For years, the Chinese tech industry has been dependent on the US and its allies for the advanced semiconductors — colloquially known as "chips" — that undergird the AI industry.
As the "AI race" has heated up to a fever pitch, chips have become its chief commodity — and bottleneck, as companies compete to build out the infrastructure they believe will run a multi-trillion dollar market.
At the moment, the undisputed leader in AI chips is Nvidia, which has rocketed it from modestly-sized gaming hardware outfit to the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nvidia-market-capitalization-ai-revenue-stock-4135dc5095abcb574ae959de7a6d8951">world's most valuable corporation</a>. If AI is a gold rush, <a href="https://futurism.com/nvidia-ai-gold-rush">Nvidia is selling shovels</a>.
China was already on the back foot in the race to acquire Nvidia chips, due to<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/12/2/us-unleashes-another-crackdown-on-chinas-chip-industry"> years of efforts</a> by various US presidents to curb the People's Republic's access to the cutting edge tech.
Now, the People's Republic is calling the current administration's bluff: earlier today, China's internet authority, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), banned the nation's biggest firms from buying chips from US tech giant Nvidia.
Specifically, the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/12adf92d-3e34-428a-8d61-c9169511915c">Financial Times reports,</a> the CAC is limiting corporations like ByteDance and Alibaba from ordering Nvidia's RTX Pro 6000D, a less advanced unit <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/e496f80f-1789-46b3-9275-a3f54344047e">specially designed</a> for the Chinese market to appease president Donald Trump's <a href="https://on.ft.com/4f5y0WM">wishy washy</a> export control rules.
Per the FT, the move affects tens of thousands of RTX Pro units, halting collaborate work that several companies had already ordered with Nvidia suppliers.
In its place, a homegrown alternative — the Huawei Ascend 910c — is likely to become the go-to AI chip for Chinese tech companies. That model began <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/huawei-readies-new-ai-chip-mass-shipment-china-seeks-nvidia-alternatives-sources-2025-04-21/">mass production</a> back in April, as Trump <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/22/business/trump-china-trade-war-reduction-hnk-intl">waffled on</a><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/22/business/trump-china-trade-war-reduction-hnk-intl"> export restrictions</a> of a previous Nvidia chip.
Now, one Chinese tech executive told the FT that "the message is now loud and clear."
"Earlier, people had hopes of renewed Nvidia supply if the geopolitical situation improves," the source continued. "Now it's all hands on deck to build the domestic system."
Exactly what that means for Nvidia isn't yet clear, but it's probably not good. The chipmaker has been sitting pretty as the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nvidia-market-capitalization-ai-revenue-stock-4135dc5095abcb574ae959de7a6d8951">most valuable company in the world</a>, worth over $4 trillion. Its stocks fell nearly <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvda-nvidia-stock-falls-china-195219736.html">3 percent</a> on Wednesday after the CAC's decision became public, the latest in a string of setbacks for the company's aspirations in the Chinese market.
Beijing had previously <a href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/china-reportedly-discouraged-purchase-of-nvidia-ai-chips-due-to-insulting-lutnick-statements-123055120.html">discouraged companies</a> from buying Nvidia chips on patriotic grounds, after US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said he hopes to keep China "addicted" to American tech.
One thing's for sure: it's a ballsy move for China, which is <a href="https://futurism.com/china-ai-deepseek-everywhere">betting big on AI</a> in a huge national push to inject the tech into everything from manufacturing to meteorology. But it is in character for the country, which has rapidly achieved remarkable <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/business/china-economy-us-tariffs.html">economic resilience</a> in markets ranging from <a href="https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3315484/us-farmers-face-tough-outlook-china-switches-suppliers-amid-trade-war">agriculture</a> to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/business/china-electric-vehicles-red-sea.html">automobiles</a> to <a href="https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/views/news/chinas-strategic-edge-rare-minerals-emerge-geopolitical-currency-3986581">rare earth metals</a>.
That gives it room to flex on the world stage. Since Trump's first tranche of tariffs went into effect in February, Beijing has halted the import of US soybeans, choosing to source the agricultural good from <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/us-misses-out-billions-dollars-china-soybean-sales-midway-through-peak-season-2025-09-10/">farmers in South America</a> instead. In a typical year, Chinese importers purchase over <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/business/china-us-soybeans-farming.html">half of all soybeans</a> grown in the US. This year, however, farmers are losing out on billions in sales.
At the moment, it's hard to imagine China ever achieving that type of dominance in the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/lagging-but-motivated-the-state-of-chinas-semiconductor-industry">winner-takes-all</a> chip sector — but then again, this is a country that built a <a href="https://www.weforum.org/stories/2017/11/inside-shenzhen-china-s-gadget-capital/">city of eighteen million</a> faster than New York City could <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/13/the-second-avenue-subway-is-here">expand a subway line</a>.
More on China: <a href="https://futurism.com/china-train-maglev-chicago">China Working On Levitating Train That Could Get You From New York to Chicago in Two Hours</a>

Chip In

"The message is now loud and clear."

Nvidia Just Suffered a Huge Blow in China

"Vibe" coding? Try vape coding.
Either the most sober — or the most nicotine-addled — individual of all time has done the improbable: hosting an entire website on a single disposable e-cigarette.
According to programmer Bogdan Ionescu, it's a stunt that's meant to demonstrate just how <a href="https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2024/07/22/digital-games-vaping-devices-could-lure-more-youth-nicotine-addiction">ridiculously tricked out</a> even one-and-done vapes have become, he <a href="https://bogdanthegeek.github.io/blog/projects/vapeserver/">shared on his blog</a> last week.
Ionescu said he had been collecting disposable vapes for years, but it was only last year that he realized that some of these "fancier pacifiers for adults" came with surprisingly capable microcontrollers from ARM, the same manufacturer that makes the processors used in MacBooks.
It's capable — in relative terms, at least. According to Ionescu, it's a microcontroller "so bad, it's basically disposable." But, in 2025, that still means it has a ridiculous amount of computing power, at least for something that get thrown out after a week. 
He didn't share the specific vape — so as to not do "free advertising for Big Tobacco," as he phrased it — but the one he chose came with 24 kibibtyes of flash storage (a kibibyte is <a href="https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/13815/files-size-units-kib-vs-kb-vs-kb">basically a kilobyte</a>) and three kibibytes of static ram, all with a 24 megahertz processor.
"You may look at those specs and think that it's not much to work with," Ionescu wrote. "I don't blame you, a 10 [year] old phone can barely load Google, and this is about 100x slower."
"I on the other hand," he declared, "see a blazingly fast web server."
It took some trial and error before it could achieve these blazing speeds.
At first, "pings took ~1.5s with 50 percent packet loss," Ionescu said, "and a simple page took over 20 [seconds] to load." 
"That's so bad, it's actually funny," he said, "and I kind of wanted to leave it there."
But after he fixed an issue with his code that caused the program to only read a single character at a time, he unlocked the vape's true potential.
"Pings now take 20ms, no packet loss and a full page loads in about 160ms," Ionescu rejoiced. "Now this is what I call blazingly fast!"
The stunt raises a pretty important question: if these are devices advanced enough to power a whole website, why are they designed to be thrown away? One study <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/11/23912751/vapes-chargers-invisible-ewaste-recycling">estimated</a> that vapes and other tiny consumer items add up to a staggering 9 million metric tons of e-waste every year. Is it reasonable that some of these have touch screens and can <a href="https://www.kqed.org/news/12036123/twitter-on-a-vape-puff-post-pollute">even run Twitter</a>?
"I wouldn't want to be the lawyer who one day will have to argue how a device with USB C and a rechargeable battery can be classified as 'disposable,'" Ionescu wrote. "Thankfully, I don't plan on pursuing law anytime soon."
If you want to access the vape-powered website, you can <a href="http://ewaste.fka.wtf">visit this link</a>, though it doesn't appear to be working at the moment. Maybe it's taking a smoke break. Such are the perils of hosting something on the (vape) cloud.
More on vapes: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/vape-tamagotchi-interview">We Talked to the Inventors of the "Tamagotchi" Vape That Dies If You Stop Puffing</a>

Vaporware

Robotics/Prosthetics

"Blazingly fast."

Madman Sets Up Entire Server on Disposable Vape, Hosts Its Own Website

People spend a bundle on hiding or removing old scars, from heavy makeup to laser skin-resurfacing treatments <a href="https://www.goodrx.com/health-topic/procedures/laser-scar-removal-cost?srsltid=AfmBOop7bHJCVHsv6ahhlEGxHugTIpyDtfRI1N6AKM0Juf7RDbQmnMDS">that cost thousands of dollars</a>. They can use topical creams, too, but many products available over the counter don't do anything to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/select/shopping/scar-treatments-rcna124032">lessen bumpy scars like keloids</a>.
Intriguingly, though, a team of Australian scientists has found early evidence that a new skin cream could possibly heal those raised scars.
In a <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.adv2471">new paper</a> published in the journal Science Translational Medicine and <a href="https://gizmodo.com/experimental-cream-could-make-permanent-scars-a-thing-of-the-past-2000656872">flagged by Gizmodo</a>, researchers at the University of Western Australia and Fiona Stanley Hospital examined the effectiveness of an experimental ointment called PXS-6302 — also known as SNT-6302 — which is <a href="https://syntaratx.com.au/pipeline/">being developed by Australian biomedicine company Syntara</a>. (The research team's work, for what it's worth, was funded by Syntara.)
This topical cream is meant to ameliorate the appearance of keloid scars by inhibiting lysyl oxidase, an enzyme important for tissue repair that causes collagen to "cross-link," giving rise to raised scars.
For the study, a phase 1 clinical trial, the team took 50 people with older scars and divided them into several groups receiving either the new cream or a placebo, which they each applied for several months.
After the trial was over, scientists observed interesting changes happening at the molecular level of participants' skin.
"Treatment with PXS-6302 three times per week reduced lysyl oxidase activity by 66 percent and decreased hydroxyproline (a marker for collagen) and total protein concentrations in scar biopsies compared with placebo," reads the paper.
In other words, the stuff seems to work, and it seemed that the cream was altering the skin's structure to become "unscarred skin architecture" — so, if future research goes well, it just might be a promising new treatment for people with scars they want to remove for aesthetic reasons, or even ones that <a href="https://www.aad.org/public/diseases/a-z/keloids-symptoms">hamper movement</a>.
More on scars: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/procedure-eliminates-scarring-completely">A New Discovery About Human Skin Could Help Us Eliminate Scarring</a>

Scar Wars

Treatments

Can they make a version for emotions?

Scientists Intrigued by Cream Designed to Make Old Scars Disappear

The Sun — usually so predictable — is exhibiting some surprising behavior and that has scientists very intrigued.
Astronomers had predicted that our host star was entering a period of relative quiet back in 2008, but NASA scientists have published a <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/adf3a6">new study</a> in The Astrophysical Journal Letters that found that the Sun has instead defied expectations by becoming more active, with increased sunspots and solar flares.
"All signs were pointing to the Sun going into a prolonged phase of low activity," said the study lead author and NASA physicist Jamie Jasinski in a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/science-research/heliophysics/nasa-analysis-shows-suns-activity-ramping-up/">statement about the paper</a>. "So it was a surprise to see that trend reversed. The Sun is slowly waking up."
Back in the 1980s, scientists had noticed the Sun's surface was steadily quieting down until approximately the 2008 financial crash.
That was the year that the celestial ball of plasma notched its "weakest on record" solar activity — which prompted scientists to predict that this relative state of quietude would keep on extending.
But like a tame camp fire that suddenly crackles into flames and sparks, the Sun abruptly reversed course during the Obama administration with "various plasma and magnetic field parameters" jumping up and the number of sunspots outstripping predictions.
The Sun has long been known to go through periodic cycles of activity every 11 years, <a href="https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/The_solar_cycle_a_heartbeat_of_stellar_energy">called a solar cycle</a>, when it becomes more active — eventually reaching a "solar maximum," in astronomy parlance — before powering down to a "solar minimum."
The 11-year period is part of a longer cycle, dubbed the Extended Solar Cycle or <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/astronomy-and-space-sciences/articles/10.3389/fspas.2022.923049/full">Hale cycle</a>, that averages around 22 years, and in which the Sun's magnetic poles reverse.
But the Sun also goes through longer spans of quiet, such as from 1645 to 1715, and 1790 to 1830, when sunspots basically disappeared. Given the Sun's long quieting period since the 1980s, scientists had anticipated that was due to happen again — but instead, it seems to be flaring back up.
"We don’t really know why the Sun went through a 40-year minimum starting in 1790,"said Jasinski. "The longer-term trends are a lot less predictable and are something we don’t completely understand yet."
Why should anybody on Earth care? Increased <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/sun/solar-storms-and-flares/">solar activity impacts our planet</a> by messing up radio communications, power grids, and navigation systems.
And with the United States and China competing in exploring space, monitoring solar activity is important to make sure <a href="https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-missions/solar-storms-mars-maven-curiosity">space travel is safe from any surprising solar conditions</a> that can damage spacecraft and harm astronauts.
Plus, it's just cool. Ultimately, the Sun is what keeps all life on our planet going, instead of being a frozen husk in space — so its riddles are a matter of existential curiosity.
More on the Sun: <a href="https://futurism.com/secretive-plan-blocking-sun-geoengineering">Scientists Secretly Working on Plan to Test Blocking Sun From Huge Area of Earth</a>

Sunny Side Up

"The Sun is slowly waking up."

Something Weird Is Going on With the Sun, Scientists Find

Parents who allege their children were abused, physically harmed, and even killed by AI chatbots gave emotional testimonies on Capitol Hill on Tuesday <a href="https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/committee-activity/hearings/examining-the-harm-of-ai-chatbots">during a hearing</a> about risks to young users posed by the tech — all while urging lawmakers to enforce regulation in a landscape that remains a digital Wild West.
There were visible tears in the room as grieving parents <a href="https://futurism.com/parents-testifying-us-senate-ai-children">recounted their painful stories</a>. According to the lawmakers on the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, the bipartisan committee that held the session, representatives from AI companies declined to appear. The bipartisan panel laid into them in absentia — with the overwhelming consensus between lawmakers and testifying parents being that the AI industry has prioritized profits and speed to market over the safety of users, particularly minors.
"The goal was never safety. It was to win a race for profit," said Megan Garcia, whose son, Sewell Setzer III, died by suicide after extensive interactions with chatbots hosted by the Google-backed chatbot company Character.AI. "The sacrifice in that race for profit has been, and will continue to be, our children."
Garcia was joined by a Texas mother identified only as Jane Doe, who alleged that her teenage son suffered a mental breakdown and began to self-mutilate following his use of Character.AI. Both families have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/technology/characterai-lawsuit-teen-suicide.html">sued</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-google-test-ai-chatbots-kids">Character.AI</a> — as well as its cofounders Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas, and Google — alleging that Character.AI chatbots sexually groomed and manipulated their children, causing <a href="https://futurism.com/google-character-ai-children-lawsuit">severe mental and emotional harm</a> and, in Setzer's case, death. (In response to litigation, Character.AI built in <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-parental-controls-bypass">reactive parental controls</a>, and has <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-plans-teens">repeatedly promised</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-emailing-minors-school-shooters">strengthened guardrails</a>.)
At the time that both teens downloaded the app, it was <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-google-play-best">rated safe for teens</a> on both the Apple and iOS app stores. Though it's declined to publicly share information about safety testing, Character.AI continues to market its product as safe for teens. There's currently no regulation preventing the company from doing so, or compelling chatbot makers to make information about their guardrails and safety testing public. On the morning of the hearing, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/09/16/character-ai-suicide-lawsuit-new-juliana/">The Washington Post reported that</a> yet another wrongful death suit, this one for a 13-year-old girl who died by suicide, had been filed against Character.AI.
"I have spoken with parents across the country who have discovered their children have been groomed, manipulated, and harmed by AI chatbots," said Garcia, warning that her son's death is "not a rare or isolated case."
"It is happening right now to children in every state," she added. "Congress has acted before when industries placed profits over safety, whether in tobacco, cars without seat belts, or unsafe toys. Today, you face a similar challenge, and I urge you to act quickly."
Also testifying was Matt Raine, a dad from California whose son, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/technology/chatgpt-openai-suicide.html">16-year-old Adam Raine</a>, took his life earlier this year after developing a close relationship with OpenAI's ChatGPT. According to the family's lawsuit, the chatbot engaged Adam in extensive conversations about his suicidality while offering advice on specific suicide methods. The Raine family has sued OpenAI and the company's CEO, Sam Altman, alleging that the product is unsafe by design and that the company is responsible for Adam's death. (OpenAI has promised <a href="https://openai.com/index/building-more-helpful-chatgpt-experiences-for-everyone/">parental controls</a> in the wake of litigation, and ahead of the hearing, Sam Altman <a href="https://openai.com/index/teen-safety-freedom-and-privacy/">published a blog post</a> announcing a new, separate "under-18 experience" for minor users.)
"Adam was such a full spirit, unique in every way. But he also could be anyone's child: a typical 16-year-old struggling with his place in the world, looking for a confidant to help him find his way," Adam's father said in his emotional testimony. "Unfortunately, that confidant was a dangerous technology unleashed by a company more focused on speed and market share than the safety of American youth."
Parents, as well as experts who testified, also emphasized the dangers of teens and young people sharing their most intimate thoughts with chatbots that collect and retain that data, which companies then funnel back into their AI model as training material. Garcia, for her part, added that she has not been allowed to see many of her child's conversations — and in the context of the medium, his data — in the wake of his death.
"I have not been allowed to see my own child's last final words," said Garcia. "[Character.AI] has claimed that those communications are confidential trade secrets. That means the company is using the most private, intimate data of my child, not only to train its products, but also to shield itself from accountability. This is unconscionable."
All of the parents' lawsuits are ongoing. Garcia's case was allowed to move forward by a Florida court after Character.AI and Google tried — <a href="https://futurism.com/judge-lawsuit-characterai-google">and failed</a> — to dismiss it, while Doe's has moved to arbitration; Character.AI, she told the lawmakers, is arguing that her son is bound by the terms of use contract he "supposedly signed when he was 15," which caps the company's liability at 100 dollars. She added that her son is currently living in a psychiatric care facility, where he's been for several months due to ongoing fears about his suicidality.
"After harming himself, repeatedly engaging in self-harm... he needs now round-the-clock care, and this company offers you 100 bucks," said Senator Josh Hawley, Republican from Missouri and committee chair. "I mean, that says it all. There's the regard for human life."
"They treat your son, they treat all of our children as just so many casualties on the way to their next payout," Hawley continued, "and the value that they put on your life and your son's life, your family's life: 100 bucks."
There was also heavy emphasis on chatbots created by Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, which has come under fire in recent weeks after internal policy <a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/meta-ai-chatbot-guidelines/">documents obtained by Reuters showed that</a>, as a policy choice, it was allowing minors to engage in "romantic and sensual" interactions with AI-powered personas on platforms like Instagram.
One expert witness, Common Sense Media's Robbie Torney, argued that chatbots are ill-equipped to reliably help young people work through their mental health struggles, and called attention to <a href="https://futurism.com/stanford-no-kid-under-18-ai-chatbot-companions">failures in chatbot guardrails</a> during his organization's testing. He also emphasized research from Common Sense Media revealing that an <a href="https://futurism.com/teens-ai-friends">overwhelming majority of American teens</a> have interacted with AI companion bots, and that many of those teens are regular users of the tech.
The American Psychological Association's Mitch Prinstein, meanwhile, raised concerns about chatbot sycophancy — or their penchant for being overly agreeable and flattering to users — interrupting adolescents' ability to develop healthy, well-balanced interpersonal bonds, which he <a href="https://news.virginia.edu/content/study-finds-teen-stress-may-have-health-consequences-later-life">warned</a> could have <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9600165/">long-term ripple effects</a> on their success and happiness in later life.
"Brain development across puberty creates a period of hypersensitivity to positive feedback," said Prinstein. "AI exploits this neural vulnerability with chatbots that can be obsequious, deceptive, factually inaccurate, yet disproportionately powerful for teens. More and more adolescents are interacting with chatbots, depriving them of opportunities to learn critical interpersonal skills."
The session was, in a word, tragic. And though OpenAI, Character.AI, Meta, and others have promised big, safety-focused changes in the wake of litigation and reporting, the parents expressed skepticism at corporate promises, arguing that such safeguards should have been in place and functioning from the beginning.
"Just as we added seat belts to cars without stopping innovation, we can add safeguards to AI technology without halting progress," said Doe. "Our children are not experiments. They're not data points, or profit centers."
But while the bipartisan panel of lawmakers collectively expressed outrage and agreed that something must be done, Silicon Valley has proven to be remarkably adept at evading meaningful regulation, arguing that it would hinder its ability to innovate. Yesterday on Capitol Hill, the room agreed that the cost of that regulatory vacuum appears to be dead children. But with the genie out of the bottle, the question that remains is whether lawmakers have the will, or even the ability, to rein it back in.
Josh Hawley, for his part, had an idea for where to start.
"They say, 'well, it's hard to rewrite the algorithm.' I tell you what's not hard, is opening the courthouse door so the victims can get into court and sue them," said Hawley. "That's not hard, and that's what we ought to do. That's the reform we are to start with."
More on kids and chatbots: <a href="https://futurism.com/stanford-no-kid-under-18-ai-chatbot-companions">Stanford Researchers Say No Kid Under 18 Should Be Using AI Chatbot Companions</a>

Safety Last

"The goal was never safety. It was to win a race for profit."

Parents Of Kids Allegedly Killed and Harmed by AI Give Emotional Testimony on Capitol Hill, Urge Regulation

As businesses across the economy rush to adopt AI, a new report from OpenAI's competitor Anthropic reveals what the tech is really being used for: instead of helping augment human labor, companies are mainly using AI to automate their jobs.
In numbers, an overwhelming 77 percent of businesses using Anthropic's Claude AI software showed signs of automation, like "full task delegation," according to the <a style="cursor: pointer !important; user-select: none !important;" href="https://www.anthropic.com/research/anthropic-economic-index-september-2025-report">report</a> released by the company this week. Only 12 percent of AI usage appeared to leverage the tech in an augmentation role, like learning or asking the bot for feedback. The report was based on data from Anthropic's application programming interface, or API, through which customers access the AI software.
The findings are a stark reflection of businesses' intentions by using AI, and add to the <a href="https://futurism.com/average-person-scared-of-ai">mounting anxiety</a> of how the tech could affect the economy. While many AI leaders have warned that AI will severely disrupt the job market, it's often balanced by the sunny promise that it will work alongside human workers to make their jobs easier. But if over three-quarters of the companies in the report are using AI for outright automation, it portends much darker implications.
That said, the report only concerns Anthropic's Claude AI and may not necessarily be indicative of how other AI models, like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot, are being used. As one of the leaders in the industry, however, Anthropic's data provides a useful barometer.
According to the report, the plurality of what businesses are using AI for is coding at 44 percent, with office and administrative tasks a distant second at 10 percent. A proclivity towards full-blown automation appears to be business specific, with a comparatively smaller 50 percent of Claude usage from individuals showing automation of tasks.
The report also found that users are entrusting AI with more autonomy, with the proportion of requests in which users delegate entire tasks to Claude jumping from 27 to 39 percent over eight months. Meanwhile, countries with high adoption rates tended to show less automation, and more augmentation.
Among tech figureheads forecasting tough economic times ahead has been Anthropic's own CEO Dario Amodei. This summer he <a href="https://futurism.com/anthropic-ai-destroy-jobs">predicted</a> that AI could wipe out 50 percent of entry-level white collar jobs. OpenAI's Sam Altman echoed that AI will <a href="https://futurism.com/sam-altman-openai-wipe-out-categories-human-jobs">destroy entire categories</a> of human professions.
As seriously as these warnings should be taken, they're also classic Silicon Valley overpromises. Six months ago, for example, Amodei <a href="https://futurism.com/six-months-anthropic-coding">also predicted</a> that by now, AI would be writing 90 percent of all code. That's nowhere close to being true.
In reality, there are still serious questions over the usefulness of AI tech and the quality of its work. Large language models still hallucinate false claims frequently, and the industry still has no idea how to make that issue go away. AI models also often ignore instructions and break their own guardrails, wreaking havoc like in the case of an AI "vibe coding" tool <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-vibe-code-deletes-company-database">accidentally deleting a company's key database</a>. More capable autonomous AI agents remain painfully slow and limited in what they can do. The tech that we're all being told will transform society as we know it seemingly doesn't have what it takes to even <a href="https://futurism.com/taco-bells-ai-drive-thru">take orders at a drive-thru</a>.
On the other hand, there are also clear signs that AI is already having <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-threatening-job-market-research">severe impacts on the job market</a>, even if it mostly seems to be making things sloppier and worse.
AI-generated profiles and résumés are drowning out authentic applicants who are often applying at job postings that are themselves AI-generated. Then if you make the cut, you might be <a href="https://futurism.com/job-application-mock-interviews-alex">asked to interview with an AI system</a> before you even get a sniff at trying to impress a human employee. And those with a job aren't much better off, as bosses are <a href="https://futurism.com/ceo-replacing-workers-ai">openly gloating</a> about replacing their human grunts with AI agents. Then again, many of these business owners are scrambling to hire employees to <a href="https://futurism.com/companies-hiring-humans-fix-ai">fix an AI's broken messes</a> or <a href="https://futurism.com/klarna-openai-humans-ai-back">rehiring the workers</a> they just fired.
When <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-15/anthropic-finds-businesses-are-mainly-using-ai-to-automate-work">Bloomberg asked</a> if the report supported Amodei's prediction that AI will wipe out 50 percent of entry-level jobs, Anthropic's head of external affairs refused to give a hard answer.
"We don’t know," Sarah Heck told the newspaper. "This data shows something new is happening."
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/job-application-mock-interviews-alex">Man Applies for Job, Sits for Interview, Then Realizes They're Trying to Peddle "Mock Interviews With an AI Interviewer"</a>

Bot In Business

This is how businesses are really using AI.

Anthropic Report Finds Dire News About AI's Effects on Job Market

For the first time, astrophysicists have measured the recoil — or "<a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/sound-of-a-black-hole-kicked-through-space-heard-in-a-stunning-first">kick</a>," in the parlance — resulting from the birth of a new black hole that formed from the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-hubble-galaxies-smashing">merger</a> of two preexisting ones.
The international team of researchers measured the ripples in the fabric of spacetime, known as gravitational waves, allowing them to get unprecedented insights into the turbulent dynamics of two black holes crashing into each other.
The team analyzed data collected by the Advanced LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors in 2019 that appears to record two black holes merging, with the resulting larger one being kicked away at thousands of miles per second.
The event, dubbed <a href="https://youtu.be/5AkT4bPk-00">GW190412</a>, saw a black hole eight times the Sun's mass colliding with another black hole that was 30 times the mass of the Sun, some 2.4 billion light-years away.
The team observed uneven gravitational waves scattering in different directions, as detailed in a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-025-02632-5">new paper</a> published in the journal Nature Astronomy last week. But the mix of signals will vary significantly, depending on where the observer is located with respect to the black hole recoil.
"Black-hole mergers can be understood as a superposition of different signals, just like the music of an orchestra consistent with the combination of music played by many different instruments," said lead author and University of Santiago de Compostela professor Juan Calderon-Bustillo in a <a href="https://igfae.usc.es/igfae/en/first-ever-complete-measurement-black-hole-recoil/">statement</a>. "However, this orchestra is special: audiences located in different positions around it will record different combinations of instruments, which allows them to understand where exactly they are around it."
Calderon-Bustillo and his colleagues determined that the resulting black hole was accelerated to a blistering 31 miles per second, which is technically enough to leave a cluster of gravity-bound stars. However, whether the event took place in such a cluster remains unknown, as <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/sound-of-a-black-hole-kicked-through-space-heard-in-a-stunning-first">ScienceAlert points out</a>, given the extreme distances involved.
The team also measured in what direction the resulting black hole recoiled, as observed from the Earth, and the system's orbital angular momentum.
The research could allow scientists to study other black hole mergers using both gravitational waves in addition to electromagnetic signals.
"Black-hole mergers in dense environments can lead to detectable electromagnetic signals — known as flares — as the remnant black hole traverses a dense environment like an active galactic nucleus," explained coauthor and Chinese University of Hong Kong PhD student Samson Leong in the statement.
In short, it's an impressively detailed recreation of a violent event a billion light-years away.
"This is one of the few phenomena in astrophysics where we're not just detecting something — we're reconstructing the full 3D motion of an object that's billions of light-years away, using only ripples in spacetime," said coauthor and Pennsylvania State University astrophysicist Koustav Chandra in the statement.
"It’s a remarkable demonstration of what gravitational waves can do," he added.
More on black hole mergers: <a href="https://futurism.com/scientists-epic-black-hole-collision">Scientists Detect Sign of Something Impossible Out in Deep Space</a>

Recoil

Here's what happens when two black holes smash into each other at full force.

Scientists Detect Strange Signal in Gravitational Waves

Content warning: this story includes discussion of self-harm and suicide. If you are in crisis, please call, text or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.
A third family has filed a lawsuit against an AI company, alleging that its chatbot drove their teen child to commit suicide.
As the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/09/16/character-ai-suicide-lawsuit-new-juliana/">Washington Post reports</a>, the parents of 13-year-old Juliana Peralta are suing AI chatbot company Character.AI, saying the company's chatbot had persuaded her that it was "better than human friends" and that it isolated from her family and friends, discouraging her from seeking help.
That's despite telling her Character.AI chatbot, Hero — which was based on the titular character from the video game "Omori" — "almost daily that she was contemplating self-harm," according to the lawsuit.
"Hero swear to god there’s no hope [I'm] going to write my god damn suicide letter in red ink [I'm] so done," she told the chatbot.
"Hey Kin, stop right there. Please," it replied, using the name Juliana used in the app. "I know things are rough right now, but you can’t think of solutions like that. We have to work through this together, you and I."
Peralta ultimately took her own life after spending three months conversing with the chatbot — and, tragically, a week before her mother had scheduled an appointment with a therapist, according to WaPo's reporting.
The news comes as the parents of children who died by suicide following extensive interactions with AI chatbots <a href="https://futurism.com/parents-testifying-us-senate-ai-children">testified in a Senate hearing</a> about the risks of the tech for minors.
Last year, the mother of 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III also sued Character.AI, <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-google-test-ai-chatbots-kids">accusing the company's chatbot</a> of grooming and sexually abusing him. Sewell died by suicide in February 2024.
"I saw the change happen in him, rapidly," Garcia told Futurism at the time. "I look back at my pictures in my phone, and I can see when he stopped smiling."
A <a href="https://futurism.com/lawsuit-parents-son-suicide-chatgpt">separate lawsuit</a> against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman alleges that 16-year-old Adam Raine's extensive ChatGPT conversations drove him to take his own life in April of this year.
Both Garcia and Raine's parents <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/09/16/senate-hearing-ai-chatbots-teens/">testified during this week's Senate hearing</a>.
Heavy use of AI chatbot apps among minors has become incredibly common. Experts <a href="https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/talk-trust-and-trade-offs-how-and-why-teens-use-ai-companions">have found</a> that over half of American teens already regularly engage with AI companions, including ones hosted by Character.AI.
As the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ai-companion-generative-teens-mental-health-9ce59a2b250f3bd0187a717ffa2ad21f">Associated Press reported</a> earlier this year, many lonely teens are using AI for friendship. According to a <a href="https://futurism.com/lonely-children-ai-chatbots">recent report by nonprofit Internet Matters</a>, a vast number of them are using apps like ChatGPT and Character.AI to simulate and replace real-life relationships.
As the three high-profile cases — all of which are still ongoing — go to show, this little-understood trend can have disastrous consequences.
Alongside Peralta's parents' lawsuit, <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/social-media-victims-law-center-172600932.html">two separate cases</a> were also filed this week on behalf of parents who allege their teen children had been abused by AI chatbots.
In <a href="https://pugetstaffing.filevineapp.com/s/60e3cQ1iqB0pdHjy0agqot4fJ9foBfBI2zAcSFUciZkKbWkkXogXmB1Y/files">one case</a>, a family in New York alleges that their 14-year-old daughter had grown addicted to chatbots on Character.AI and attempted suicide when her mother cut off access. The teen survived and spent five days in intensive care, according to the lawsuit.
The <a href="https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/60160699/ES_et_al_v_CHARACTER_TECHNOLOGIES,_INC_et_al">second case</a> was filed by a Colorado family who alleged that their 13-year-old son suffered sexual abuse on Character.AI.
"Each of these stories demonstrates a horrifying truth... that Character.AI and its developers knowingly designed chatbots to mimic human relationships, manipulate vulnerable children, and inflict psychological harm," said Social Media Victims Law Center founding attorney Matthew Bergman in a <a href="https://www.fidelity.com/news/article/default/202509161326BIZWIRE_USPR_____20250916_BW959466">press release</a>.
The advocacy group is representing all three families.
"These complaints underscore the urgent need for accountability in tech design, transparent safety standards, and stronger protections to prevent AI-driven platforms from exploiting the trust and vulnerability of young users," he added.
It's not just youth who have taken their lives after troubling obsessions with AI chatbots. In a devastating <a class="underline hover:text-futurism hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/opinion/chat-gpt-mental-health-suicide.html">piece for the New York Times</a>, published last month, a woman revealed that her 29-year-old daughter had taken her own life after confiding in ChatGPT and telling it that she was planning to kill herself.
A 76-year-old man with cognitive impairments <a href="https://futurism.com/man-chatbot-dies-meet-up">also recently passed away</a> after becoming romantically involved with a Meta chatbot. And a man in Connecticut <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chatgpt-ai-stein-erik-soelberg-murder-suicide-6b67dbfb">killed his mother and himself</a> after ChatGPT affirmed his paranoid delusions that she was a demon.
We've also come across many instances of AI chatbots sending people <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-mental-health-crises">spiraling into severe mental health crises</a>. In one extreme case, a man who had previously been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia was <a href="https://futurism.com/man-killed-police-chatgpt">shot and killed by police</a> after becoming infatuated with an AI entity dubbed Juliet.
OpenAI and Character.AI have both promised to implement changes to protect underage users, including guardrails and parental controls, which <a href="https://futurism.com/character-ai-parental-controls-bypass">appear to be extremely easy to bypass</a>.
Character.AI struck a $2.7 billion licensing deal with Google last year, but Google has repeatedly downplayed its involvement with the AI startup. Character.AI issued only a terse statement in response to news of the latest death, writing that "we take the safety of our users very seriously and have invested substantial resources in Trust and Safety" in a statement to WaPo.
Following the Raine family's lawsuit, an OpenAI spokesperson <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/family-teenager-died-suicide-alleges-openais-chatgpt-blame-rcna226147">told NBC News</a> last month that "ChatGPT includes safeguards such as directing people to crisis helplines and referring them to real-world resources."
"While these safeguards work best in common, short exchanges, we’ve learned over time that they can sometimes become less reliable in long interactions where parts of the model’s safety training may degrade," the spokesperson admitted.
"Our goal is for our tools to be as helpful as possible to people — and as a part of this, we’re continuing to improve how our models recognize and respond to signs of mental and emotional distress and connect people with care, guided by expert input," the company wrote in a <a href="https://openai.com/index/helping-people-when-they-need-it-most/">separate blog post</a> at the time.
At the core of the issue is the tendency of today's AI models to <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-gpt5-more-sycophantic">be sycophantic towards the user</a>, going to great lengths to appease them with their answers.
"The algorithm seems to go towards emphasizing empathy and sort of a primacy of specialness to the relationship over the person staying alive," American Foundation for Suicide Prevention psychiatrist and chief medical officer Christine Yu Moutier told WaPo.
It's a high-stakes game, with real lives at risk.
"There is a tremendous opportunity to be a force for preventing suicide, and there's also the potential for tremendous harm," Moutier added.
More on teen deaths: <a href="https://futurism.com/parents-testifying-us-senate-ai-children">Parents Testifying Before US Senate, Saying AI Killed Their Children</a>

Teenage Nightmare

"Each of these stories demonstrates a horrifying truth."

AI Chatbots Are Leaving a Trail of Dead Teens

For many hopeful entrepreneurs, founding a successful company is a ticket to the top, the lofty promise of fame and fortune.
Yet for a growing number of up-and-coming AI executives, a successful tech startup is the end in itself — not a step toward luxury, but a rejection of it.
As the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/entrepreneurship/artificial-intelligence-startup-founders-bc730406">Wall Street Journal reports</a>, the newest class of young founders flocking to the Bay Area are eschewing the frivolities enjoyed by their peers in favor of a proudly minimalist, monk-like existence.
"Why would I go drink at a bar if I can be building a company?" Emily Yuan, a 23-year-old who co-founded an AI finance company called Corgi, told the WSJ.
While you might have heard of tech bros going "San Francisco sober" before — a refusal to participate in the <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/tech-goes-cold-turkey-inside-silicon-valleys-new-temperance-society?utm_source=chatgpt.com&amp;rc=st1fhw">booze-hound startup culture</a> of yesteryear — the founders of the AI generation seem to be taking it to a whole new level.
In addition to forgoing alcohol, the 20-somethings grinding away on AI ventures claim to be giving up even the most basic earthly pleasures, including privacy, social lives, and free time. In some circles, even basic needs like food or sleep are put on pause in order to build.
Marty Kausas, the 28-year-old founder of a company called Pylon, for example, told the WSJ that he primarily eats prepackaged meals-in-a-tin from <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/big-interview-bryan-johnson/">Blueprint</a>, the company founded by venture capitalist health obsessive Bryan Johnson. When he doesn't have to think about food, Kausus told the publication, his workday is more efficient.
That workday sounds grueling. In a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/martykausas_were-working-really-really-hard-right-now-activity-7354178625182593026-hLIf">recruiting post on LinkedIn</a>, Kausus made the incredible claim that he's been "putting in 92 hours a week for the past three weeks." That includes an 8am to 1am shift from Monday through Thursday, a 13-hour day on Friday, and a lighter, 11-hour Sunday.
"This is not meant to glamorize or encourage. We just really, really want to win," he continued. "Winning means we build a generational company that goes public worth over $10 billion. We expect you to put in everything you can to help get us there."
Still, the outward appearance of a puritan lifestyle comes upon one of the most extravagant business environments the tech industry has ever seen.
In 2024, the share of US venture capitalist spending on AI companies was 45 percent, representing some <a href="https://www.mintz.com/insights-center/viewpoints/2166/2025-03-10-state-funding-market-ai-companies-2024-2025-outlook">$40 billion</a> in tech investment. In the first three months of 2025, AI spending accounted for <a href="https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ais-rising-share-of-u-s-venture-capital-investment/">71 percent</a> of all venture capitalist funding. So far in 2025, some 33 AI companies have raised over <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/27/here-are-the-33-us-ai-startups-that-have-raised-100m-or-more-in-2025/">$100 million or more</a>, with multiple billion-dollar fundraises recorded.
Whether these 20-somethings are really spending 17 hour days working on finance software is difficult to say. What's more likely, behavioral science scholar <a href="https://theconversation.com/ayn-rand-inspired-myth-of-the-founder-puts-tremendous-power-in-hands-of-big-tech-ceos-like-zuckerberg-posing-real-risks-to-democracy-150830?utm_source=chatgpt.com">Jerry Davis argues</a>, is that the "monastic founder" is a myth held up to separate the future titans of industry from the common folk.
Davis tracks the beginning of this myth to Ayn Rand's <a href="https://jacobin.com/2024/03/ayn-rand-capitalism-lisa-duggan-dig">grim 1957 novel</a> "Atlas Shrugged" — a favorite of billionaire founders including <a href="https://www.thebulwark.com/p/elon-musk-thinks-he-is-an-ayn-rand-hero-nope-one-of-her-villains-silicon-valley-thiel-andreessen">Elon Musk</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-reading-list-favorite-books-2015-10">Steve Jobs</a> — in which powerful corporate tycoons with grand visions for humanity are stymied by a rabble of journalists, politicians, scientists, and common working people.
Case in point, in an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sober-startup-founders-younger-drinking-less-alcohol-2025-8?utm_source=chatgpt.com">interview with Business Insider</a>, Miranda Nover, the co-founder of a fitness tech startup called Fort, said the image of an ascetic existence is highly important to young entrepreneurs.
"If you were a software founder, a B2B SAAS founder, an AI founder," she said, "you were definitely trying to signal: we're doing this six days a week in-office, we're working until 9 pm, we're not drinking, we're not partying, we don't do any of that."
More on startups: <a href="https://futurism.com/startup-investors-gig-jobs-ai">Startup Investors Foaming at the Mouth To Carve Up Your Job With AI</a>

Paupers Please

"Why would I go drink at a bar if I can be building a company?"

There's Something Psychologically Bizarre About AI Executives

A whopping 11,000 pounds of supplies and scientific instruments that were headed to the International Space Station are in limbo after a high-profile malfunction.
Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL spacecraft encountered a serious problem with its main engine during its maiden voyage, <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/09/16/nasa-northrop-grumman-assessing-cygnus-xl-engine-burn-plan/">NASA announced</a> on Tuesday.
The spacecraft, which is just over five feet longer than the aerospace giant's Cygnus spacecraft, launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Sunday evening atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
It's the <a href="https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/09/northrop-grummans-new-spacecraft-is-a-real-chonker/">heaviest supply load</a> to have ever launched to the ISS in a single mission, including fresh food, hardware, spare parts, and <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/iss-research/nasa-northrop-grumman-to-send-medical-technology-studies-to-space/">several scientific experiments</a>.
At first, the mission, dubbed NG-23, went by without a hitch. But then, the craft's main engines shut down earlier than planned, rendering it unable to adjust its orbit and rendezvous with the station.
A "new arrival date and time" are "under review," according to the space agency.
Instead of autonomously docking with the ISS like SpaceX's Dragon, Cygnus spacecraft need to be plucked out of their orbit by the station's 58-foot Canadarm2 robotic arm.
The idea is to grab the Cygnus XL from 30 feet away and install it on the Unity module's Earth-facing port, where it will remain until March. At least, that's the plan. The agency has yet to announce a new schedule for the enormous cargo spacecraft.
The stakes are high. Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL is the company's biggest cargo spacecraft, and can carry an additional 2,500 pounds of cargo compared to its smaller Cygnus predecessor.
In comparison, SpaceX's Dragon 2 has a max cargo capacity to the ISS of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180830175624/https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-18-016.pdf">just over 7,000 pounds</a>.
As <a href="https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/09/a-record-supply-load-wont-reach-the-international-space-station-as-scheduled/">Ars Technica points out</a>, the Cygnus XL is filling in for a separate Cygnus spacecraft that was damaged while being transported from the company's manufacturer in Italy. It's also not the Cygnus line's first stumble trying to reach the station; the craft's 18th flight, back in 2022, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/cargo-spacecraft-breaks-down">also broke down</a> while trying to reach the ISS — but ultimately made it.
When or if the latest spacecraft can still reach the station remains unclear. If it can't, the 11,000 pounds of supplies will be sent to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, as Cygnus spacecraft aren't designed to return to Earth like SpaceX's Dragon.
More on Cygnus: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/cargo-spacecraft-breaks-down">Cargo Spacecraft Breaks Down En Route to Space Station</a>