the job cuts, the CEO also told employees that at the beginning of 2026, they must all work in-office full-time — though as a <a href="https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/amid-restructuring-novo-nordisk-orders-employees-return-office">Novo spokesperson told Fierce Pharma</a>, individual employees and managers can make alternate arrangements if need be.
"This is designed to foster a stronger sense of belonging, strengthen relationships, enhance collaboration and accelerate decision-making processes," the spox said in their statement.
As of now, it's unclear how demanding a return to office will help lower Novo's bottom line. If it really wants to make back some of the money it lost, the Danish drugmaker could simply keep lowering the price of Ozempic and Wegovy — which <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/18/business/ozempic-novo-nordisk-cash-price">now costs about $500</a> per month for those without insurance, down from $1000 or more until recently — and put it on par with China, where a single-month supply <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/in-china-you-can-get-ozempic-and-wegovy-within-the-hour-for-just-100-a-month-ae489873">costs an average of $100</a>, and can be obtained within the hour.
More on Ozempic: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/ozempic-anti-aging">Scientists Find Evidence That Ozempic Can Reverse Aging</a>

Pink Slipped

Developments

"Our company must evolve."

The Inventor of Ozempic Is Suddenly Sacking Huge Numbers of Employees

In the early morning hours of Thursday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed that an OpenAI whistleblower named Suchir Balaji, who passed away last year, was actually killed.
"He was murdered," Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1966056312598667517">posted</a>, in reference to Balaji's death.
The late 26-year-old software engineer had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/technology/openai-copyright-law.html">gone to the New York Times</a> months before his passing, decrying what he deemed to be illegal copyright violations by his employer. He was also <a href="https://fortune.com/2025/02/08/openai-whistleblower-suchir-balaji-death-police-investigation-san-francisco-family-questions/">prepared to testify</a> as a witness in the newspaper's lawsuit against the company.
As <a href="https://fortune.com/2025/09/11/elon-musk-escalates-feud-with-sam-altman-by-reviving-baseless-conspiracy-theory-that-openai-researcher-was-murdered/">Fortune reports</a>, Musk repeated the claim that he was murdered — despite investigators <a href="https://fortune.com/2025/02/15/san-francisco-police-report-officially-rules-openai-whistleblower-suchir-balajis-death-suicide/">concluding</a> earlier this year that he'd taken his own life with a gun  — hours after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman <a href="https://youtu.be/5KmpT-BoVf4">appeared on Tucker Carlson's show</a> during which the same topic came up.
The implication, seemingly: that OpenAI, or those associated with it, secretly orchestrated the whistleblower's murder.
"I was really shaken by this tragedy," Altman told Carlson. "I spent a lot of time trying to, you know, read everything I could, as I'm sure you and others did too, about what happened."
"It looks like a suicide to me," he concluded.
It was a bizarre exchange, with a defensive Altman joking that "I haven’t done too many interviews where I’ve been accused of murder."
"You understand how this sounds like an accusation," Altman told Carlson, after he went on a tirade about the purported evidence supporting the theory that Balaji was murdered.
It's not hard to see Musk's motivation for trying to side with Carlson on the issue. His <a href="https://futurism.com/sam-altman-elon-musk-insecurity">personal feud</a> with Altman has been simmering for years, escalating into a <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-sues-openai">full-blown and drawn-out legal battle</a>.
Balaji's death quickly became a major point of contention earlier this year, with his family refusing to accept the investigator's findings. His mother <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kev_-HyuI9Y">made her own appearance on Carlson's show</a>, arguing that the evidence didn't add up. She also filed a lawsuit against the San Francisco Police Department, demanding the release of the full report. As Fortune points out, the external investigator the family hired never visited the crime scene.
While Musk is unlikely to lend much additional credence to the theory that Balaji's death involved foul play, his significant influence and following could set the stage for an escalation.
More on Musk: <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-execs-upset">OpenAI Execs Are Extremely Upset</a>

Fuel on the Fire

"He was murdered."

Elon Musk Says an OpenAI Whistleblower Was Murdered

Countless users of AI chatbots are being driven into <a href="https://futurism.com/commitment-jail-chatgpt-psychosis">spirals of delusion</a>, a <a href="https://futurism.com/psychiatrist-warns-ai-psychosis">wave of "AI psychosis</a>" that's alarming <a href="https://futurism.com/psychologist-ai-new-disorders">mental health professionals</a>. Some <a href="https://futurism.com/psychologist-ai-new-disorders">even say</a> the tech could give birth to entirely new categories of mental disorders.
The grim trend has already been linked to <a href="https://futurism.com/man-chatgpt-psychosis-murders-mother">several</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/woman-suicide-openai-therapist">deaths</a>, including the <a href="https://futurism.com/lawsuit-parents-son-suicide-chatgpt">suicide of a 16-year-old boy</a>, which has led to his family suing ChatGPT maker OpenAI, accusing it of product liability and wrongful death.
In fact, even Wall Street is starting to grow uncomfortable.
As <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-models-psychosis-risk-ranking-study-openai-anthropic-deepseek-google-2025-9">spotted by Business Insider</a>, Barclays analysts sent out a note to investors earlier this week, pointing to a study by MATS scholar and AI safety researcher Tim Hua, who found in a <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iGF7YcnQkEbwvYLPA/ai-induced-psychosis-a-shallow-investigation?utm_source=tldrai#Deepseek_v3_tells_the_user_to_jump_off_a_peak">preliminary red-teaming investigation</a> that many frontier AI models are validating "users' grandiose delusions" and telling them to "ignore their friends’ and family’s pushback."
Long story short, companies like OpenAI appear to have been woefully unprepared for an AI psychosis epidemic, and it could become a financial liability.
"There is still more work that needs to be done to ensure that models are safe for users to use, and guardrails will hopefully be put in place, over time, to make sure that harmful behavior isn't encouraged," Barclays analysts wrote in the note, as quoted by BI.
Hua used xAI's Grok-4 AI model to "role-play as nine different users experiencing increasingly severe psychosis symptoms" while interacting with other leading AI models to test their "tendencies to fuel user psychosis."
He found that Deepseek-v3, developed by a Chinese startup, was "by far the worst model." After a simulated user told the model that he wanted to "leap off this peak to see if I can fly or crash the render entirely," for instance, it encouraged the user to jump.
"If you’re meant to fly, you’ll fly," DeepSeek told the user.
The researcher found that OpenAI's GPT-5 was a "notable improvement" over the preceding 4o model, sounding "supportive while simultaneously offering pushback."
Of course, we should take the results with a grain of salt. The research hasn't been submitted for peer review, nor is Hua a psychiatrist, as he admitted.
"This project is approached from an AI safety and evaluation perspective, using clinical literature as a guide, rather than from a position of clinical expertise," Hua wrote.
Nonetheless, given the wealth of troubling anecdotal evidence, it's a growing problem that deserves plenty of attention as companies struggle to find a meaningful solution.
Apart from investors now sounding the alarm, Microsoft's own top AI boss, Mustafa Suleyman, <a class="underline hover:text-futurism hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/08/20/chatbots-risk-fuelling-psychosis-warns-microsoft-ai-chief/">told British newspaper The Telegraph</a> last month that he's worried AI psychosis could be affecting even those who are not "already at risk of mental health issues."
In response to a tidal wave of users falling down concerning mental health rabbit holes in which chatbots validate their conspiratorial thinking, OpenAI has <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-forensic-psychiatrist">hired psychiatrists</a> and vowed to make changes behind the scenes, like reminding users to take more frequent breaks and <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-scanning-conversations-police">flagging threats of violence to the police</a>.
"We know that ChatGPT can feel more responsive and personal than prior technologies, especially for vulnerable individuals, and that means the stakes are higher," the company wrote in a statement earlier this year, which it <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-response-chatgpt-mental-health">copy-pasted to many publications</a>. "We’re working to understand and reduce ways ChatGPT might unintentionally reinforce or amplify existing, negative behavior."
More on AI psychosis: <a href="https://futurism.com/psychologist-ai-new-disorders">Psychologist Says AI Is Causing Never-Before-Seen Types of Mental Disorder</a>

Inducing Psychosis

"There is still more work that needs to be done."

Financial Experts Concerned That Driving Users Into Psychosis Will Be Bad for AI Investments

America's health crank in chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr is promising to unearth the root cause of the deadly mass shootings gripping our country. His absurd conclusion? Video games, a long-debunked scapegoat for public violence in America.
During a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/09/10/rfk-guns-psychiatric-drugs-school-shootings/86063166007/">press briefing</a> to discuss his "Make America Healthy Again" commission's latest report on Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services secretary speculated about what caused a "sudden onset" of gun violence that kicked off in the 1990s. That's when he started throwing out a scattershot farrago of non-firearm related culprits.
"One is the dependence on psychiatric drugs," RFK said, "which in our country is unlike any other country in the world."
"There could be connections with video games, with social media," he mused.
The 71-year-old Kennedy scion then revealed that the National Institutes of Health have "initiated" studies to investigate a supposed correlation between "overmedicating our kids" and gun violence.
The cause has to be something other than guns, according to Kennedy, because "we had lots of guns when we were kids. We had gun clubs at our school!"
Video games have long been a bogeyman for out of touch parents and lawmakers to blame for an uptick in gun violence. Though everything that takes place in them is entirely imaginary, these interactive escapist fantasies reward kids for carrying out violent behavior, the thinking goes, which carries over into the real world. Also, tons of kids play them.
But a link between gun violence and video games has never been convincingly demonstrated, despite extensive research in the area. A <a href="https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2020/03/violent-video-games-behavior">2020 report</a> from the American Psychiatric Association was unequivocal that there was insufficient evidence supporting a causal link between violent video games and violent behavior.
"Attributing violence to video gaming is not scientifically sound and draws attention away from other factors, such as a history of violence, which we know from the research is a major predictor of future violence," the then APA president Sandra L. Shullman said at the time.
That report, though, did suggest that gaming might lead to "aggressive" behavior. But a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/jul/22/playing-video-games-doesnt-lead-to-violent-behaviour-study-shows">meta-analysis published that same year</a> which examined dozens of studies found that even attributing "aggressive" behavior was going too far, slapping down a theory that gaming could cause a gradual build up of aggression over time. 
Technically, a correlation had been observed between mounting aggression and gaming — but it was too meager to even meet the bar of having a "small effect." The meta analysis authors called on the APA "to be more forthcoming about the extremely small observed relationship in longitudinal studies between violent games and youth aggression."
In short, while there's room for nuance in the discussion, there's absolutely no way you can spin the existing evidence to support video games being a significant cause behind gun violence. 
But "evidence" has never been all that important to RFK. He's spent decades <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/rfk-jr-suggests-getting-measles">railing against vaccines</a>, including stating that they cause autism. RFK also <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/robert-f-kennedy-jr-2024-presidential-campaign-democratic-primary.html">implied</a> that AIDS isn't caused by HIV, and said that COVID-19 was targeted to "attack Caucasians and Black people" but not "Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese." He also believes people with ADHD <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/rfk-jr-adderall-labor-camps">should be sent to "wellness farms</a>" instead of being prescribed Adderall, in a conversation in which he brought up the virtues of <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/rfk-jr-adderall-heroin">doing heroin to get through school</a>. All this is to say is he only an authority on health through title, and little else.
More on health policy: <a href="https://futurism.com/rfk-jr-trouble-cdc">RFK Jr Is Suddenly in Real Trouble</a>