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 2024.
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</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>

Main Engine Off

Lost in space.

Experimental Spacecraft Headed to Space Station Suddenly Shuts Down

When a job seeker named Conor recently applied for a content architecture position, something felt off right away.
For one thing, he got an offer for a virtual job interview just minutes after he applied, which seemed like a suspiciously quick turnaround time in today's <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-impossible-find-job">beleaguered job market</a>. Was there any way that a human had actually reviewed his application?
And when he logged in for the interview, he immediately realized he was talking to an AI system, not a human. It wasn't the first time this had happened to him during his job search, but this AI was particularly clunky: it asked overly generic questions, paused awkwardly after he answered them, and refused to provide even basic information about the role.
"Compared to other AI I had talked to, this was just not programmed with any company information, couldn't tell me the timeline of the hiring process, or about any benefits being offered," said Conor, who asked to be identified only by his first name since he's still on the job market, in an interview with Futurism.
He left the call confused and dispirited. And then, minutes after the "interview" wrapped up, he received a strange followup email from the company behind the AI interviewing system, a startup called Alex.
"AI interviews can feel unfamiliar, but they don’t have to be intimidating," read the message. "Our new candidate portal lets you take mock interviews with an AI interviewer. You can rehearse your answers, get more comfortable with the format, and sharpen your presentation skills — all on your own time."
Suddenly, Conor felt like he'd been used. Had the whole thing been a ruse? Had there even been a job in the first place, or had it been wasting his time with a fake listing — a "<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/22/ghost-jobs-why-fake-job-listings-are-on-the-rise.html">ghost job</a>," in hiring parlance — designed to pull in users for a startup's new product by belittling them with a pointless interview?
Adding insult to injury, the email's link to Alex's "mock interview" service led to a <a href="https://archive.is/zpiVB">blank white page</a> plastered with the words "coming soon."
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-363978" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/09/alex_coming_soon-1.jpg" alt="A message on Alex AI that says &quot;Coming Soon. A new candidate's portal is coming to you soon!&quot;" width="1130" height="300" />
"It just feels like a new approach to a scam," Conor said.
He's right, but Alex turns out to be a multimillion-dollar startup founded by a Brown University dropout named John Rytel and a former Facebook AI employee called Aaron Wang.
After graduating from prominent startup accelerator Y Combinator in winter of 2024, Alex — then known as "Apriora AI" — went on to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pitch-deck-ai-recruiter-startup-apriora-seed-funding-2024-5">raise $2.8 million</a> in a seed round led by 1984 Ventures, a venture capital firm boasting stakes in companies like <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/seso/financial_details">Seso</a>, an HR platform for hiring and managing <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20250828162039/https://www.sesolabor.com/workers">seasonal Mexican farmhands</a> en masse.
Though virtual interview software like <a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/hirevue/?sh=6d0107b77adf">HireVue</a> has existed since 2004, Rytel and Wang say it doesn't go far enough.
"Existing video interviewing platforms were built to solve this for companies, but their one-way interfaces and cookie-cutter questions create a disappointing candidate experience," they explained in their Y Combinator <a href="https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/KY6-apriora-your-ai-interviewer-to-identify-the-best-candidates-faster">launch announcement</a>.
Their $2.8 million solution? We applied for the same job as Conor, conducted our own interview with Alex's AI, and it felt like that same one-sided automated process its founders had described, except with some generative AI sprinkled in.
The system was glitchy, slow, and clearly pushing us through a series of pre-specified questions. As with Conor, Alex's AI refused to provide any details about the job or the company allegedly hiring for it.
And when we asked Alex's AI about the peculiar offer Conor had received about the "mock interviews with an AI interviewer," it denied that any such program existed.
"I don't have any knowledge of or connection to such services or advertisements," it replied.
But when we signed off the interview, we got the same email as Conor.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-364196" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/09/alex_email-2.jpg" alt="Email: Hi JON, I'm Aaron, CEO of Alex — we're the team behind the AI interviewer you just met. We built Alex to help candidates like you prepare for important career moments. AI interviews can feel unfamiliar, but they don’t have to be intimidating. That’s why we created a space just for you to practice. Our new candidate portal lets you take mock interviews with an AI interviewer. You can rehearse your answers, get more comfortable with the format, and sharpen your presentation skills — all on your own time. Try it here — it's completely optional and not tied to your candidacy in any way. We're here to help you put your best foot forward, and this is a great place to start. If you have any feedback, I'd love to hear it: aaronw@alex.com Best, Aaron CEO, Alex Unsubscribe from these messages here. Disclaimer: This is a private practice environment. Your responses won't affect any real interviews and are not used to train AI systems or shared with employers. It's simply a space to help you build confidence. " width="872" height="859" />
When we clicked the link, we were met by the same blank page.
"I felt so terrible about the interview," Conor told us of the uncanny experience. "They kind of just took all of my information and just didn't provide me anything about the company."
"I was like, this is impossible. It just felt like, this is not real, not anything to be taken seriously," he continued. "And if it was even remotely a legitimate offer, the whole process just felt so jarring."
Conor's experience is a textbook example of the <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/disconnection-dynamics/202505/ai-and-alienation-of-work-parallels-to-karl-marxs-vision">kind of alienation</a> enabled by a world increasingly mediated by for-profit AI software. A <a href="https://lisep.org/tru">June report</a> by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity found that nearly a quarter of Americans are "functionally unemployed," owing in large part to a high number of discouraged workers — people who are willing to work but who've given up on looking for a job.
Many of them say they'd rather <a href="https://fortune.com/2025/08/03/ai-interviewers-job-seekers-unemployment-hiring-hr-teams/">rather stay unemployed</a> than talk to a robot, calling it an "added indignity" to the meatgrinder of online job boards. Earlier this year, an <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/62-of-us-job-seekers-would-consider-not-applying-to-companies-using-generative-ai-during-the-hiring-process-302435010.html">astonishing 62 percent</a> of US jobseekers said they'd be turned off from applying to a job that used AI recruitment software.
According <a href="https://equitablegrowth.org/how-new-job-search-technologies-are-affecting-the-u-s-labor-market">to the Washington Center for Equitable Growth</a>, automated hiring systems like Alex often exclude qualified applicants from finding otherwise available jobs, confounding both hiring companies and job seekers.
There's also the enormous minefield of AI discrimination. Tools like Alex are trained on huge troves of existing data, meaning that real-life socioeconomic bias is <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-openai-gpt-hiring-racial-discrimination/?leadSource=uverify%20wall">baked into the software from the start</a>. Researchers have already identified the grim consequences of this, finding that AI hiring programs favor names associated with white applicants a staggering <a href="https://www.washington.edu/news/2024/10/31/ai-bias-resume-screening-race-gender/">85 percent of the time</a>.
And in the face of all this hiring automation, a <a href="https://arxiv.org/html/2502.05099v1">February Harvard study</a> concluded that it was the applicants with the most internal referrals — those from well-connected or high-income backgrounds, typically — who were statistically the most likely to land gigs gatekept by AI platforms.
Alex didn't respond to questions about this story.
But it did eventually replace the blank landing page with a barebones site listing mock interviews for implausible-sounding jobs including "Space Tourism Guide," "Professional Athlete," and "Mayor of Springfield, IL."
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-363980 size-full" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/09/alex_mayor-1.jpg" alt="Screen shot of job listing for &quot;Mayor&quot;: &quot;About the Role We are seeking a dedicated and visionary individual to serve as the Mayor of Springfield, IL. As the Mayor, you will be the chief executive officer of the city, responsible for overseeing municipal operations, implementing policies, and representing the city in various capacities. This role requires strong leadership, strategic thinking, and a commitment to serving the community.&quot;" width="965" height="242" />
However, when we clicked "Launch Interview" on the jobs, the site crashed and wouldn't let us go any further.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-363975 size-large" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/09/alex_crashed-1200x525.jpg" alt="Error message on Alex AI: &quot;Invalid session, reach out to support@alex.com&quot;" width="1200" height="525" />
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/companies-bragging-ai-job-applicants">Companies Bragging About Their AI Furious as Job Applicants Use AI During Interviews</a>

Bait and Switch

"It just feels like a new approach to a scam."

Man Applies for Job, Sits for Interview, Then Realizes They're Trying to Peddle "Mock Interviews With an AI Interviewer"

The United States' standing as an important place for cancer research is under threat.
As the<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/magazine/cancer-research-grants-funds-trump.html"> New York Times reports</a>, the Trump administration has dramatically slashed funding to US-based cancer research, endangering the country's overall leading position in science research — not to mention the fates of cancer patients across the country.
"We are great in science," Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institute of Health (NIH) and a Nobel prize-winning scientist, told the NYT. "Why would we want to destroy one of our greatest assets?"
In the first three months of his second term, <a href="https://www.sanders.senate.gov/in-the-news/trump-administration-cut-2-7-billion-in-nih-research-funding-through-march-senate-committee-minority-report-says/">Trump has slashed $2.7 billion from the NIH's budget</a>. Federal cancer research, in particular, has seen drastic reductions, which critics say will hamper any advancement in finding effective treatments. This has translated into <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2025-07-16/thousands-laid-off-from-nih-fda-and-cdc-after-supreme-court-decision">mass layoffs</a> and the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00703-1">freezing of important ongoing studies</a>.
In addition, Trump has proposed another round of cuts for next year, such as reducing the budget of the NIH agency, the National Cancer Institute, from $7.2 billion to $4.5 billion, according to the NYT.
The cuts could have devastating consequences. According to a <a href="https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.22.01826">study</a> published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, every $326 spent on cancer research adds a year to one's life expectancy — a bargain, relatively speaking.
The five-year survival rate for cancer has risen from just 49 percent in the 1970s to 68 percent today, according to the NYT. The implications are enormous — <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics">approximately 38.9 percent</a> of Americans are expected to be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, according to the National Cancer Institute.
The push for cuts is animated by <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8631569/">distrust among many conservatives</a> that the overall health apparatus in this country has become corrupt, oppressive, and politicized, especially during the worst days of the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/covid19.html">COVID pandemic when lockdowns were in place</a>. (Tellingly, conservatives also tend to <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10625042/#:~:text=Discussion,health%20care%20experience%20and%20outcomes.">distrust information</a> on cancer from government health organizations.)
Conservatives have also used Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives to justify funding cuts,<a href="https://georgiarecorder.com/2025/09/16/nih-grant-cuts-throw-science-into-a-downward-spiral-researchers-and-advocates-say/"> some of which were flagged erroneously</a> because grant applications contained hot-button words like "trans."
Vaccine skeptic and secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr, also <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/rfk-jr-cancels-cancer-vaccine-mrna">canceled promising work on mRNA</a>, which could've potentially led to a <a href="https://ufhealth.org/news/2025/surprising-finding-could-pave-way-for-universal-cancer-vaccine">universal vaccine against cancer</a>, according to experts.
That's what's especially galling about these cuts — we know so much more about cancer and are on the brink of some incredible scientific breakthroughs, such as new cancer radiation therapies that are <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9591027/">more targeted and less harmful</a> to surrounding healthy tissue, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/magazine/trump-administration-cancer.html">according to the NYT</a>.
"I believe I am one of only a small handful of labs in the country that specializes in drug-delivery barriers in pediatric brain cancer," University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School professor Rachael Sirianni told the NYT.
Sirianni's research focuses on a fast-growing brain cancer in children called medulloblastoma.
"When you remove me from the ecosystem, you are removing something that can’t be replaced."
Meanwhile, top scientists are <a href="https://futurism.com/scientists-brain-drain-trump-white-house">looking to leave the US behind</a>. Varmus, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on cancer, has received invitations from foreign governments to continue his work.
More on cancer research: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/rfk-jr-cancels-cancer-vaccine-mrna">RFK Jr. Cancels Promising Work on Cancer Vaccine</a>

Sick Move

Cancer

"Why would we want to destroy one of our greatest assets?"

Trump Shutting Down Cancer Research

A year after a glitch at cybersecurity company CrowdStrike triggered a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/airlines-flight-times-whiteboards-it-outage">global computer outage</a> affecting millions of computers, the software vendor is being forced to contain a new threat: a swarm of self-replicating worms.
As first <a href="https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/09/self-replicating-worm-hits-180-software-packages/">reported by</a> investigative cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs, CrowdStrike once again became the launchpad for a potentially debilitating security hazard when some 25 code packages were compromised by a novel strand of malware.
Dubbed "Shai-Hulud," the malicious software is designed to slip into developer machines through the JavaScript repository "Node Package Manager" (NPM), a widely used database of software modules and coding tools. According to Krebs, once the malware nabs credentials from an infested computer, it publishes its finds to a public file on GitHub, which includes the name "Shai-Hulud" — the mythic sandworm from Frank Herbert's 1965 sci-fi novel "Dune."
What makes Shai-Hulud particularly devastating is that every time an unsuspecting developer installs an infected module from NPM, the worm searches their system for "access tokens" — a way to <a href="https://docs.npmjs.com/about-access-tokens">download NPM content</a> without a username or password — and infects the 20 most popular packages associated with that person's account.
"This creates a cascading effect where an infected package leads to compromised maintainer credentials, which in turn infects all other packages maintained by that user," <a href="https://www.stepsecurity.io/blog/ctrl-tinycolor-and-40-npm-packages-compromised">said</a> StepSecurity researcher Ashish Kurmi.
In a breakdown of the attack, software engineer <a href="https://www.reversinglabs.com/blog/shai-hulud-worm-npm">Karlo Zanki of ReversingLabs</a> called Shai-Hulud a "first of its kind self-replicating worm."
So far, Kreb says that at least 187 NPM modules have been affected, including the 25 managed by CrowdStrike. Intriguingly, the worm is designed to assume its victim is operating a computer with a Linux or Mac operating system, and to "deliberately skip" Windows PCs.
NPM and CrowdStrike quickly removed the infected packages, which has slowed the worm's spread.
"After detecting several malicious NPM packages in the public NPM registry, a third-party open source repository, we swiftly removed them and proactively rotated our keys in public registries," a CrowdStrike representative <a href="https://thehackernews.com/2025/09/40-npm-packages-compromised-in-supply.html">told The Hacker News</a>.
Charlie Eriksen, a researcher at <a href="https://www.aikido.dev/blog/s1ngularity-nx-attackers-strike-again">security firm Aikido</a>, put it in even starker terms in an interview with Krebs.
"I would think of this attack as a 'living' thing almost, like a virus," he warned. "Because it can lay dormant for a while, and if just one person is suddenly infected by accident, they could restart the spread. Especially if there’s a super-spreader attack."
More on cybersecurity: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/life-destroyed-ai">Man's Entire Life Destroyed After Downloading AI Software</a>

Like A Leech

"I would think of this attack as a 'living' thing almost, like a virus."

CrowdStrike Infested With "Self-Replicating Worms"

A <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1nidifd/ok_should_we_start_worrying/">new viral video</a> shows a kickboxing humanoid robot shrugging off a flying dropkick from a human being.
"OK, should we start worrying?" one user <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1nidifd/ok_should_we_start_worrying/">asked</a> on the r/singularity subreddit in response to the video.
"It looks like it doesn't like falling," another user <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1nidifd/comment/nehzoey/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">added</a>.
The research behind the stunt was conducted by scientists at the Active Intelligent Systems (ACT) Lab at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen, China, using Unitree's popular G1 robot.
The robot's incredible agility highlights how far the tech has come in a matter of years. Chinese robot manufacturer Unitree's G1, in particular, has quickly turned into a popular test bed for reinforcement learning techniques, allowing it to pick up new skills very quickly.
In fact, the only thing that even came close to defeating the robot in the video was a loose tile that tripped it up — and even in that case, it made an impressive recovery, jumping right back up to fight some more in less than a second.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Testing Humanoid Robots to the Limit
Professor He Kong&#39;s team from the Active Intelligent Systems (ACT) Lab at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen, China, has released a video showcasing a &quot;violence test&quot; designed to challenge the limits of… <a href="https://t.co/B01K1ez8g6">https://t.co/B01K1ez8g6</a> <a href="https://t.co/97161kcnHh">pic.twitter.com/97161kcnHh</a>
&mdash; RoboHub🤖 (@XRoboHub) <a href="https://twitter.com/XRoboHub/status/1967496323701276997?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 15, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
We've already seen the G1 show off its martial arts prowess several times, from punching the air and delivering a <a href="https://futurism.com/robot-learned-kung-fu">swooping roundhouse kick</a> to two of the bots <a href="https://futurism.com/unitree-robots-boxing">facing off in a kickboxing showdown</a> event at the World AI Conference in Shanghai last month.
However, things can still go off the rails — with alarming results. A <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/video-experimental-fighting-robot-thrashing-uncontrollably">video of a failed test run</a> by robot combat company REK in July showed a G1 flailing its arms and legs, seemingly trying to break free of a harness.
Others are using the robot for dramatically different purposes as well. Case in point, a cowboy hat-toting bipedal robot, dubbed "Jake the Rizzbot," has been <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/rizzbot-cowboy-hat-robot-austin">wandering the streets</a> of <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/jake-rizzbot-gay">several US cities</a> this summer, turning heads and flinging compliments — instead of punches and kicks — at passersby.
More on humanoid robots: <a href="https://futurism.com/robot-keytar-disguise">Band Appears on Stage With Poorly-Disguised Robot Playing the Keytar</a>

And It Gets Up Again

"OK, should we start worrying?"

Unstoppable Martial Arts Robot Can Take a Direct Dropkick Without Falling Down

Partisan politics in the United States makes for a generally contentious atmosphere But these days, the mainstream rift isn't just between blue and red — even some of president Donald Trump's most diehard fanatics have become openly belligerent over the president's <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-embraced-ai-exploded-deepseek">obsession with AI</a>.
Following the release this summer of president Trump's "AI Action Plan" — a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americas-AI-Action-Plan.pdf">sweeping blueprint</a> outlining the white house's strategy to ramp up AI development while slashing regulation — a number of far-right stalwarts from Marjorie Taylor Greene to Steven Bannon have ripped into Trump over his tech policies.
"I have many concerns about the AI Executive Order signed yesterday by President Trump," <a href="https://x.com/RepMTG/status/1948400163875152237">Taylor Greene wrote</a> on X-formerly-Twitter, the day after Trump's "<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/preventing-woke-ai-in-the-federal-government/">Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government</a>" executive order.
"My deep concerns are that the EO [executive order] demands rapid AI expansion with little to no guardrails and breaks," the Georgia representative continued. "This needs a careful and wise approach. The AI EO takes the opposite."
And Bannon, a longtime Trump loyalist who briefly served as Trump's chief strategist at the outset of his first term, compared the approach to "summoning the demon," according to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/13/ai-is-opening-a-maga-trump-split-00534925">new reporting from Politico</a>. The former Trump aide also made headlines in early September when he joined conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer in a <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-big-tech-dinner-zuckerberg-cook-rcna229425">scathing critique</a> of the president's photo-op dinner with tech tycoons including Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates.
"There isn’t a single Trump supporter who is going to be happy to see this photo tonight," <a href="https://x.com/lauraloomer/status/1963770145358143598?s=46&amp;t=MOrgn1OciSYSUInllbgRZw">Loomer said in a post</a> on X-formerly-Twitter. "Zuckerberg and Gates belong in prison. Not at the dinner table with President Trump."
Candace Owens, another formerly prominent personality in Trump media circles, went a step further when she <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/candace-owens-says-she-embarrassed-031428399.html">rescinded her support</a> for Trump this summer, saying that she was "embarrassed" to have campaigned for the president during his 2024 election bid.
While Owens hasn't criticized Trump's AI policy directly, she has blasted the tech in the past, calling software like <a href="https://x.com/RealCandaceO/status/1948787888876884461">Elon Musk's Grok</a> an "inherent danger."
Other political characters in the outer rings of the Trump orbit are also taking issue with the president's embrace of AI. Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn — who <a href="https://www.blackburn.senate.gov/2025/9/crime/video-blackburn-joins-president-trump-at-white-house-for-announcement-of-memphis-safe-task-force-to-combat-crime">recently cheered</a> as Trump <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-signs-order-send-national-guard-memphis-crime-crackdown-rcna231517">signed an order</a> deploying hundreds of federal agents and National Guard troops to her home city of Memphis — has likewise spurned the president over an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-big-beautiful-bill-ai-regulation-ban-tech-2025-6">AI regulation provision</a> in the "Big Beautiful Bill."
"This provision could allow Big Tech to continue to exploit kids, creators, and conservatives," Blackburn said in a <a href="https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/06/30/congress/blackburn-yanks-support-for-ai-moratorium-00434635">statement</a> at the time. "Until Congress passes federally preemptive legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act and an online privacy framework, we can’t block states from making laws that protect their citizens."
The rift highlights a fascinating contradiction between Trump's ideological supporters and his moneyed interests: essentially, it's the "drain the swamp" style conservative populists who voted him into <del>the</del> office versus the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-inauguration-tech-billionaires-zuckerberg-musk-wealth-0896bfc3f50d941d62cebc3074267ecd">billionaire tech bros</a> whose vast fortunes are now <a href="https://www.nationofchange.org/2025/04/03/what-will-tech-moguls-do-with-their-wealth/">deeply embedded</a> in the US economy.
"The base’s concerns about Big Tech are colliding with Silicon Valley’s influence in this administration," Mark Beall, former Director of Strategy and Policy at the Department of Defense's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, told Politico.
When it comes to Trump's AI ambitions, Wynton Hall, the social media director at the right wing publication Breitbart concurred.
"There is within the conservative movement certainly a concern about child safety, mental health, all those things," he told Politico. "The transhumanism stuff is also a real concern for conservatives."
More on Trump: <a href="https://futurism.com/president-trump-billions-crypto">A Sitting President Is Making Billions Off Crypto, Which Feels Like a Bit of an Outrage</a>

Friendly Fire

"Summoning the demon."

Trump's Biggest Fans Furious at His Embrace of AI

Welcome to the future, where the vibes are bad in almost every meaningful respect — but where you do, at the very least, get to "vibe code," or use an AI model to write code and even build entire pieces of software.
But rarely does the process go smoothly enough for prime time. The jury's still out on whether experienced programmers actually benefit from using AI coding assistants, and the tech's shortcomings are even more obvious when it's being relied on by untrained amateurs who openly embrace the whole shtick of working off mainly "vibes." 
Nothing illustrates that last point better than the fact that some veteran programmers are apparently now making a killing by fixing these AI-hallucinated disasters, <a href="https://www.404media.co/the-software-engineers-paid-to-fix-vibe-coded-messes/">as spotlighted by 404 Media</a>, which interviewed a few of these canny opportunists.
"I started fixing vibe-coded projects because I noticed a growing number of developers and small teams struggling to refine AI-generated code that was functional but lacked the polish or 'vibe' needed to align with their vision," Hamid Siddiqi, a programmer who offers to "fix your vibe code" on Fiverr, told the outlet.
Siddiqi added that these clients need help with everything from horrendously optimized code to botched AI-generated UIs. 
And business is booming.
"I've been offering vibe coding fixer services for about two years now, starting in late 2023," Siddiqi told 404. "Currently, I work with around 15-20 clients regularly, with additional one-off projects throughout the year."
AI models are notorious for hallucinating and generally not doing what you intend them to do. One man found this out the hard way after his vibe-coding AI <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-vibe-code-deletes-company-database">wiped out his business's entire database</a>. Nonetheless, even the largest tech firms have embraced using AI coding assistants. Google CEO Sundar Pichai <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-ceo-code-ai">claimed</a> that as much as 25 percent of the company's code is now AI-generated; Microsoft chief Satya Nadella did one better and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/29/satya-nadella-says-as-much-as-30percent-of-microsoft-code-is-written-by-ai.html">claimed that it was 30 percent</a> at his company.
Some research has suggested that relying on the tech does the opposite of making workflows more efficient, as programmers have to constantly <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-programming-assistants-code-error">double and triple check the AI's error-laden outputs</a>. One <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-coding-programmers-reality">recent study</a> found that programmers who used tools like Anthropic's Claude were a whopping 19 percent slower, and ended up using less than half of the AI's suggestions.
It's no surprise, then, that Siddiqi is far from alone. Searching "vibe code fixer" on Fiverr, which is just one of many popular gig work platforms, returns over 230 results. Fixing "vibe code," or some permutation thereof, is explicitly mentioned by many of these programmers describing their services.
Some companies are getting in on the scene, too. 404 cited one software firm, Ulam Labs, which says on its website that "we clean up after vibe coding. Literally."
There's even an entire website dedicated to the niche: <a href="http://vibecodefixers.com">VibeCodeFixers.com</a>. Its founder Swatantra Sohni told 404 that over 300 veteran programmers have already signed up. He bought the domain immediately after Andrej Karpathy, a prominent computer scientist and a former director of AI at Tesla, coined the term in February. The writing on the wall was that obvious.
"Most of these vibe coders, either they are product managers or they are sales guys, or they are small business owners, and they think that they can build something," Sohni told 404.
Often, he found that vibe coders burn money on AI usage fees in the final stages of development when they try to add new features that break the app, at which point it would be cheaper to just start from scratch.
Luckily for Siddiqi and company, they often don't.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-coding-security-problems">Programmers Using AI Create Way More Glaring Security Issues, Data Shows</a>

Helping Hands

Vibe first, ask for professional help later.

Amateurs Using AI to “Vibe Code” Are Now Begging Real Programmers to Fix Their Botched Software

A single-engine plane crashed landed in a field of sugar cane in Brazil over the weekend, <a href="https://www.alagoas24horas.com.br/1692258/aviao-monomotor-cai-com-180kg-de-drogas-e-piloto-morre-em-al/">according to local news media Alagoas 24 Horas</a>, killing the pilot and leaving behind 180 kilograms — or almost 400 pounds — of cocaine.
So far, it just sounds like a tale of drug smuggling gone awry. Except that the coke, stacked together in neat bricks and wrapped in plastic, as shown in a video from local police obtained by Alagoas, sported a distinctive label: the official SpaceX logo, in blue and white, giving the story a bizarre space-age twist.
The plane crash occurred in the coastal city of Coruripe on the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday afternoon, according to Alagoas. The deceased pilot was <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15098973/Australian-plane-crash-cocaine-Brazil.html">later identified</a> as 46-year-old Timothy James Clark, an Australian businessman from Melbourne who seemed to have worked in the country's mining industry and as a pilot.
Photos from police show the crumpled plane with a blue-colored tail lying upside down in a field of shattered sugarcane.  The craft was registered to the African nation of Zambia.
The case remains under investigation, local law enforcement told Alagoas. The street value of the detained coke is unknown, but according to <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/10/25/how-much-does-cocaine-cost-around-the-world">one recent estimate</a>, the stuff goes for around $1,500 per kilo in Latin America, meaning the plane could have easily been carrying a quarter million dollars in illicit cargo.
There's little to indicate where the pilot was headed and why were the drugs branded with the SpaceX logo, but this isn't the first time that a brand affiliated with Elon Musk, the SpaceX CEO, has been slapped on some illegal drugs.
A <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zarastone/2017/08/08/tastes-like-tesla-how-tesla-ecstasy-pills-became-the-hot-way-to-get-high/">2017 Forbes article</a> highlighted how drug sellers were using tech company names, such as TripAdvisor and Skype, to brand illicit drugs to users. Musk's electrical vehicle company Tesla was a prominent example, with pills of MDMA often being pressed into the shape of its logo.
"The appeal of high tech companies, who have already paid millions for the best graphic design available, as the image they want to be associated with their product is a natural fit," Johnboy Davidson, a representative from ecstasy pill testing database Pill Reports, told Forbes at the time. "You may not be able to afford an actual Tesla but hey why not have the pill with that logo and you’ll feel just as good?"
We can imagine that the drug manufacturer for the marooned cocaine in Brazil wanted potential buyers to associate their product with SpaceX's image (not to mention <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/us/elon-musk-drugs-children-trump.html">Musk's reportedly worrisome drug use</a>): bold, risk taking, and ready to send you into orbit like a <a href="https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/dragon">SpaceX Dragon capsule</a>.
More on SpaceX: <a href="https://futurism.com/nudists-declare-war-spacex">Nudists Declare War on SpaceX</a>