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The American AI industry has a problem. In order to justify its explosive spending on AI infrastructure — data centers, essentially — firms like OpenAI and Google need to convert as many non-AI users into power users as they possibly can, ideally ones who are willing to pay monthly subscription fees for the privilege.Much of this frenzy is unfolding at the corporate level, as AI labs chase enormous contracts with various enterprises, often leading to massive overspending and pushback from employees. Fortunately for AI companies, there’s a ready-made and untapped audience waiting to be converted into life-long users: kids, particularly ones…

America’s disgust with AI — and the extreme wealth concentration with which it’s inextricably entwined — continues to rise ahead of the midterm elections in November.According to polling by the Wall Street Journal, a staggering 63 percent of adults in the US now support a pause on AI. A full 57 percent say the US government should regulate AI “immediately,” while a rock bottom 12 percent said they trusted AI companies to “take the lead” and regulate themselves.Of course, any discussion of AI has to contend with the obscene wealth underwriting the tech, both literally in the form of capital…

Last month, Futurism published an investigation into a company called Brown Brothers Media, which has attracted tens of millions of page views per month by acquiring struggling news sites and turning them into AI-powered content mills. (One of the brothers behind the company, we also reported, has extensive ties to Ghislaine Maxwell, the incarcerated collaborator of deceased sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.)Brown Brothers Media achieved this extraordinary success by inventing fake journalists and subject matter experts, often outfitting them with fraudulent credentials and personal histories, and using their bylines to churn out thousands of SEO-optimized articles on its network of publications.…

You can buy practically anything these days on the internet — especially when it’s being shipped straight from China, the beating heart of global manufacturing.It doesn’t matter how macabre the object in question is. If it has a price, there’s a company willing to sell and even advertise it to you on social media. One Reddit user found that out the hard way after spotting an Instagram ad for a “pet incinerator” on the Meta-owned platform. Several Instagram users flagged the same ad, which shows a cutesy AI-generated cat and dog — which appear healthy and not in need of…

Let’s get this out of the way: AI models don’t have feelings, and they’re certainly not “alive.”So what does it mean when someone’s accused of building an “AI torture chamber?” Apparently, it means that they must be stopped at all costs.On X — where else — alarm grew this week among AI “welfare” types over someone’s recreation of an experiment researchers conducted to explore “pain” signals in different LLMs. In the pre-print study which hasn’t undergone peer-review, the researchers gave each model a virtual “button” it could press to relieve its “pain” — but at a cost, such as zapping a…

As programmers make more and more use of generative AI in the workplace, their responsibilities are quickly transitioning from creating new products from scratch to babysitting a large language model that cobbles together code.It’s gotten to the point where some engineers are no longer able to make sense of the code being spat out by an AI, as chip optimization software company Infinity founder Jeremy Nixon told Business Insider.That doesn’t bode well, considering researchers are finding that the widespread use of AI can lead to cognitive decline and skill atrophy, including among computer scientists. Developers are afraid that software engineers…

The AI industry’s data centers aren’t belching pollution, driving their neighbors bonkers with screeching noise, and using up vast amounts of power and water. They’re also allowing companies to exploit tax breaks to save billions of dollars on their federal tax bill.As the New York Times reports, Meta is writing off its enormous, multibillion-dollar data center construction projects as “pilot models,” a Reagan-era tax credit originally intended to support companies dabbling in potentially risky research and experimentation.Put differently, the Mark Zuckerberg-led company is telling the IRS that its data center buildouts are far from guaranteed to pay off in order…

In mid-September, a new company called Robot Entertainment Kombat hosted what it claimed was the first-ever human-on-robot cage fight in California. The whole thing was more WWE than “Real Steel” — behind the scenes, the robot was controlled by a human handler, and its strikes were sold wrastlin’-style by the dramatic human performer it “fought.”Regardless of the authenticity, the California State Athletic Commission have apparently sent the organizers a cease and desist order, addressed to “all persons holding, promoting, advertising or sponsoring unsanctioned human versus humanoid robot cage fight[s].”Using the letter to drum up some buzz on social media, Robot Entertainment…

It’s hardly a secret that president Donald Trump is addicted to AI slop, but his proclivity for being wooed by the tech apparently doesn’t end there. Trump is also, according to new reporting from TIME magazine, absolutely enthralled by Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot.Whereas your average user might turn to the infamously foul-mouthed AI — which briefly identified itself as “MechaHitler” — to win an online argument or crank out gooning material, the commander in chief uses it for more productive activities such as consulting on his military and geopolitical schemes.An illustrative moment came in December 2025, when Elon Musk returned to the…

Desperate for clicks in a sea of outrageous video content and AI slop, influencers are using increasingly shocking encounters with wildlife to push themselves to the top of the algorithm.For a case in point, consider a recent viral incident in the country of Oman, in which Ukrainian fitness influencer Vadym Oleynik and his wife Olena Kravchenko filmed themselves “riding” a large adult sea turtle as it tried to nest its eggs. While it isn’t known exactly what species of turtle the couple was messing with, the area they were in, the Ras al Hadd Turtle Reserve, is one of the…