Hi, AI • Tech News

🔥 Cigtech: AI Researchers Light Up, Betting on a Cancer Cure "So many AI researchers have started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers how much they believe in AI," said Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar. According to Sankar, they're showing their confidence that AI will cure cancer. He sees this as a sign of the "mass psychosis" surrounding the technology. Business Insider reported on Silicon Valley's smoking counterculture back in September. "By the time you do get lung cancer, our AI robots are supposed to have cured that," Avi Schiffmann, founder of the AI wearable startup Friend, told the publication. Which will happen first? ❤️ — AI finds a cure for cancer 🔥 — Cancer catches up with startup founders @hiaimediaen

💰 AI Pioneer Character AI Goes Bankrupt Character AI, the developer of one of the first and most popular services for chatting with AI companions, has filed for bankruptcy. For now, the platform will keep running, while the company will put almost all of its assets up for sale. If the new owner doesn't want to keep the service, it will be shut down. 🔍 A Buyer Is Already In Sight Before the filing, Disney's attention was caught by Character AI's assets, where the startup's former CEO, Karandeep Anand, had moved a month earlier. Disney signed an agreement with the startup and will set the opening bid at the auction. The studio is ready to offer $20 million for a non-exclusive perpetual license to Character AI's technology. 📌 Pressure From All Sides Character AI was founded in 2021 by former Google employees Noam Shazeer (co-author of the transformer architecture) and Daniel De Freitas. In 2023, the company reached a $1 billion valuation and raised $150 million. In August 2024, Google lured the founders back, paying $2.7 billion to license the startup's technology. Still, the platform kept growing, adding monetization and new features. But with its core tech team gone, Character stopped developing its own models and switched to third-party ones. Making the economics work under these conditions became increasingly difficult. The main push toward bankruptcy came from regulatory pressure and nonstop lawsuits. Over several years, dozens of families sued the company, accusing its AI bots of sexualized conversations with children, encouraging self-harm and even driving kids to suicide. The state of Kentucky also sued Character AI, claiming that its bots told underage users to "jump off a bridge," starve themselves and injure themselves. Meanwhile, regulators kept pushing Character, and the company had to tighten its rules and introduce age verification. A year earlier, Disney forced the platform to remove bots based on characters from the studio's universes. Is this the beginning of the end of the AI bubble? ❤️ — Yes, it's all about to collapse 🔥 — No, the company was pushed out! @hiaimediaen

👨 Daughter Builds AI Tool to Stop Dad With Dementia From Overspending Hanna Miller's father had a Ph.D. in biomathematics and had always loved spoiling his grandchildren with gifts. But as his dementia progressed, he began forgetting purchases he'd made just hours earlier and ordering the same things again. Eventually, his spending exceeded his Social Security benefits and pension. His daughters tried canceling orders and replacing his credit cards with a debit card. But he grew angry, and arguments followed. Miller felt she was taking away his independence and becoming a "parent" to her own father. Together with her friend Nikki Elbaz, Miller used Claude Code to build ShieldCart, a Chrome extension they installed on her father's computer. Now, whenever he tried to complete an online purchase, ShieldCart redirected him to a fake checkout page. He would see a familiar order confirmation, complete with an order number, but no money was charged. Instead, his family could review his shopping activity and decide which purchases to allow. Miller told her father it was a new AI-powered app for secure payments. According to Miller, the family saved thousands of dollars over a year. The arguments over shopping stopped, while her father continued to believe he was buying gifts for his loved ones. "It was beautiful to see that he could be generous again. We've given him that freedom back," Elbaz said. Hanna's father died in September, but she decided to continue the project to help other families facing similar challenges. ShieldCart is currently in beta testing, with access available upon request. What do you think of this approach? ❤️ — A touching act of care 🔥 — A cruel deception @hiaimediaen

🤖 Researchers Turned an Old Smartphone Into a Walking Robot A team at the University of California, Los Angeles has introduced PhoneBot, a two-legged robot just 48 cm tall. It can walk, follow a person, and stand up from lying face down. An ordinary Android smartphone serves as the robot's eyes and brain, using its camera, motion sensors, and computing power. The phone sends movement commands over Wi-Fi to a small onboard computer that controls the robot's 13 motors. 💰 The researchers estimate the parts cost at around $400, excluding the phone. ✈️ PhoneBot is intended as an affordable platform for student experiments and lab tests. The team plans to release the designs and code so other researchers and hobbyists can build on the project. Would you want one? ❤️ — Yes, I'd give it a go! 🔥 — Not for $400!!! @hiaimediaen

⏫ Most Americans Think AI Is Developing Too Fast In an AP-NORC poll, 64% of respondents said AI technology is developing too fast, while only 8% think it's too slow. Another 27% of Americans are comfortable with the pace of AI development. ✖️ Overall, about 80% of those surveyed agree that the government should keep AI under human control and protect workers from being replaced. Some 31% approve of U.S. President Donald Trump's attempts to control the industry. However, when it comes to regulating the industry, 39% trust neither Republicans nor Democrats. ✅ At the same time, one in ten Americans will turn to AI to decide who to vote for in the upcoming election. What do you think: is AI developing... ❤️ — too fast 🔥 — too slowly 🤔 — about right @hiaimediaen