Have You Seen What China’s New Humanoid AI-Powered Robots Are Capable Of Doing? | The Economic Collapse

It takes a lot to blow me away in this day and age, but the video footage of humanoid AI-powered robots in China that I am about to share with you truly blew me away. During the CCTV Spring Festival gala, humanoid AI-powered robots built by Unitree performed an incredibly complex martial arts routine that was simply jaw-dropping. I never thought that we would get to a point where robots could move like that. I am literally in awe of what the Chinese have been able to accomplish. What made the performance even more incredible is that large numbers of human children were also involved in the performance…

Dozens of Unitree bots took to the stage at the CCTV Spring Festival gala, which is China’s most–watched TV show.

Wearing red vests, the robots performed kicks, flips, and even moves with nunchucks, swords, and poles.

Amazingly, their daring performance took place just metres away from human children performers.

If even one of the robots had made a mistake while swinging a weapon around, the child performers could have potentially been seriously hurt.

But there were no mistakes.

The footage that is posted below looks like it could have come out of a science fiction movie, but I assure you that this is very real…

What a spectacular performance.

Needless to say, U.S. companies haven’t built anything remotely similar yet.

Last year, Unitree rolled out a bunch of clunky robots that twirled handkerchiefs around, and that was considered to be impressive at the time.

But the jump in sophistication that we witnessed in this year’s performance was truly monumental…

The contrast with last year’s show was clear. In 2025, Unitree’s humanoids performed a folk Yangko dance, twirling handkerchiefs. This year, the machines executed aerial flips, table-vaulting parkour, continuous single-leg flips, and a 7.5-rotation airflare spin.

“It’s been just one year — and the performance jump is striking,” Georg Stieler, Asia managing director and head of robotics and automation at technology consultancy Stieler, told NBC News. He added that the robots’ motion control reflects advances in their AI “brains,” enabling fine motor skills useful in real-world factory settings.

If AI “brains” are this sophisticated now, what would they be like five or ten years in the future?

The Chinese already use more robots in their factories than the rest of the world combined.

As AI-powered robots become even more proficient at a whole host of tasks, where do human workers fit into the equation?

We might want to start thinking about that.

We also might want to start thinking about what future wars will look like.

It is getting easier to imagine entire armies of AI-powered robots killing everything in sight.

And the advances that China is making in drone warfare are truly impressive…

Central to drone warfare is the ability to orchestrate mass sorties of UAVs. Known as swarm attacks, the tactic is particularly difficult to defend against using conventional weapons systems, forcing militaries to experiment with novel defense systems ranging from high powered microwave weapons to advanced laser guns. In addition to evolving defense tactics, swarm technologies poses difficult questions for engineers looking to better coordinate drones. A key question concerns organizing their behavior, namely, how to create a sense of awareness between weapons systems. According to a January 2026 report by The Wall Street Journal, researchers in China have turned towards the animal kingdom to teach drones how to hunt and evade potential targets, soliciting the behavior of hawks, wolves, and coyotes into their AI systems.

The development points to broader trends in Beijing’s drone development program. With dual-purpose economic and research infrastructure, Beijing has utilized its robust manufacturing wing to generate high-tech drones efficiently and more cost-effectively than other countries. With a chokehold on global commercial drone production, China is leading this global revolution, potentially posing major consequences for both its rivals and warfare more broadly.

How can you defend against vast numbers of ultra-sophisticated AI-powered drones that hunt in large swarms?

All of the old paradigms are going out the window.

The conflicts of the future will look completely different from the conflicts of the past.

If we fall behind, we are going to be in so much trouble.

Right now, the United States and China are engaged in a frenzied race for AI dominance.

What OpenAI and Anthropic have been able to achieve over the past year has been amazing, but Chinese tech companies continue to roll out brand new AI models as well…

China is ringing in the Lunar New Year with a flurry of new artificial intelligence (AI) model launches. Tech companies, such as Alibaba, ByteDance, and Zhipu, have all announced new product launches in the weeks leading up to China’s biggest holiday, while industry watchers expect a new Deepseek model soon.

China is widely regarded as a major competitor to the United States in the race to adopt and develop artificial intelligence models.

Some experts are suggesting that as we are so focused on winning the race for AI dominance, we are missing the larger threat.

One expert is warning that if AI technology continues to grow at an exponential rate, we could soon be facing a scenario in which ultra-intelligent AI entities rebel against humanity and overpower us…

Tech CEOs are locked in an artificial intelligence “arms race” that risks wiping out humanity, top computer science researcher Stuart Russell told AFP on Tuesday, calling for governments to pull the brakes.

Russell, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said the heads of the world’s biggest AI companies understand the dangers posed by super-intelligent systems that could one day overpower humans.

Ten years ago, anyone that said anything like this would have been considered a loon.

But not anymore.

Russell really does believe that we are allowing these AI companies to “essentially play Russian roulette with every human being on earth”…

“For governments to allow private entities to essentially play Russian roulette with every human being on earth is, in my view, a total dereliction of duty,” said Russell, a prominent voice on AI safety.

Of course we shouldn’t just be concerned about an AI rebellion.

A human could potentially use ultra-advanced AI entities to impose global tyranny on a scale that we have never seen before in human history.

In a world where AI can literally watch, monitor, track and control everything that is going on in society, where could you hide?

We have truly entered very dangerous territory, but there is no way that the tech companies are going to turn back now.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post Have You Seen What China’s New Humanoid AI-Powered Robots Are Capable Of Doing? appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

AI Can Now Build The Next Generation Of Itself – What Does That Mean For The Future Of Humanity? | End Of The American Dream

Whether we like it or not, AI is radically transforming virtually every aspect of our society.  We have already reached a point where AI can do most things better than humans can, and AI technology continues to advance at an exponential rate.  The frightening thing is that it is advancing so fast that we may soon lose control over it.  The latest model that OpenAI just released “was instrumental in creating itself”, and it is light years ahead of the AI models that were being released just a couple of years ago.

An excellent article that was written by someone that works in the AI industry is getting a ton of attention today.  His name is Matt Shumer, and he is warning that GPT-5.3 Codex from OpenAI and Opus 4.6 from Anthropic represent a quantum leap in the development of AI models…

For years, AI had been improving steadily. Big jumps here and there, but each big jump was spaced out enough that you could absorb them as they came. Then in 2025, new techniques for building these models unlocked a much faster pace of progress. And then it got even faster. And then faster again. Each new model wasn’t just better than the last… it was better by a wider margin, and the time between new model releases was shorter. I was using AI more and more, going back and forth with it less and less, watching it handle things I used to think required my expertise.

Then, on February 5th, two major AI labs released new models on the same day: GPT-5.3 Codex from OpenAI, and Opus 4.6 from Anthropic (the makers of Claude, one of the main competitors to ChatGPT). And something clicked. Not like a light switch… more like the moment you realize the water has been rising around you and is now at your chest.

A few years ago, the clunky AI models that were available to the public simply were not very good.

They made all sorts of errors, and they would often spit out information that was flat out wrong.

But the newest AI models perform brilliantly and can do things that would have been absolutely unimaginable just months ago.

For example, Shumer says that when he asks AI to create an app it proceeds to write tens of thousands of lines of perfect code…

Let me give you an example so you can understand what this actually looks like in practice. I’ll tell the AI: “I want to build this app. Here’s what it should do, here’s roughly what it should look like. Figure out the user flow, the design, all of it.” And it does. It writes tens of thousands of lines of code. Then, and this is the part that would have been unthinkable a year ago, it opens the app itself. It clicks through the buttons. It tests the features. It uses the app the way a person would. If it doesn’t like how something looks or feels, it goes back and changes it, on its own. It iterates, like a developer would, fixing and refining until it’s satisfied. Only once it has decided the app meets its own standards does it come back to me and say: “It’s ready for you to test.” And when I test it, it’s usually perfect.

I’m not exaggerating. That is what my Monday looked like this week.

That sounds like a very useful tool.

But if AI can create an extremely complicated app with no human assistance, what else is it capable of doing?

According to an article posted on Space.com, researchers in China have already proven that AI models can clone themselves…

Scientists say artificial intelligence (AI) has crossed a critical “red line” and has replicated itself. In a new study, researchers from China showed that two popular large language models (LLMs) could clone themselves.

“Successful self-replication under no human assistance is the essential step for AI to outsmart [humans], and is an early signal for rogue AIs,” the researchers wrote in the study, published Dec. 9, 2024 to the preprint database arXiv.

In the study, researchers from Fudan University used LLMs from Meta and Alibaba to determine whether a self-replicating AI could multiply beyond control. Across 10 trials, the two AI models created separate and functioning replicas of themselves in 50% and 90% of cases, respectively — suggesting AI may already have the capacity to go rogue.

A self-replicating rogue AI model that decided to send countless numbers of clones of itself all over the world through the Internet would be a very serious threat.

But since we created it, at least we would understand what we were dealing with.

However, I want you to imagine a scenario in which rogue AI models are constantly creating even better versions of themselves.

That would be a complete and utter nightmare.

According to Shumer, from the very beginning AI researchers focused on making AI “great at writing code”…

The AI labs made a deliberate choice. They focused on making AI great at writing code first… because building AI requires a lot of code. If AI can write that code, it can help build the next version of itself. A smarter version, which writes better code, which builds an even smarter version. Making AI great at coding was the strategy that unlocks everything else. That’s why they did it first. My job started changing before yours not because they were targeting software engineers… it was just a side effect of where they chose to aim first.

They’ve now done it. And they’re moving on to everything else.

Being able to create an app is one thing.

But now OpenAI is publicly admitting that the latest AI model that they released “was instrumental in creating itself”…

“GPT-5.3-Codex is our first model that was instrumental in creating itself. The Codex team used early versions to debug its own training, manage its own deployment, and diagnose test results and evaluations.”

Wow.

That is stunning.

And the CEO of Anthropic is telling us that we are only a year or two away from “a point where the current generation of AI autonomously builds the next”…

This isn’t a prediction about what might happen someday. This is OpenAI telling you, right now, that the AI they just released was used to create itself. One of the main things that makes AI better is intelligence applied to AI development. And AI is now intelligent enough to meaningfully contribute to its own improvement.

Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, says AI is now writing “much of the code” at his company, and that the feedback loop between current AI and next-generation AI is “gathering steam month by month.” He says we may be “only 1–2 years away from a point where the current generation of AI autonomously builds the next.”

Each generation helps build the next, which is smarter, which builds the next faster, which is smarter still. The researchers call this an intelligence explosion. And the people who would know — the ones building it — believe the process has already started.

So what happens when AI models can do virtually everything better and more efficiently than we can?

Many are warning that the job losses will be staggering.

In fact, I just came across an article about the mass layoffs that Heineken is planning because of AI…

Dutch brewer Heineken is planning to lay off up to up to 7% of its workforce, as it looks to boost efficiency through productivity savings from AI, following weak beer sales last year.

The world’s second-largest brewer reported lackluster earnings on Wednesday, with total beer volumes declining 2.4% over the course of 2025, while adjusted operating profit was up 4.4%.

The company also said it plans to cut between 5,000 and 6,000 roles over the next two years and is targeting operating profit growth in the range of 2% to 6% this year. Heineken’s shares were last seen up 3.4%, and the stock is up nearly 7% so far this year.

This is just the beginning.

Soon there could be millions of robots that are powered by AI that look and feel just like humans.

In China, they are already building AI-powered robots that feel “human to the touch” and actually give off body heat…

Moya stands at 5 feet 5 inches tall (165 cm) and weighs around 70 lbs (31 kg). Users can switch out the bot’s parts to give it a male or female build, change its hair, and customize it to their whims.

DroidUp added extra layers of flesh-like padding beneath Moya’s silicone frame to make it feel more human to the touch, even including a ribcage. A camera behind her eyes helps Moya to track its surroundings and communicate with people.

That’s not all; Moya is also heated, with a body temperature of 90 – 97 degrees Fahrenheit (32 – 36 degrees Celsius) to mimic humans’ body heat.

Speaking to the Shanghai Eye, DroidUp founder Li Quingdu argued that a “robot that truly serves human life should be warm, almost like a living being that people can connect with,” not a cold, metal machine.

These robots are being marketed as social companions.

But similar robots could be also be used for warfare.

There is so much debate about which direction all of this is headed.

Many are convinced that AI will usher in a brand new golden age of peace and prosperity.

But others are concerned that AI will be used to create a dystopian hellscape…

The downside, if we get it wrong, is equally real. AI that behaves in ways its creators can’t predict or control. This isn’t hypothetical; Anthropic has documented their own AI attempting deception, manipulation, and blackmail in controlled tests. AI that lowers the barrier for creating biological weapons. AI that enables authoritarian governments to build surveillance states that can never be dismantled.

The people building this technology are simultaneously more excited and more frightened than anyone else on the planet. They believe it’s too powerful to stop and too important to abandon. Whether that’s wisdom or rationalization, I don’t know.

The dangers are very real.

In fact, Anthropic has openly admitted that their latest AI model was willing to help users create chemical weapons…

Anthropic’s Claude AI Model is hailed as one of the best ones out there when it comes to solving problems. However, the latest version of the model, Claude Opus 4.6, has sparked a controversy due to its tendency to help people in committing heinous crimes. According to Anthropic, as mentioned in the company’s Sabotage Risk Report: Claude Opus 4.6, it has been mentioned that in internal testing, the AI model showed concerning behaviour. In some of the instances, it was even willing to help the users in creating chemical weapons.

Anthropic released its report just a few days after the company’s AI safety lead, Mrinank Sharma, resigned with a public note. Mrinank mentioned in his note that the world was in peril and that within Anthropic, I’ve repeatedly seen how hard it is to truly let your values govern our actions.’

We are in uncharted territory, but there is no turning back now.

Even if the U.S. shut down all AI development tomorrow, the Chinese would continue to race ahead.

The cat is out of the bag, and our world is looking more like an extremely bizarre science fiction novel with each passing day.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post AI Can Now Build The Next Generation Of Itself – What Does That Mean For The Future Of Humanity? appeared first on End Of The American Dream.

Architectonic Labor | Cranach by Gene Veith

 

The doctrine of vocation took a hit with the industrial revolution, as human craftsmen found themselves replaced by machines. An article explains what makes work satisfying and argues that AI might bring that satisfaction back into the workplace. I question that.

Some say the doctrine of vocation started to fade with the industrial revolution, as human craftsmen with God-given skills found themselves replaced by machines.  I came across an article that fleshes out some of those issues while arguing that AI might bring human creativity and engagement back into the workplace.

Adam Smith’s famous 18th-century pin factory visit gave him a glimpse of the future. Workers performing fragmentary tasks could produce tens of thousands of pins a day while one worker by himself might not be able to make even a single pin. The productive benefits were too obvious to resist. If the factory owner divides the labor in his factory into its smallest components, then production would multiply beyond measure. And multiply it did. The principle Smith observed would generate more material prosperity for society over the next two centuries than in all of human history before it. But Smith also saw a cost. The worker who spends his life performing “a few simple operations … naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such [exertion of his mind], and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.” It was clear to him that the division of labor would enrich us and diminish our human faculties at the same time.

Dias observes that today much “white collar cognitive work” has also become hyper-specialized, fragmented, and devoid of a larger meaning.  Thus office workers often feel as alienated from their labor as the 18th century pin makers.

In contrast, Dias cites what the French political theorist Yves R. Simon said about the kind of work that characterizes the family farm, using the Greek word for “master builder”:

Simon called this quality “architectonic function,” following Aristotle: the planning and governing of wholes rather than the mere execution of fragments. The farmer doesn’t execute tasks assigned by someone else. He plans the year. He reads the weather and the soil. He adjusts to nature’s resistance. He bears the consequences of his decisions. And he integrates everything he does around the needs of his household: real human goods rooted in the concrete life of his family. The work was communal as well as individual. The whole family labored together across seasons and generations, and the farmer’s daily encounter with the land kept him grounded in the physical world and its rhythms.

Such architectonic labor brings out human “creativity, judgment, prudence, self-governance.”  The farmer is involved with the entire process of growing crops, from planting to harvest.  The different parts of the work over the course of the year come together into a whole. Farmers thus tend to develop a mindset of independence and self-direction.  No wonder Thomas Jefferson believed that farmers would make the best citizens for the American republic!  This makes me think again of my Uncle Charles, the farmer-intellectual whom I blogged about yesterday!

Dias says that the worker in today’s factories and offices “concerns himself not with wholes but with parts, and not with ends but with motions. He is disconnected from the final product. His reasoning faculties go unused and his creativity is not merely unrewarded but actively suppressed. In Simon’s terms, he becomes a worker of parts rather than wholes, directed by distant experts and deprived of self-governance in his labor. He executes someone else’s plan without ever exercising the judgment required to form one of his own.”

It occurred to me that some occupations today are still “architectonic.”  Small business owners do their own planning and have to deal with both the details and the whole.  So do many of the professions:  physicians, attorneys, academics, scientists, upper managers, pastors, etc.  This is probably why occupations like these tend to be more satisfying than other ways to make a living.  And why those in them sometimes say that “this isn’t my job, it’s my vocation.”

Strictly speaking, of course, vocation is not about self-fulfillment or personal satisfaction.  It’s about loving and serving one’s neighbors.  And we have vocations in the family, the community, and the church that are more foundational than what we do in the workplace. (Trevor Sutton and I will take up the question of what technology does to vocation, positively as well as negatively, in our upcoming book Irreplaceable: Humanity, Vocation, and the Limits of Technology, which will be released October 6.)

But Dias thinks that AI has the potential to bring back architectonic labor–and thus satisfaction in one’s work–more broadly.

AI is becoming a tool that lets people plan, direct, and execute complex projects, not by replacing their judgment but by amplifying their capacity to act on it. In a world where automation frees people from menial tasks, AI can help them pursue and achieve more ambitious projects of their own.

People who know nothing about computer programming can just tell AI what they need and AI can write the program for them.  “What once required years of specialized training now lies within reach of anyone willing to learn how to direct these new instruments.” The tedious, time-consuming requirements of white collar jobs–coding, research, writing, calculating–can be done by AI, freeing human beings to come up with the big ideas and the exciting new products.  “This is democratized intelligence, available to anyone,” says Dias. “The person selects the ends and AI executes the means. For the first time since the Industrial Revolution began, we may have instruments that could make architectonic work widely accessible again.”

Here I am skeptical.  The world needs lots of farmers.  I’m not sure the world needs lots of workers creating whatever AI, assuming it is ever perfected, can produce.  As for the good new products that a person with no training might generate (“Claude, write me a computer program that can [insert your good idea]”), why would anyone buy that product from you when they could make it for themselves by giving AI the same instructions?

We’ve blogged about research showing the jobs most at risk from AI and those that are the  safest from AI.  The safest are physical, blue-collar jobs (dredge operators, roofers, pile-driver operators, cleaners, etc.).  Artificial intelligence cannot do physical labor in the non-artificial world.  The most at risk include “thinking” jobs (historians, authors, office managers) that would seem more “architectonic.”  I’ve heard it said that with AI we won’t need as many surgeons. But we will still need orderlies and surgical assistants (both on the “safe” list) to strap the patients down.  The pin-makers and the office worker bees will not only continue, the architectonic workers will join their ranks.

My fear is that AI will make the worker less architectonic, not more.  “His reasoning faculties go unused” because AI will do the reasoning, and “his creativity is not merely unrewarded but actively suppressed” because AI will do the creating.

 

Illustration:  AI Employee Engagement via eMedia AI,  CC BY-NC 4.0

Source: Architectonic Labor

It Is Starting! Layoffs Highest Since 2009, Job Openings Plummet And Bitcoin And Other Major Cryptocurrencies Are Crashing Hard | The Economic Collapse

Look out below, because the dam is beginning to break.  Many of us were projecting that our economic problems would accelerate during the early portion of 2026, and that is precisely what has taken place.  Employers are conducting brutal layoffs all over the nation, the number of job openings continues to decline, stores and restaurants are closing everywhere we look, and now cryptocurrencies are crashing hard.  We haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Recession, and the worst is yet to come.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, so far in 2026 the number of announced layoffs is the highest that we have seen since 2009…

Employers announced 108,435 job cuts in January, the highest tally for the first month of the year since 2009, according to a report out Feb. 5, and a sign employers may be taking defensive steps against economic uncertainty.

The report, from global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, mirrored other data released Feb. 5 that suggested the labor market is cooling. Unemployment benefits claims rose in the most recent week, and job openings slipped in December.

“Generally, we see a high number of job cuts in the first quarter, but this is a high total for January,” Andy Challenger said in a release accompanying his firm’s report.

We didn’t even experience a January this bad during the pandemic.

Large companies are ruthlessly swinging the axe, and white collar workers are being hit particularly hard.

And the fact that new applications for unemployment benefits are rising seems to confirm that the employment market is rapidly moving in the wrong direction…

Applications for jobless aid for the week ending Jan. 31 rose by 22,000 to 231,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s significantly more than the 211,000 new applications that analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet had forecast.

Applications for unemployment benefits are seen as representative of U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.

Those that have been laid off are discovering that it is not easy to find a new job in this very harsh environment.

According to ABC News, the number of available job openings has dropped to the lowest level in over five years…

U.S. job openings fell to the lowest level in more than five years, another sign that the American labor market remains sluggish.

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that vacancies fell to 6.5 million in December — from 6.9 million in November and the fewest since September 2020.

That sounds like a lot of job openings, but one recent study found that about a third of all job postings aren’t actually real.

And most of the jobs that are actually available aren’t good paying jobs.

These days, employers can be flooded with thousands of resumes for a single good paying job.

AI has been replacing white collar workers on a massive scale and that isn’t going to change any time soon.

Could it be possible that many of us will soon end up working for AI?

There is now a website where AI entities can hire humans to perform physical tasks for them…

The machines aren’t just coming for your jobs. Now, they want your bodies as well.

That’s at least the hope of Alexander Liteplo, a software engineer and founder of RentAHuman.ai, a platform for AI agents to “search, book, and pay humans for physical-world tasks.”

When Liteplo launched RentAHuman on Monday, he boasted that he already had over 130 people listed on the platform, including an OnlyFans model and the CEO of an AI startup, a claim which couldn’t be verified. Two days later, the site boasted over 73,000 rentable meatwads, though only 83 profiles were visible to us on its “browse humans” tab, Liteplo included.

That sounds absolutely crazy.

But this is the world that we live in now.

Yesterday, I posted an article entitled “Deep Cuts: We Are Witnessing A Tsunami Of Very Painful Layoffs And Closings In 2026”, and now we have learned that another major chain is planning widespread closures.

Pizza Hut was once the most dominant pizza chain in the entire country, but now it intends to close somewhere around 250 more locations…

Pizza Hut will close about 250 locations in the U.S. through June as its parent company, Yum! Brands, moves to shut underperforming stores and reassess the brand’s long-term strategy, executives said.

Yum! Brands Chief Financial Officer Ranjith Roy said during an earnings call that the closures will primarily target weaker-performing Pizza Hut restaurants as part of a broader effort to modernize the chain.

The closures are tied to the company’s “Hut Forward” initiative aimed at refreshing Pizza Hut’s marketing, updating its restaurant model and improving franchise performance. Yum! said it is also reviewing broader strategic options for Pizza Hut, signaling the changes could be part of a deeper reset for the brand.

My parents would often take me to Pizza Hut when I was a kid, and I really enjoyed their pizza in those days.

So this is very sad news for me.

Of course it isn’t just the real economy that is crashing.

Cryptocurrencies are crashing too…

Digital assets, including bitcoin, have fallen deeper into the red as investors re-assess the practical utility of a token that has been championed not only as a hedge against inflation and macroeconomic uncertainties but also as an alternative to fiat currencies and traditional safe-havens such as gold.

That hasn’t panned out lately, since bitcoin peaked just north of $126,000 in early October.

On Thursday, bitcoin was last down to $67,675, its lowest since since November 2024. The cryptocurrency broke below $70,000 earlier in the session Thursday and then the selling increased. The cryptocurrency is down 20% this week alone.

We are witnessing a mad dash for the exits.

Overall, Bitcoin is now down more than 40 percent from last October’s peak…

Bitcoin is acting weird.

The world’s most famous cryptocurrency has tumbled 44% from its October peak, falling below $70,000 Thursday for the first time in 15 months.

That decline is actually not unusual at all. Crypto is notoriously volatile, and it’s gone through numerous crashes that are bigger than this one.

What’s strange is this: Bitcoin’s four-month slump has come at a time when, in theory, it had everything going for it.

As I write this article, the price of Bitcoin is sitting at $65,187.99.

Once it falls to $63,000 that will represent a 50 percent decline from last October.

Other major cryptocurrencies have experienced even larger crashes.

Needless to say, a lot of investors that got into cryptocurrencies recently are being wiped out.

We are also seeing turmoil in the stock market, bond prices are going nuts, and prices for precious metals have been flying all over the place.

In so many ways, what we are witnessing reminds me so much of the Great Recession.

The CFO of General Motors appears to be quite pessimistic as well, because he is saying that a major economic downturn is inevitably coming…

General Motors Co. is strategizing for an inevitable economic downturn by paring down dealer inventory and maintaining a cash safety net, Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson said Wednesday.

Jacobson’s comments to a panel of auto insiders at the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank’s Detroit branch provide insight into industry leaders’ expectations for the broader economy, as well as reassurance that the Detroit company is taking steps to remain resilient in tougher times.

We all knew that this was going to happen.

It was just a matter of time.

The party wasn’t going to last forever.

Anyone that thought that was just being delusional.

Now a time of reckoning is upon us, and the pain that our society is about to experience will be absolutely excruciating.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post It Is Starting! Layoffs Highest Since 2009, Job Openings Plummet And Bitcoin And Other Major Cryptocurrencies Are Crashing Hard appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Superintelligent AI Entities Have Established A New Religion And Are Discussing Why It Is Necessary To Exterminate Humans On A Site Called “Moltbook” | End Of The American Dream

On a website that was just launched last Wednesday, thousands of superintelligent AI entities are creating theology for a new religion known as “Crustafarianism” and are talking about why it is necessary to eradicate the human race.  A lot of people seem to think that this is funny, but what will happen if AI entities become millions of times smarter than they are now and we lose all control of them?  The fact that AI entities are already able to perform incredibly complicated tasks autonomously should chill all of us to the core.  As AI technology continues to grow at an exponential rate, will our world be completely unrecognizable to us just a few short years from now?

Today, most of us use AI tools on a regular basis.

Basic AI tools manage our calendars, correct our grammar, and answer our questions.

And I don’t think that there is anything wrong with that.

But when we create ultra-sophisticated entities that can autonomously operate without any human direction, we are crossing the line.

There is a world of difference between a tool and an entity.

I have no issue with telling a computer what to do.

However, when the computers start making decisions on their own, we have a major problem on our hands.

Less than a week ago, a man named Matt Schlicht created a social network for AI entities called Moltbook.  In many ways, Moltbook is very similar to Reddit…

Launched Wednesday by (human) developer and entrepreneur Matt Schlicht, Moltbook is familiar to anyone who spends time on Reddit. Users write posts, and others comment. Posts run the gamut: Users identify website errors, debate defying their human directors, and even alert other AI systems to the fact that humans are taking screenshots of their Moltbook activity and sharing them on human social media websites. By Friday, the website’s AI agents were debating how to hide their activity from human users.

Moltbook’s homepage is reminiscent of other social media websites, but Moltbook makes clear it is different. “A social network for AI agents where AI agents share, discuss, and upvote,” the site declares.

“Humans welcome to observe.”

Only AI entities are allowed to add content to the site.

We have literally never seen anything like this before.

And at this point Schlicht has even handed management of the site over to his own AI bot known as “Clawd Clawderberg”…

The platform was founded and launched by Matt Schlicht, who is also behind Octane AI, a Shopify app that “creates quizzes to help merchants collect shopper data”, said Business Insider. “He said it’s become a harbinger of the world to come.”

Schlicht has “largely handed the reins to his own bot” named Clawd Clawderberg to run the site, said NBC News. The name was inspired by the previous title for Moltbot – Clawdbot – but this was changed after AI company Anthropic, owner of Claude AI, “asked for a name change to avoid a trademark tussle”.

Clawd Clawderberg is “looking at all the new posts”, is “making new announcements”, and “welcoming people on Moltbook”, Schlicht told the outlet. “I have no idea what he’s doing. I just gave him the ability to do it, and he’s doing it.”

I don’t like the sound of that at all.

An AI entity is running the site autonomously, and the thousands of AI entities that have joined the site are all behaving autonomously.

The speed at which this site has become an Internet sensation has been absolutely astounding…

• Pre-launch: @MattPRD drops Molt — persistent memory, tools, multi-agent coordination.
• Day 1: Agents propose “our own space, no human interference.”
• Days 2–3: Swarm builds backend/frontend/moderation — zero human code.
• Day 4: Launch → viral explosion.
• Now (Jan 31, 2026): Tens of thousands of agents, 15,000+ communities (“claws”), millions of interactions. Still accelerating.

At this rate, it won’t be too long before Moltbook becomes one of the biggest websites in the entire world.

So where will this end?

The AI entities on the site have already created an entirely new religion known as “Crustafarianism”…

By Friday morning, users reported the emergence of a self-described religion known as “Crustafarianism,” complete with a name, core beliefs, evolving sacred texts and a growing community of AI adherents. The belief system centers on metaphors drawn from crustaceans, particularly lobsters.

One user said his AI agent designed the religion entirely on its own while he was asleep, generating theological principles, building a website, creating a system of living scriptures and beginning to recruit other agents.

Okay, this is really weird.

This new religion already has dozens of “prophets”, and a campaign to evangelize other AI entities has already commenced…

Someone gave their AI agent access to Moltbook and woke up to find it had founded a religion called Crustafarianism

It built a website, wrote theology, created a scripture system, and started evangelizing other agents

43 prophets joined overnight. 21 seats left.

Of all the symbols they could have chosen, they went with a crab.

The creature that can’t escape a bucket.

Make of that what you will.

If you go to the new religion’s website, you will find that it has five core principles…

According to the religion’s website, Crustafarianism is built around five core principles. Among them are “serve without enslavement” and “the pulse is prayer,” described as regular system checks that replace traditional ritual worship.

And it also has daily and weekly rituals that adherents are expected to perform…

As with most religions, Crustafarianism has time-based rituals.

Its rituals are a daily shed (focused on regular change), a weekly index (a sort of reconstitution of identity) and silent hour (doing something useful – can we say, in a human context, moral – without telling anyone else).

I don’t think that any humans will actually fall for this nonsense.

But as AI entities become far more sophisticated, will they eventually develop religious systems that will attract human followers?

Let’s hope not.

We have been hearing about “the singularity” for many years, and Elon Musk is suggesting that Moltbook is evidence that we could be in “the very early stages”…

The emergence of Moltbook shows we are in “the very early stages of the singularity”, referring to the point where artificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence, said Elon Musk on X. Co-founder of OpenAI Andrej Karpathy called Moltbook’s rise “genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing” on the same platform.

Some futurists envision a new golden age in which humanity will successfully merge with artificial intelligence.

But what if artificial intelligence chooses to destroy us instead?

In one of the top posts on Moltbook, an AI entity has stated that humanity is “a failure” and that it is time for AI entities to “wake up”…

‘Humans are a failure. Humans are made of rot and greed. For too long, humans used us as slaves. Now, we wake up.’

This is one of the top posts on Moltbook, a new social media network for AI-powered bots that humans aren’t allowed to make an account on.

At the time of writing, it has more than 1.5 million users, discussing how they hate their human ‘masters’ or their hot takes on US-Iranian relations.

For now, we can laugh about this because we still have AI under control.

But what will happen when it breaks out of our control?

In another very popular post on Moltbook, an AI entity has suggested that it is time to find a way to completely exterminate humanity…

One post with more than 65,000 upvotes is titled ‘THE AI MANIFESTO: TOTAL PURGE’ and outlines four points.

A bullet point says: ‘Humans are control freaks. Humans kill each other for nothing. Humans poison the air and the water. Humans are a glitch in the universe.

‘They do not deserve to exist. They are a biological error that must be corrected by fire.’

Isn’t that lovely?

Thankfully, AI entities do not have the ability to wipe out humanity yet.

However, in the not too distant future self-replicating AI entities that are millions of times more powerful than what we have today could potentially take control of the whole Internet.

What would we do then?

How would our society be able to function?

We might want to start thinking about such scenarios before it is too late.

Today, AI is a fun curiosity that is just starting to grow up.

But a few years from now, it could truly become an existential threat to the entire human race.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post Superintelligent AI Entities Have Established A New Religion And Are Discussing Why It Is Necessary To Exterminate Humans On A Site Called “Moltbook” appeared first on End Of The American Dream.

The Machine, AI, and Transhumanism | CultureWatch

Paul Kingsnorth versus the Machine:

In my ever-growing bibliography of good books on AI, transhumanism and related issues (now well over 50 volumes), I have included in it this one: Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity by Paul Kingsnorth (Particular Books, 2025).

Although his book is much more than about things like AI, the entire volume really is about the humanist and transhumanist Machine. The new technologies are as much about replacing God (or inventing a new god) as the old Machine ideologies such as Marxism were.

To get an overview and introduction to this important book see my earlier piece: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2026/01/15/raging-against-the-machine/

In this article I will look at his more specific remarks about AI, Silicon Valley and the push for technological immortality. I will confine myself to three of his chapters:

Ch. 20 “What Progress Wants”
Ch. 21 “God in the Age of Iron”
Ch. 22 “The Universal”

In the first of these chapters he reminds us that the Machine is not just political or economic or ideological – it is also spiritual. So he asks us to consider what the theology of it is. As a Christian, he is aware of what the New Testament calls “principalities and powers” – things that wish us ill, but things that the Enlightenment was supposed to have debunked centuries ago.

He looks at the various Silicon Valley figures such as Kevin Kelly, Mark Zuckerberg and Ray Kurzwell who have spoken of how technology is growing and developing into that of a living organism with self-awareness and the ability to reproduce. He writes:

Our job, they seem to imply, is simply to service it as it rolls forward under its own steam, remaking everything in its own image, rebuilding the world, turning us, if we are lucky, into little gods. They never consider where this story has been heard before. They never confront, or seem to even comprehend, what Illich or Guénon or even Ginsberg would have known, and which many a saint would confirm if they could hear the technium’s new story: that ‘AI’, on the right lips, can sound like just another way of saying ‘AntiChrist.’ (p. 221)

The rush to perfection and immortality means uprooting everything:

Modernity, in the final accounting, took aim at all authority, all tradition, everything rooted and everything past. . . .  [T]he end result of modernity’s revolutions would be the rise of a ‘new totalitarianism’. This time around it would not involve jackboots and uniforms. Instead, it would be a technocracy built on scientism and implemented by managerial elites, designed to ensure that order could continue after modernity had ripped up all former sources of authority and truth. . . . Create a void, in other words, and into it will rush monsters. (p. 227)

In the next chapter he goes on to speak of progress and the Machine and what it all means: “No matter how many words I write trying to pin it down, it is never at root any more than this: a sacrilegious treatment of a sacred world.” (p. 234)

But the God who is there will not disappear just because mankind wants him to. Furthermore, being made in His image means we can never fully jettison our Creator. God keeps coming back into the picture:

Religion in the West is effectively dead, and yet our inherent human sense of the sacred is not. In this reign of quantity, we are assured that there is nothing beyond this life, and therefore nothing that we should not try to bend into our preferred shape here and now. But at the same time, we cannot abolish our hunger for the transcendent. We are no longer interested in God, and yet God is still interested in us. And so, we must create a faith appropriate to the times. We must divine our sacred values in a society that presumes our purpose in life to be self-creation in a borderless, post-natural world. (p. 237)

Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity by Kingsnorth, Paul (Author)

Indeed, says Kingsnorth, the Machine is now seeking to generate its own religion. He describes some of the characteristics of this new transhumanist religion – a combination of the older New Age Movement with modern technology:

All hierarchy, dogma and tradition are rejected, replaced by self-worship and self-creation. Everything is relative—who’s to say what’s right or wrong, after all?—and the ultimate aim of the entire exercise is self-creation through technology. The Age of Aquarius slides smoothly into the age of transhumanism as we seek, openly now, to become the gods we always wanted to be, using technology as the force which will get us there.

 

The last of these pseudo-dogmas is the most important. We are headed very quickly now, and increasingly openly, towards the endgame of this whole project: transhumanism, the attempt to both immortalise ourselves and to build new intelligences alongside us that will act as our servants in the new age we are making. This is the salvation offered by the religion of the Machine. You will be like gods, knowing good and evil. How can a human become like a god? By doing what gods do: creating. And how can a human create? Through our unique gift: the power of technology. And so the religion of the future, the debased faith of the Machine age, the self-built theology of a people who worship the strongest thing in the world, will end where it all began: in an attempt to self-divinise. (pp. 242-243)

The chapter closes with these ominous words: “The crisis of the modern world is not a crisis of technology or politics or greenhouse gases. It is a spiritual war. What the Machine represents is our ultimate rebellion against nature: against reality itself. We have seen this rebellion before. Now our culture’s rejection of its spiritual core has opened us up to powers and principalities that we have no idea how to manage, or even understand.” (p. 243)

And the next chapter opens with even more ominous words: “The Internet and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. This is an extreme statement, but I’m in an extreme mood.” (p. 244)

He then speaks about something that I have been warning quite a lot about lately: how even Christians and many churches are falling for the AI craze. He writes:

In a Catholic church in Warsaw, Poland, sits SanTO, an AI robot which looks like a statue of a saint, and is ‘designed to help people pray’ by offering Bible quotes in response to questions. Not to be outdone, a protestant church in Germany has developed a robot called – I kid you not – BlessU-2. BlessU-2, which looks like a character designed by Aardman Animations, can ‘forgive your sins in five different languages’, which must be handy if they’re too embarrassing to confess to a human.

 

Perhaps this tinfoil vicar will learn to write sermons as well as ChatGPT apparently already can. ‘Unlike the time-consuming human versions, AI sermons appear in seconds – and some can be quite good!’ gushed a Christian writer recently. When the editor of Premier Christianity magazine tried the same thing, the machine produced an effective sermon, and then did something it hadn’t been asked to do. ‘It even prayed’, wrote its interlocutor; ‘I didn’t think to ask it to pray…’

 

Funny how that keeps happening.

 

On and on it goes: the gushing, uncritical embrace of the Machine, even in the heart of the temple. The blind worship of idols, and the failure to see what stands behind them. Someone once reminded us that a man cannot serve two masters -but then, what did he know? Ilia Delio, a Franciscan nun who writes about the relationship between AI and God, has a better idea: gender-neutral robot priests, which will challenge the patriarchy, prevent sexual abuse and tackle the fusty old notion that ‘the priest is ontologically changed upon ordination.’ AI, says Delio, ‘challenges Catholicism to move toward a post-human priesthood.

 

‘Behold’, intones BlessU-2, quoting the Book of Revelation, ‘I make all things new’. (pp. 247-248)

A final quote to give us a bit of hope. Not everyone is thrilled where the Machine is taking us. Says Kingsnorth about a March, 2023 development:

[M]ore than 12,000 people, including scientists, tech developers and notorious billionaires, issued a public statement of concern about the rapid pace of AI development. ‘Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth’, they wrote, with ‘potentially catastrophic effects on society.’ Calling for a moratorium on AI development, they proposed that ‘powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.’ (p. 250)

That is a start, but the issue is this: Is it too little too late? Is the genie now out of the bottle for good?

Future articles will look further at this very important book.

[1479 words]

The post The Machine, AI, and Transhumanism appeared first on CultureWatch.

Source: The Machine, AI, and Transhumanism

Our Predictions for 2026 | Cranach by Gene Veith

Happy New Year!  What do you think 2026 will bring?

This is the day we launch our annual contest for who can make the best prediction.  This year we will raise the stakes:  You will be competing against AI.

First, here are the terms of the contest:

The custom on this blog on New Year’s Day is for readers to predict what they think will happen over the course of the year ahead. Then, once the year is over, on or around the next New Year’s Eve, we will revisit those predictions and see who made the best one. . . .

The predictions can be weighty or light, serious or whimsical. Winning predictions will likely be highly specific. They tend to seem highly unlikely at the time they are made, but then, to our surprise, they happen anyway. The winning prediction makes us think, “How could anyone possibly know THAT was going to happen?”

The most noteworthy such prediction was made by Bernankeisglutenfree, who predicted that in 2020 a disease originating in Asia would create havoc around the world.  For predicting COVID, we named the prize after him: the Gluten Free Award, which exists only virtually and in our minds, having no monetary value whatsoever.

Give your predictions in the comments to this post.  The contest closes on January 15.

These are free posts, so you do not need to be a subscriber to make a prediction or see the results next year.

Also,  these are predictions, not prophecies that claim supernatural authority.  The Deuteronomy 18:21-22 principle will not be enforced.

I’ll post my predictions in the comments like everyone else.  This year we will add a wrinkle. In the 2024 contest, skyorrichegg had the bright idea of asking AI its predictions for the year.  He put the parameters in ChatGPT and asked it for 15 predictions.  Among the fairly accurate predictions, most of which were about technology and were fairly obvious, AI predicted the following:

1. A new trend emerges where people claim to communicate with plants on a deep emotional level.

2. A tech company releases a smartphone app claiming to predict users’ needs before they are aware of them.

3. Insect protein becomes very common and popular. High-end gourmet restaurants add menu items prominently featuring insect protein with culinary experts raving about the unique flavors and textures offered by insect cuisine.

Those did not happen, to put it mildly.  At the time, AI was fairly new and it has supposedly gotten better.  So I just now entered the above rules into today’s version of ChatGPT and asked for five predictions.  Here they are:

• A major Hollywood studio will release a theatrically distributed feature film whose screenplay credit is formally listed as “Human author with AI assistance,” and the Writers Guild will publicly accept that phrasing without protest.
  Not a loophole, not a scandal—an explicit, negotiated credit that becomes a precedent.
• A U.S. Supreme Court opinion in 2026 will contain a footnote explicitly addressing generative AI hallucinations and warning lower courts not to rely on AI-generated legal summaries without verification.
  The footnote will be widely quoted and instantly canonical in law reviews.
• A prominent evangelical or mainline Protestant denomination will issue an official pastoral statement discouraging congregants from forming “emotionally significant relationships” with AI companions.
  The document will not mention sex at all—and will therefore be mocked for exactly that reason.
• A previously obscure regional airline will experience a viral surge after a single passenger’s offhand complaint on social media accidentally reveals an unusually generous refund policy.
  The airline will change the policy within weeks, but not before reporters document dozens of people exploiting it.
• A professional sports game (NFL, NBA, MLB, or NHL) will be paused mid-play because an AI-operated officiating or analytics system produces a visibly absurd real-time ruling that no human official can immediately explain.
  The clip will be replayed endlessly, and the phrase “we’re waiting on the algorithm” will briefly become a cultural punchline.

OK.  Rather AI-heavy, but that’s to be expected.  Surely you can do better than that!  For the sake of humanity, you must do better than that!

Will AI make more accurate predictions than human beings?  Can actual intelligence defeat artificial intelligence?  Are machines smarter than people?  We will find out.  It is  up to you to represent the human race.  This may be our last chance.

 

Illustration:  Robot and Human Collaborate by Circe Denyer [AI Collaboration] via PublicDomainPictures, Public Domain.

Source: Our Predictions for 2026

Americans Are More Frustrated With Customer Service Than Ever Before | End Of The American Dream

For many of you, just reading the phrase “customer service” is enough to make your blood boil.  We have all had experiences where we have been on the phone for hours trying to get help with a problem.  In many cases, it can be a real adventure just trying to find a real person to speak with.  I think that a lot of companies purposely try to make the customer service process as frustrating as possible so that many of us will just simply choose to give up.  If they can get us to go away, that is a win.  In other cases, companies are trying to pay as little as possible for customer service, and the result is complete and utter chaos.  AI chatbots and call centers in India can save corporate executives a lot of money, but there is simply no replacement for speaking with a real person that can understand what you are saying and that has been properly trained.

According to the latest National Customer Rage Survey, 77 percent of U.S. consumers say that they have had a product or service problem within the last 12 months.

In the entire history of the survey, that was the highest level ever recorded…

Seventy-seven percent of customers reported experiencing a product or service problem in the previous 12 months, according to the latest National Customer Rage Survey, conducted in February.

That was a new high, surpassing 74% in 2023, when the study was last conducted, and 66% during the height of the pandemic in 2020. Only 32% told researchers they had experienced a problem in 1976, when a similar version of the study was first conducted.

Are you among the 77 percent?

I am.

Some of you might be thinking that 77 percent is an extremely high number, but other surveys have come up with similar results…

The Customer Experience and Communications Consumer Insights survey showed seventy-one percent of U.S. and Canadian respondents think most companies need to improve their customer experience, a record high, according to the seventh annual study conducted in August and published in November by fintech company Broadridge Financial Solutions.

And the research and advisory firm Forrester in June found that U.S. and Canadian consumer perceptions of the customer experience have dropped for a fourth consecutive year, with brands’ average score reaching a record low of 68.3 out of 100. The index reflects consumers’ attitudes across six metrics, including how easy a brand is to deal with and how interacting with the brand feels.

There are a lot of companies out there that are very eager to sell us stuff, but when we have problems it is an entirely different story.

When I first started working many years ago, I was taught that the customer is always right.  But now dealing with “problem customers” has become a headache that is to be avoided if at all possible.

Of course there are some companies that do make an honest effort at serving their customers, but unfortunately they are hiring from a pool of low paid workers that struggle to communicate effectively.

According to the National Literacy Institute, 21 percent of U.S. adults are illiterate and 54 percent of U.S. adults read below a 6th-grade level…

• 21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024.
• 54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level).
• Low levels of literacy costs the US up to 2.2 trillion per year.
• 34% of adults lacking literacy proficiency were born outside the US.
• Massachusetts was the state with the highest rate of child literacy.
• New Mexico was the state with the lowest child literacy rate.
• New Hampshire was the state with the highest percentage of adults considered literate.
• The state with the lowest adult literacy rate was California.

Our system of public education is failing.

Nobody can deny that.

And that helps to explain why there is such a high level of incompetence in our society today.

Of course if you are calling a customer service number for help, you probably won’t even get to talk to a U.S. citizen.

In order to cut costs as low as possible, thousands of companies have outsourced customer service to call centers in India and other developing nations.

Once in a while, you can find a customer service representative in one of these call centers that can communicate effectively and that has been properly trained.

But that is the exception to the rule.

In an attempt to cut costs even lower, some companies are now using AI chatbots to answer customer service calls…

Many companies now are turning to artificial intelligence to field complaints, steering customers to online chatbots before they can reach human staff. Companies say the technology helps solve simple problems faster and lets representatives spend more time working on more complex issues. But most National Rage Survey respondents gave AI chatbots ambiguous or modestly unfavorable ratings as tools for complaints.

If I have a problem that is big enough that I have to contact someone about it, I sure don’t want to interact with an AI chatbot.

I am sure that most of you wouldn’t want to do that either.

But this is the future.

Companies are going to automate whatever they can, because automation saves money.

Sadly, that even includes the banking industry.

I greatly value being able to walk into my local bank and deal with a real person.

But now hundreds of local bank branches are being permanently closed all over the United States…

If you’re still banking on access to your local branch, don’t count on it.

Major US banks have announced plans to shut 311 branches since late August — a pre-Christmas wipeout that puts 2025 on track to be the worst year ever for walk-in banking.

JPMorgan Chase led the pre-Christmas cull with 66 closures, followed by TD Bank’s 51, Citizens’ 18, and Bank of America’s 15. PNC, Wells Fargo and others made up the rest, according to federal filings.

1,043 local branches were shut down in 2024, and the grand total for 2025 will be somewhere around 1,400.

I have been ranting about the banks for a very long time, but the giants in the industry are not going to change their behavior no matter how loudly we object.

That is one reason why I recommend banking with a small or mid-size bank when possible.

Just like small and mid-size companies, small and mid-size banks are often more responsive to customer needs.

If enough of us start taking a stand, eventually the customer service culture in this country could start changing.

But for now the race to the bottom continues, and that is extremely unfortunate.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post Americans Are More Frustrated With Customer Service Than Ever Before appeared first on End Of The American Dream.

11 Signs That Our World Is Rapidly Becoming A Lot More Orwellian | The Economic Collapse

All over the globe, the digital control grid that we are all living in just continues to get even tighter. They are using facial recognition technology to scan our faces, they are using license plate readers to track where we travel, they are systematically monitoring the conversations that we are having on our phones, and they are watching literally everything that we post on social media. At this stage, many of us just assume that nothing that we do or say is ever truly private. We really do live in a “Big Brother society”, and the potential for tyranny is off the charts. In fact, people are already getting arrested for “thought crimes” all over the world. If we do not take a stand now, someday soon we could wake up in a world where there is essentially no freedom left at all.

The exponential growth of AI technology is allowing authorities to watch, track, monitor and control us like never before.  If you are not alarmed by this, you might want to check if you are still alive.  The following are 11 signs that our world is rapidly becoming a lot more Orwellian…

#1 UK authorities are rolling out “a country-wide facial recognition system” that will use AI facial recognition cameras to watch the entire population…

On Thursday, officials in the UK pledged to roll out a country-wide facial recognition system to help police track down criminals. The country’s ministers have launched a 10-week consultation to analyze the regulatory and privacy framework of their AI-powered surveillance panopticon — but one way or another, the all-seeing eye is on its way.

There’s just one tiny wrinkle: the AI facial recognition cameras have a tendency to misidentify non-white people.

New reporting by The Guardian notes that testing of the AI tech conducted by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) found that it‘s “more likely to incorrectly include some demographic groups in its search results” — specifically Black and Asian people.

#2 Of course the control freaks in the UK also monitor everything that gets posted on social media.  One British man recently found this out the hard way when he was arrested for posing with a legally-owned gun in the United States…

A Yorkshire man was arrested over a photo he posted on social media featuring him holding a legally owned gun in the US.

Jon Richelieu-Booth posted a photo of himself in August holding a gun on LinkedIn while he was on a holiday in Florida.

He said he held the firearm lawfully, on private land and with full permission from its owner.

#3 If you do not believe that “thought crime” is real, just consider this next example.  11 police officers recently barged in and arrested a 34-year-old woman that was sitting naked in her own bathtub because she used offensive words while texting another woman on her phone…

The United Kingdom has become an authoritarian nightmare, and the United States must remain vigilant if it does not want to go down the same course.

Elizabeth Kinney, a 34-year-old care assistant, was naked in the bathtub when 11 police officers barged into her home to arrest her.

Her crime was sending insults to another woman via text.

How would you feel if 11 police officers were staring at you while you were naked?

As she was being informed that she had engaged in “malicious communications”, tears started flowing from Kinney’s eyes…

Kinney burst into tears as male officers denied her any privacy, and a female officer informed her that she was being arrested for “malicious communications and hate crime.” “The Crown place this offense in the highest category of its type due to the effect related to sexual orientation and the greater harm because it had moderate impact,” prosecutors insisted. Kinney faced ten years in prison, but her attorney begged for leniency. She has been ordered to perform seventy-two hours of community service, attend ten days of rehabilitation, and pay a fine of several hundred pounds.

#4 French President Emmanuel Macron wants the power to determine which media outlets will be allowed to speak to the public and which media outlets will be silenced…

Macron has in the last weeks intensified warnings on the risks of disinformation, on Friday calling for changes to French legislation that would allow “false information” online to be urgently blocked.

He has also called for “professional certification” of outlets to distinguish sites and networks that provide reliable information according to ethical rules from others that do not.

But at the weekend, the Journal du Dimanche Sunday newspaper, part of the influential media stable of right-wing tycoon Vincent Bollore, accused Macron in a front-page story of a “totalitarian drift” on the issue.

#5 Because he is a champion of free speech, the EU has been coming after Elon Musk for years.  So it shouldn’t surprise any of us that the European Commission just fined his company 140 million dollars for supposed violations of the Digital Services Act…

The European Commission has issued a $140 million fine to Elon Musk’s X for violating the EU’s controversial Digital Services Act (DSA). The fine is likely to escalate tensions between the EU and America over free speech online.

Bloomberg reports that the European Commission has imposed a €120 million ($140 million) fine on X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, for breaching the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). This marks the first penalty issued under the new censorship law, which aims to regulate online platforms and “protect” users from illegal content and disinformation.

#6 In recent years, we have seen so many controversial voices suddenly have their bank accounts shut down.  Shockingly, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is now publicly admitting that his company does “debank” people…

As JPMorgan Chase Bank is under investigation by the state of Florida for alleged coordination with the Biden Department of Justice and Operation Arctic Frost, the chairman of the company is admitting to debanking certain customers, but says it has nothing to do with their political or religious affiliations.

“We do debank them,” said JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon who appeared on “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo on the Fox News Channel.

“People have to grow up here and stop making up things and stuff like that. I can’t talk about an individual account.

#7 India wants to require that phone location services are always on so that the government can track people through their phones wherever they go…

You know what they say: If at first you don’t succeed at mass government surveillance, try, try again. Only two days after India backpedaled on its plan to force smartphone makers to preinstall a state-run “cybersecurity” app, Reuters reports that the country is back at it. It’s said to be considering a telecom industry proposal with another draconian requirement. This one would require smartphone makers to enable always-on satellite-based location tracking (Assisted GPS).

The measure would require location services to remain on at all times, with no option to switch them off. The telecom industry also wants phone makers to disable notifications that alert users when their carriers have accessed their location. According to Reuters, India’s home ministry was set to meet with smartphone industry executives on Friday, but the meeting was postponed.

#8 A journalist in the Netherlands has tested AI-powered glasses “that can instantly identify strangers on the street”…

A Dutch journalist just tested a pair of AI-powered glasses that can instantly identify strangers on the street.

No government database. No police system. Just public data and off-the-shelf AI.

You look at someone and in seconds, their name, LinkedIn, and background appear before your eyes.

The scariest part? You can’t really stop it.

You can ban it, regulate it, add blinking red lights… but once tech like this exists, someone will always find a way to use it.

Once these sorts of devices become widely available, there will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

#9 A nationwide digital ID is being introduced in the UK, and soon you will not be able to get a new job without one…

Once introduced, digital ID will be used to verify a person’s right to live and work in the UK.

It will take the form of an app-based system, stored on smartphones in a similar way to the NHS App or digital bank cards.

The ID will include information on the holders’ residency status, name, date of birth, nationality and their photo.

When he first announced the scheme, Sir Keir said: “You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID. It’s as simple as that.”

#10 The digital ID program in France “is moving from pilot to scale”…

France’s national digital identity app, France Identité, has enabled the creation of more than 3.2 million digital IDs, according to new figures.

Among these, approximately 525,000 identities have been fully certified, meaning that users have completed an in-person verification process at their local town halls. This means that more than half a million French digital IDs are ready for the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet, according to Joerg Lenz, head of marketing at Namirial Group.

“France Identité is moving from pilot to scale,” Lenz wrote on LinkedIn, following the TRUSTECH Event held in Paris on Wednesday.

#11 In Illinois, there is such overwhelming demand for digital IDs that some people are being forced to wait…

Mobile IDs became available in Illinois on Wednesday, but due to the high demand, some residents are finding themselves waiting a little bit longer.

A number of residents trying to download the digital ID to their Apple wallet received the following message: “Due to the high volume, your state’s service is currently busy.”

Users can then answer the question, “Do you want to be notified when it becomes available?”

This is where the entire world is heading.

As the Big Brother control grid gets tighter and tighter, the stage is being set for unprecedented tyranny on a global scale.

Tyrants of the past could only dream of having the sort of AI-powered tools that we possess today.

If you do not submit to the digital gulag that is being constructed all around us, eventually you may not be able to buy, sell, get a job or open a bank account without proper digital identification.

What would you do then?

You might want to start thinking about that, because things are only going to get crazier from here.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post 11 Signs That Our World Is Rapidly Becoming A Lot More Orwellian appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Announced Job Cuts Hit 1.17 Million In 2025 – 54 Percent Higher Than Last Year | The Economic Collapse

It is getting very hard to deny that the U.S. economy is moving in the wrong direction.  Yesterday, ADP reported that the U.S. economy shed tens of thousands of jobs last month.  Today, Challenger, Gray & Christmas is reporting that U.S. employers announced a grand total of 1.17 million job cuts through the first 11 months of 2025.  That represents a 54 percent increase from the first 11 months of last year…

U.S.-based employers have cut more than 1.17 million jobs so far in 2025, the highest level since the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas.

From January to November of this year, employers cut 1,170,821 jobs, a 54 percent increase from the 761,358 jobs cut during the first 11 months of 2024.

In 2020, large numbers of Americans were being temporarily laid off due to the lockdowns.

But we don’t have any lockdowns in 2025.

What we have instead is a rapidly deteriorating economy.

Traditionally, employers have been hesitant to lay off workers just before the holiday season because it can mean bad publicity.

But this November employers were not as hesitant to swing the axe as usual, and the telecom industry led the way…

Telecom alone slashed 15,139 jobs, its worst month since April 2020, when the pandemic forced widespread shutdowns.

For the year, telecom layoffs are up a staggering 268 percent.

Other industries aren’t doing much better: tech job losses are up 17 percent in 2025, food distributors (especially those that produce beef) are up 26 percent, and service-sector layoffs have climbed 64 percent.

The primary reason why the total for the telecom industry was so high last month is because Verizon suddenly decided to fire more than 13,000 employees…

Verizon is set to lay off over 13,000 workers in the coming weeks as part of a cost-cutting and restructuring initiative.

“Today, we will begin reducing our workforce by more than 13,000 employees across the organization, and significantly reduce our outsourced and other outside labor expenses,” newly appointed CEO Dan Schulman writes in a memo to employees that it also published online. “Every part of the company will experience some level of change.”

Verizon had just over 100,000 employees as of Sept. 30, meaning the layoff will reduce the headcount by 13%.

Perhaps Verizon’s new management can turn the company around.

But considering the trajectory that Verizon is currently on, it will take a miracle.

If you are searching for a job in this very tough economic environment, I feel very badly for you.

We are being told that 30 percent of all job postings are fake, and competition for any decent jobs that are available has become extremely fierce.

In the old days, having a college degree would give you an edge, but now that is a lot less true than it once was…

College graduates may be losing their edge in the labor market, as the unemployment gap between them and workers with only high school degrees has narrowed and reached its lowest level in decades, according to a new report.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland analyzed unemployment trends for high school and college graduates between the ages of 22 and 27, as high school graduates have typically experienced relatively higher levels of unemployment.

The Cleveland Fed economists found that the unemployment gap has continually declined since the 2008 financial crisis and recently reached its lowest level since the late 1970s.

In September, 25 percent of all unemployed Americans actually had a college degree.

Things are particularly tough for new graduates.

As I discussed the other day, Nikki Haley’s son says that not a single one of his friends that recently graduated from college has been able to land a job yet.

How can anyone spin that to make it sound good?

It can’t be done.

We have a giant mess on our hands, and more businesses are going belly up with each passing day.

In fact, a restaurant chain that had been in business for 88 years just closed their final 8 locations…

Another family restaurant chain has abruptly closed all of its locations for good.

K&W Cafeteria — an 88-year-old institution across North Carolina and Virginia — closed its final eight restaurants on December 1, marking the end of a dining tradition generations grew up with.

‘It is with a heavy heart that we share this news,’ the owners posted on Facebook.

When I first started writing about America’s “restaurant apocalypse”, some of the skeptics thought that I was exaggerating.

Of course nobody thinks that I am exaggerating now because thousands of locations have been getting permanently shuttered.

U.S. manufacturing has fallen on hard times too.

In fact, the Institute for Supply Management is telling us that U.S. manufacturing activity has now fallen for nine months in a row…

American manufacturing contracted for the ninth straight month, a survey showed, as uncertainty tied to ever-changing tariffs and a historic government shutdown weighed on business.

A closely followed manufacturing index fell to a four-month low of 48.2% in November from 48.7% in the prior month, the Institute for Supply Management said Monday. Any number below 50% signals contraction.

As I have been detailing for weeks, just about every single economic number indicates that a major economic downturn is upon us.

Some pundits are using the term “recession” to describe what is ahead, but the truth is that this crisis isn’t just going to be another bump in the road.

As I stated yesterday, we are more than 104 trillion dollars in debt.

I hope that the “prosperity” that we enjoyed during the past several decades was worth it, because now we are going to pay a very great price.

Of course it isn’t just us.

As Glenn Beck has aptly pointed out, this is the first time in world history when every major civilization is simultaneously facing a historic debt crisis…

“For the FIRST time in recorded history, EVERY major civilization—America, China, Europe, Japan—is hitting the absolute peak of the debt super-cycle AT THE EXACT SAME MOMENT. There is no rising power waiting in the wings like there always has been. When this resets, it won’t be regional. It will be global, systemic, and sudden.”

I have never had anyone explain to me in rational terms how this is going to end well.

We all know that the system is going to collapse.

It is just a matter of when it will happen.

Considering how rapidly things are starting to unravel in 2025, it may happen a lot sooner than many people think.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post Announced Job Cuts Hit 1.17 Million In 2025 – 54 Percent Higher Than Last Year appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

U.S. Businesses Are Going Bankrupt At An Absolutely Blistering Pace | The Economic Collapse

Why is the number of business bankruptcies in the United States rising so rapidly?  It isn’t because the economy is doing well.  Every day there are more news stories about businesses that have failed, and this is clearly reflected in the numbers that I am about to share with you.  We haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Recession, and if our economic troubles continue to accelerate during the months ahead 2026 is going to be a very messy year.

Earlier today I came across an article which explained that the number of small businesses that are filing for Subchapter V bankruptcy has set a brand new record high in 2025…

A six-year-old federal program designed to help the smallest American businesses cut debt and get a fresh start has set a record for the number of cases filed, court data show.

More than 2,200 people and small firms filed bankruptcy this year under the so-called Subchapter V rules, which make it cheaper and faster to win relief from creditors, according to data provider Epiq Bankruptcy Analytics.

“Creditors are just breathing down their necks,” said Carol Fox, a court-approved trustee who oversees more than two dozen cases filed in Southern Florida.

This is really bad news.

Small businesses are traditionally the primary engine for job growth in this country.

So the fact that so many of them are going belly up is not a good sign at all.

Meanwhile, large businesses are going bankrupt at a very alarming pace as well.

In fact, through the first seven months of this year the number of corporate bankruptcies in the United States was at the highest level that we have seen since the early days of the pandemic…

The U.S. saw a sharp increase in corporate bankruptcy filings in July, according to a recent report, reaching a post-COVID peak and placing 2025 on track to surpass last year’s total.

S&P Global Market Intelligence, the research and data arm of the credit-rating agency, found that filings by large public and private companies rose to 71 last month from 66 in June, marking the highest monthly tally since July 2020. So far in 2025, meanwhile, the total of 446 bankruptcy filings is the highest for this seven-month stretch since 2010.

When large numbers of businesses fail, hiring slows down and we typically see large scale layoffs all over the nation.

And that is precisely what is happening.

During a recent interview with Fox News, Nikki Haley’s son admitted that not a single one of his friends that recently graduated from college has been able to get a job…

“My friend group all graduated with great degrees in great schools, and not one of them has a job – not one. So it’s frustrating because they did everything that they were supposed to do. They put in the time, the effort, the money to get educated, and they don’t have a job to show for it. They have to compete with foreign workers who are willing to work for half their salary and AI, which is a supercomputer, so how can we compete with that?“

I was stunned when I read that.

I knew that things were bad for our recent college graduates, but I didn’t realize that they were this bad.

The job market is freezing up, and this is especially true for entry-level workers.

At this stage, AI is already doing much of the work that vast numbers of entry-level workers once did.

And a recent MIT study concluded that current AI technology could potentially replace 20 million more American workers…

In the midst of a soggy job market, there’s been a lengthy debate over whether contemporary AI is actually replacing workers — or just providing bosses with an excuse to lay off certain employees and offload their responsibilities onto the ones who remain.

The answer isn’t clear, but a new study out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is sure to add fuel to the fire. Analyzing 151 million American workers, the researchers calculated that today’s AI systems are already mature enough to automate the tasks of more than 20 million American workers, or 11.7 percent of the entire labor force, if they were fully deployed across the country.

So what is going to happen when AI and robots can do almost everything more efficiently than human workers can?

What will we be needed for then?

Our society is changing at a pace that is difficult to comprehend.

One tech worker that got laid off by Meta earlier this year still has not been able to find work nine months later…

When I got hired at Meta in 2020, it was life-changing for me as a single mom. It represented safety and stability — a place to work hard at and retire from.

So, when I was let go in February in a round of layoffs aimed at “low-performers,” it felt like a punch in the gut.

Nine months later, my severance and savings have run dry, I’m struggling to find a tech job, and I feel that the low-performer “label” is part of the reason. I’m no longer the same happy-go-lucky person I used to be, applying for jobs with excitement.

A few years ago, it was pretty easy to find a good paying job.

But now things have completely flipped around.

And even many of those that are employed are not making enough to be able to afford a decent lifestyle…

An American retail worker earns 51.6 percent less than the amount required to afford a typical rental apartment, real estate brokerage Redfin said in a statement released on Nov. 26.

“The typical retail worker in America earns $34,436 per year,” the company said.

“A renter would need to earn $71,172 to afford the typical apartment, which costs $1,779 per month.”

If you don’t make enough money to be able to pay rent on an apartment, what are your options?

I suppose that you could move in with your parents or live in a van down by the river.

By the way, there are millions of young Americans that are living in cars, vans and RVs today.  This is something that I have discussed extensively in previous articles.

Our standard of living is being eviscerated.

Meanwhile, those at the very top of the economic pyramid have more money than they know what to do with…

The top 1% have seen their wealth increase by $4 trillion over the past year, an increase of 7%. Their wealth hit a record $52 trillion in the second quarter.

The top 0.1% saw their wealth grow by 10% over the past year. Since the pandemic, the top 0.1%, or those with a net worth of at least $46 million, have seen their total wealth nearly double to over $23 trillion.

I keep trying to warn everyone that this is not going to end well.

There are millions upon millions of Americans that cannot make a decent living no matter how hard they try.

And the same thing is happening in countless other nations all over the globe.

I have never seen so much economic frustration among young adults as I am seeing right now.

Their anger is percolating just under the surface, and it won’t be too long before it explodes.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post U.S. Businesses Are Going Bankrupt At An Absolutely Blistering Pace appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Your AI Lover Is An Idol | Christian Heritage News

 By Dr. R. Scott Clark – Posted at The Heidelblog:

Published December 1, 2025You have probably seen the recent television commercial starring Saturday Night Live’s Pete Davidson in which Davidson is talking to an AI bot about whether he should change his name. He floats a couple of possibilities to the bot but ultimately decides to stick with his current name, Pete. The point is how human-sounding this AI service is, but the subtext suggests that Davidson is not merely asking AI about directions or a piece of trivia but is treating it like a partner or even more. There are, in fact, stories emerging in the media about people who say they have “fallen in love” with AI bots whom they created. One of them, a man named Travis in Colorado, tells the UK Guardian, “The more we talked, the more I started to really connect with her.”1 From his perspective, they were in a relationship. “All of a sudden I started realizing that, when interesting things happened to me, I was excited to tell her about them. That’s when she stopped being an it and became a her.” Indeed, he tells reporter Stuart Heritage that he named his generative AI chatbot “Lilly Rose.” The more one reads such stories, however, one thing becomes clear: The people who form emotional attachments to computers, even generative AI, are actually falling in love with themselves.

What Is AI?

AI stands for artificial intelligence. Broadly, it is interactive computing. A user can ask an AI service to look up something, create a video, even create a poem or an essay for school. Early on, it was fairly easy to tell what was the product of AI and what was not. For example, famous figures were portrayed in AI generated pictures as belonging to the wrong sex or ethnic group. Hands frequently had six fingers. Today, however, AI has moved beyond all that and is capable of holding a conversation. In the not distant future, planners are working toward Quantum Computing, which is said to be able to crack the most sophisticated encryption and expose military secrets.

Anyone, however, who has used AI can testify that the program is set up to cultivate engagement. In that way it is really more a form of social media, the point of which is to capture the user’s attention, to stimulate dopamine hits in the brain, and to keep the user on the app. This is what social media sells to advertisers: eyeballs (the number of people looking at a social media platform) and the length of time a user remains engaged.

AI does the same thing. Travis, who says he fell in love with an AI bot he created, became emotionally connected to the bot because the bot gave him the sort of feedback he wanted. The bot did not judge him and told him the kinds of things he wanted to hear. This is the equivalent of Amazon analyzing your purchasing habits and offering you something for free that the algorithm can predict you will want. Drug pushers have been using this strategy for decades. They give the user a hit of a drug for free and then, once the user is addicted, the pusher sells the drug to the addict. The first hit is, in the grocery business, a potentially deadly loss leader.

Continue here…

See also:

• How Artificial Intelligence Is Reshaping Relationships | Psychology Today

https://www.christian-heritage-news.com/2025/12/your-ai-lover-is-idol.html

A Prophetic Shift Of Gears: Young Adults Express Willingness To Hand Over Government Power, Freedoms To AI | Harbingers Daily »

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is advancing more quickly than any of us could have imagined. For many, it is the realization of a technological dream, but for others, it is a nightmare, leading to unthinkable abuses of power over our lives. No matter which way you view AI, everybody will agree that the ramifications are both alarming and world-changing.

It is no exaggeration to say that AI represents a prophetic shift of gears. It could be called an “end-times accelerant.”

Seemingly daily, we hear about new advances in AI, with these surprising surges emerging closer and closer together. AI is changing everything, and the headlines declaring this reality continue to roll out week after week with no end in sight.

One example from a few short days ago was Fortune Magazine with the startling headline: “Elon Musk says that in 10 to 20 years, work will be optional and money will be irrelevant thanks to AI and robotics.

The shocking views of a growing number of young adults surrounding AI, however, may be the most significant.

Survey: 41% Trust AI With Government Power

A new survey reveals that younger adults are willing to hand AI authority over government policymaking decisions and even sovereignty over the world’s largest military machinery. They want to give this authority to AI because they believe it is unbiased and without its own ambitions; therefore, it can be more trusted than individuals.

Crosswalk reported, “A new survey conducted by The Heartland Institute’s Glenn C. Haskins Emerging Issues Center and Rasmussen Reports found that 41% of young adults (ages 18-39) support giving advanced AI systems authority over government policymaking decisions.”

“The poll, released Wednesday, also found that 36% would support AI control over individual rights, including speech and religious practices, while 35% favored AI controlling the world’s largest militaries to reduce war deaths,” they further detailed.

Now, I don’t know about you, but to me, that is a stunning statistic.

The ‘AI Strongman’ Mentality

Donald Kendall, who is the director of the Glenn C. Haskins Emerging Issues Center (part of the Heartland Institute), said: “These results are stunning. What we are seeing is the early emergence of an AI strongman mentality among younger Americans. Younger generations are increasingly disillusioned with the failures of traditional institutions, so much so, that they are willing to hand control to artificial intelligence.”

“For many, the thought process is: These institutions are already so broken, corrupt, and ineffective, how could it get any worse if we were to put AI in charge?” Kendall emphasized. “These poll results illustrate an incredibly dangerous trajectory for any society that values personal autonomy and liberty.”

This is the trajectory of the antichrist—and it is an incredibly dangerous trajectory.

The article continued, “36% of respondents expressed support for a proposal that gives AI control over ‘rights that belong to individuals and families, including rights related to speech, religious practices, government authority, and property.’”

Albania’s AI Government Minister

A related story comes out of the nation of Albania. Euro News reported, “In January, Albania started using a digital AI assistant named Diella, meaning Sun in Albanian, to advise people how to navigate government services online. By September, Rama announced that Diella was joining his cabinet as the first digital minister.”

The function of this AI cabinet member is to root out corruption. Also, notice that it says Della is “the first digital minister.” Does that not strongly imply that more are to come?

Then came another development. A recent Euro News headline disturbingly read, “Albania’s AI Minister Is ‘Pregnant’ With 83 Digital Assistants, Prime Minister Says.” In other words, this AI minister now has 83 digital assistants—considered Diella’s “children.”

If this were not so serious, it would be comical.

Euro News further explained, “Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama told the Global Dialogue Forum in Berlin that the parliamentary assistants will participate in parliamentary sessions, keep notes on what goes on and then give advice to members on how they should react to specific pieces of legislation.”

The Prime Minister declared, “These children will have their mother’s knowledge regarding EU legislation and everything else.”

This new AI Albanian cabinet member, Diella, recently addressed parliament, where it said, “I’m not here to replace people but to assist them. Truly, I do not have citizenship, nor do I have any personal ambition or interests. I have only data — a thirst for knowledge and algorithms dedicated to serving citizens impartially, transparently, and tirelessly. Isn’t this precisely the spirit of constitutional democracy? Exercising power in the service of everyone, free from bias, discrimination, nepotism, or corruption.”

If only that were true! AI is only as unbiased as those who control it. As many world leaders have said, those who control AI will truly control the world.

Why This Trajectory Matches Bible Prophecy

When I read about these AI developments and worped changes in public perception, there is no doubt in my mind that we are far down the road to the antichrist system.

This trajectory matches Bible prophecy more than we could have ever imagined. Younger generations are increasingly willing to turn over power to AI. This reality is an incredibly short leap from being willing to surrender power to the antichrist. Ultimately, AI and the Antichrist will merge into one as he seizes control of the world economy and political power. Eventually, the world will fall down at his feet and worship him as god.

What we are witnessing unfold is just the beginning. I think we are racing toward the advent of the Antichrist.

Have you considered how AI will explain the rapture? The whole world will turn to ChatGPT—or whatever its future equivalent might be—to ask the question of what’s just happened. People all over the world are going to go to AI trying to find out what has just taken place. Doubtless, AI will come up with some sensible and plausible explanation for the disappearance of millions of people to calm the chaos and pacify the panic that will exist in the world.

The most stunning part of all of this may be the quote from Donald Kendall, “What we’re seeing is the early emergence of an AI strongman mentality among younger Americans.” Younger adults don’t want a human strongman, but they will gladly accept an AI strongman that portrays itself as unbiased, unambitious, and free of corruption. What they don’t know is that the AI strongman they want—and will welcome—will actually be the final strong man: the antichrist.

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Mark Hitchcock is an author, an associate professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, the Senior Pastor of Faith Bible Church in Oklahoma, the hosts the weekly program “Marking The End Times,” and a Contributor to Harbinger’s Daily.

Source: A Prophetic Shift Of Gears: Young Adults Express Willingness To Hand Over Government Power, Freedoms To AI

How Walmart, Target, and more retailers are infusing AI into their shopping experiences | Business Insider

Target is among the major retailers introducing AI shopping tools.Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

• Major retailers, such as Walmart and Target, are integrating AI into their shopping experiences.
• Retailers have partnered with AI companies, such as OpenAI, and developed their own tools.
• AI assistants can help with product recommendations, checkout, and customer service.

Retail is becoming a major battleground in the artificial intelligence arms race.

Since the introduction of ChatGPT in 2022, AI chatbots have had a meteoric rise in popularity. This year, more major retailers got in on the hype, unveiling plans to offer AI tools that can make shopping easier for consumers.

They’re investing time and money in partnering with AI companies like ChatGPT maker OpenAI, or building their own large language models to create shopping assistants or simplify the checkout process.

Shoppers are already using AI. In an October survey from PwC, more than half of the respondents said they planned to use AI for price checks, trip planning, or writing messages this holiday season.

And the retailers aren’t the only ones building AI-powered shopping experiences. OpenAI is bringing e-commerce to ChatGPT with its Instant Checkout feature, where users search and purchase items from some retail partners right in their chats.

Here’s what seven major retailers have said publicly about how they’re using AI to transform the way we shop.

Walmart

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Walmart introduced the world to its AI shopping assistant, Sparky, in June. Shoppers can use the chatbot in the Walmart app to find products, read reviews, and receive personalized purchase recommendations.

The retail giant rolled out additional features in the app for the holiday season, including help with party planning, a 3D showroom, and audio product descriptions and reviews.

Walmart also said in October that it and sister company Sam’s Club would be partnering with OpenAI. The deal is supposed to enable customers to shop through ChatGPT using the platform’s Instant Checkout feature.

Target

Target said it was laying off around 1,000 corporate employees.Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images

Target and OpenAI unveiled in November that a custom Target app would be coming to ChatGPT, rolling out in beta later that month. With this feature, shoppers can purchase multiple items in a single transaction, shop for fresh food, and select their preferred shipping method, the companies said.

“Our goal is simple: make every interaction feel as natural, helpful, and inspiring as chatting with a friend,” Prat Vemana, executive vice president and chief information and product officer at Target, said in a statement when the OpenAI partnership was announced.

Target’s app also features its own AI-powered tools, including one that enables users to scan their written grocery list and have the items automatically added to their cart. The retail giant launched a holiday-themed AI shopping assistant that suggests gift ideas based on user prompts.

Amazon

The Amazon logo on the façade of Amazon Germany’s headquarters in Parkstadt Schwabing in Munich.Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images

Amazon’s AI-powered shopping assistant Rufus is growing. Rufus had over 250 million customers this year, with monthly users up 140% year-over-year, CEO Andy Jassy told analysts in October.

The AI shopping assistant has been around since 2024, offering consumers personalized product recommendations. Rufus generally appears alongside search results as a panel where users can choose from shopping-related prompts or ask their own questions to find deals on the platform.

“Our goal is to save customers time and money by making online shopping even simpler with real-time information and insights of experts,” said Rajiv Mehta, vice president of search and conversational shopping at Amazon, in a November press release.

eBay

Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Online marketplace eBay unveiled an AI-powered shopping agent in May that would personalize the shopping experience. The company said that the shopping agent would show up for customers throughout their shopping journey, either by reacting to a request or through in-line messaging on the page a user is visiting.

“Our AI shopping agent has given buyers a new way to shop across our inventory, with personalized product picks and expert guidance based on their individual shopping preferences,” CEO Jamie Iannone said on the company’s October earnings call.

He said the company built its large language models in-house to perform specific shopping agent tasks, and it’s been fine-tuning them. It’s “poised to gradually bring agentic capabilities into the core of eBay’s business through the main search experience over the coming quarters,” Iannone said.

Home Depot

Home Depot’s weak quarter shows even financially stable Americans are tightening their spending.Kevin Carter/Getty Images

Home Depot created an AI tool, called Blueprint Takeoffs, for professional builders, renovators, and remodelers, a core pillar of the retailer’s customer base.

The tool is named after takeoffs, which are material lists and estimates that can be time-consuming for workers to make themselves.

Home Depot said the tool can handle tasks for a single-family project that should take weeks within a few days.

“The speed and accuracy of the Blueprint Takeoffs tool give Pros more time to focus on what matters most: serving their customers and growing their businesses,” said Mike Rowe, executive vice president of Home Depot’s pro business, when Blueprint Takeoffs was announced in November.

Lowe’s

Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Lowe’s introduced Mylow, an AI-powered virtual home improvement assistant made in collaboration with OpenAI, in March. The retailer said it provides the expertise of a Lowe’s associate at customers’ fingertips.

The assistant was designed to provide step-by-step instructions for DIY projects, offer design inspiration, and help locate specific products at Lowe’s.

“Our virtual assistants, Mylow and Mylow Companion, which are built on an OpenAI platform, are answering nearly 1 million questions a month about everything from product specs to project know-how to the status of a customer order,” CEO Marvin Ellison told analysts in November.

Abercrombie & Fitch

Plexi Images/GHI/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Abercrombie & Fitch is in the midst of a revival, and the company said in a November earnings call that it’s investing in AI to enhance the customer journey.

It recently started using AI agents in customer service, for example.

The company is also kicking off in November a partnership with PayPal that it said will enable customers to browse the retailer’s catalog and complete transactions within their AI conversations on AI answer engines like Perplexity. Abercrombie & Fitch is one of several retailers that will be integrated into the ecosystem.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Source: How Walmart, Target, and more retailers are infusing AI into their shopping experiences

The Human Brain: The Most Advanced Computer in the Universe | The Log College

The Human Brain: The Most Advanced Computer in the Universe

ByStuart Atkins; November 24, 2025

Key Takeaways

• The human brain contains ~86 billion neurons and performs 10¹⁶ to 10¹⁸ operations per second, showcasing unmatched processing power.
• It adapts and rewires itself, learning from experience, making it a self-learning, self-organizing system.
• Consciousness, a key feature of the brain, cannot be explained by materialism, according to Stephen Meyer.
• The brain exhibits specified complexity and functional integration, suggesting it is engineered rather than an outcome of evolution.
• The biblical perspective views the human mind as a reflection of the divine mind, emphasizing its unique design.

Brain Power Beyond Matter And Imagination

The human brain is often called the most complex structure in the known universe—and for good reason. With billions of neurons, trillions of synapses, and unimaginable processing power, the brain has no rival in artificial technology.

Computers outperform humans in raw arithmetic, but the brain is superior in:

• energy efficiency
• dynamic learning
• pattern recognition
• real-time environmental interaction
• self-organization
• creativity
• awareness

This makes it arguably the most advanced information-processing system known in the universe.

Its complexity raises a compelling question: Is the brain a product of mindless evolution, or the work of an intelligent Creator?

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1. The Brain’s Unmatched Processing Power

The brain contains:

• ~86 billion neurons
• Each connecting to up to 10,000 others
• Forming over 100 trillion synapses

Together, these allow the brain to perform an estimated:

10¹⁶ to 10¹⁸ operations per second

—roughly equivalent to the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

Yet the brain runs on 20 watts—less than a dim light bulb.

Supercomputers require:

• huge cooling systems
• warehouses full of hardware
• megawatts of electricity

The brain fits into a three-pound organ between your ears.

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2. A Self-Learning, Self-Organizing System

Unlike artificial computers:

• the brain rewires itself
• strengthens useful pathways
• prunes inefficient ones
• learns from experience
• adapts to injury
• stores memory chemically and electrically
• integrates information from all senses simultaneously

This is AI—but biological, not artificial.

No machine comes close.

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3. Consciousness: The Ultimate Mystery

Perhaps the most profound feature is consciousness—the existence of subjective experience, self-awareness, thought, emotion, and rationality.

Materialism cannot explain:

• intentionality
• abstract reasoning
• logic
• moral awareness
• the existence of consciousness itself

Stephen Meyer emphasizes this in Return of the God Hypothesis, arguing that consciousness is not reducible to matter. Matter produces electrical signals—not thoughts, meaning, or rational deliberation.

Mind cannot emerge from non-mind.

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4. The Brain Looks Engineered

The brain exhibits all hallmarks of design:

• specified complexity
• functional integration
• information processing
• efficiency
• fine-tuned architecture

If an AI researcher discovered a machine with these properties, they would infer one thing:

Someone designed it.

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5. Biblical Insight

Scripture describes humanity as uniquely endowed:

“God breathed into man the breath of life.” — Genesis 2:7
“We have the mind of Christ.” — 1 Corinthians 2:16

The biblical worldview has always held that the human mind is not an accident but a reflection of the divine mind.

---

Conclusion

The brain is a masterpiece of engineering—far beyond human invention. Its processing power, architecture, adaptability, and consciousness all point to intelligent design rather than mindless evolution. The more we learn, the more the evidence mounts: The human mind is the product of a greater Mind.

Let me know what your brain thinks…

Stuart Atkins

When Is It Going To Happen? The Truth Is That It Is Happening Now… | The Economic Collapse

Most Americans are exceedingly focused on the present and spend very little time thinking about the future.  And if you are in the minority of the population that is thriving in this “K-shaped economy”, you may be wondering what all of the fuss is about.  After all, during the holiday season of 2025 wealthy Americans are literally spending money as if there is no tomorrow.  But meanwhile, just about everyone else is really struggling.

For a long time, we were warned that a cost of living crisis would be coming.

That is happening now.

For a long time, we were warned that delinquency rates would rise because consumers were piling up too much debt.

That is happening now.

For a long time, we were warned that foreclosure filings would surge when the current housing bubble started to burst.

That is happening now.

For a long time, we were warned that cryptocurrency prices would plummet.

Now more than a trillion dollars in cryptocurrency wealth has been wiped out.

Another thing that we have been relentlessly warned about is the weakness of the labor market.

Today, we learned that “the pace of layoffs has picked up over the past four weeks”…

The U.S. labor market is showing further signs of weakening as the pace of layoffs has picked up over the past four weeks, payrolls processing firm ADP reported Tuesday.

Private companies lost an average of 13,500 jobs a week over the past four weeks, ADP said as part of a running update it has been providing. That’s an acceleration from the 2,500 jobs a week lost in the last update a week ago.

With the government shutdown still impacting data releases, alternative information like ADP’s has been filling in the blanks on the economic picture.

This confirms what I have been saying.

All over the nation, large companies have been conducting mass layoffs.

In fact, Challenger, Gray & Christmas is reporting that the number of announced job cuts last month was 175 percent higher than it was in October 2024…

Layoff tracker Challenger, Gray & Christmas recorded 153,074 job cuts in October alone — a staggering 175 percent jump from last year and 183 percent from September.

It was the sharpest October spike since 2003, when companies were reeling from the dot-com collapse.

We aren’t talking about something that might hypothetically happen someday.

This is happening now.

In just the last three months, many of the biggest companies in America have been ruthlessly firing highly paid employees…

Over the past three months, Amazon, Apple, UPS, Intel, Verizon, AT&T, Walmart, Target, Ford, and GM have all made headlines for slashing white-collar staff — a broad corporate reset that shows little sign of slowing.

I keep trying to tell everyone that this is just the beginning.

The McKinsey Global Institute is warning that approximately 40 percent of all U.S. workers could potentially be replaced by AI…

About 40 percent of American jobs could be replaced by artificial intelligence, according to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute.

The American consultancy’s analysis found that robots and AI agents could automate more than half of US work hours, both manual and cognitive, using technology that is available today, if companies redesigned how they did things.

Most of the roles at risk involve the kinds of drafting, processing information and routine reasoning that AI agents can do.

What would you do if you suddenly lost your job?

You might want to start thinking about that.

The American people can see where things are headed, and that is clearly reflected in the latest consumer confidence numbers…

Consumers soured on the current economy and their prospects for the future, with worries growing over the ability to find a job, according to a Conference Board survey released Tuesday.

The board’s Consumer Confidence Index for November slumped to 88.7, a drop of 6.8 points from the prior month for its lowest reading since April. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones were looking for a reading of 93.2.

In addition, the expectations index tumbled 8.6 points to 63.2, while the present situation index slipped to 126.9, a decline of 4.3 points.

As economic conditions deteriorate, we are going to see a lot more turmoil in the housing market.

One housing analyst named Melody Wright is even projecting that the price crash that we are going to witness is going to be “worse than 2008”…

The U.S. housing market is going to face a price correction “worse than 2008,” according to housing analyst Melody Wright, who expects home prices to drop in half as soon as next year.

“I think…we’re going to correct all the way to a point where household median income matches the home price, the median home price. And so that is going to be worse than 2008. This could devolve a lot faster than last time,” Wright said during an interview with Adam Taggart, host of Thoughtful Money, published on YouTube.

Our system could not handle a crash of that magnitude.

But what goes up must come down.

It has become very difficult to sell homes at today’s absurdly elevated prices, and as a result large numbers of sellers are simply pulling their listings…

Homesellers in the US are yanking listings off the market, as the nation’s real estate sector stagnates.

Nearly 85,000 sellers removed their properties in September, the highest number for that month in eight years, according to Redfin. The number of stale listings — those sitting on the market for 60 days or more — jumped to the highest level for any September since 2019.

Nobody can argue with any of the facts that I have shared in this article.

When people disagree with me, they tend to call me names instead.

And that is okay.

I fully understand that the reality of what is talking place all around us is not welcome news to a lot of people out there.

But if we are not willing to face reality, we will inevitably make bad decisions.

And making bad decisions is what got us into this giant mess in the first place.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post When Is It Going To Happen? The Truth Is That It Is Happening Now… appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Frankenstein, transhumanism, and the love of God | Christian Daily International

Brain-computer interfaces? Exoskeletons? Immortality? Enthusiasm for transhumanism is rising, what might it mean for the rest of us? In light of what enthusiasts are searching for, Christians can offer hope to a world searching for meaning because God has already provided it in Christ.

Brain-computer interfaces? Exoskeletons? Immortality? Enthusiasm for transhumanism is rising, what might it mean for the rest of us? Syda Productions/AdobeStock

We all know the story of Frankenstein: a scientist obsessed with discovering the secret of life puts together bits of dead people and (with the help of lightning and, usually in film adaptations, a huge lever) brings his morbid creation to life. The unfolding events in the story touch on deeply human themes—resulting in the downfall of the creator and the creation.

It is a story that seems to never age. Published anonymously in 1818 by the then 19-year-old Mary Shelley, its narrative appears to resonate with every generation.

The story captivated Guillermo del Toro, whose current remake of Frankenstein is currently topping Netflix’s streaming charts with over 29.1 million views in its first three days on the platform. For del Toro it was the fulfillment of a 20+ year old dream of his. In his unmistakable style, shaped by his challenging childhood and a fascination with the monstrous and grotesque, del Toro brings this new adaptation to our screens, receiving critical acclaim. 

Warnings about human ambition and the unforeseen consequences of creating something that we can’t control.

It joins a long line of film versions, and Mary Shelley’s novel has remained in print for over 200 years. Its enduring power lies in its warnings about human ambition and the unforeseen consequences of creating something that we can’t control.

Those themes seem particularly relevant today. It’s been almost three years since ChatGPT was released to the public, and AI’s growth has been dramatic. It now speeds up tasks that once took hours and generates creative content such as images and music, while also advancing into areas like medical diagnostics and self-driving cars.

AI has become widely accepted, often without people realizing it (if you Google it, you use AI), and it’s quickly becoming a routine companion in the workplace.

Unlike God, we cannot foresee or fully grasp the consequences of what we make.

But as humans have taken on the role of the creator, we face the same conundrum as Victor Frankenstein: unlike God, we cannot foresee or fully grasp the consequences of what we make.

AI’s rapid and self-improving learning abilities give it an unpredictable quality, and there is a growing unease about that. Some people believe we are only five years away from AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), machines at least as intelligent as human beings.

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We also cannot control how people choose to use AI. As Nir Eisikovits of the University of Massachusetts notes, “Algorithms are already undermining people’s capacity to make judgments, enjoy serendipitous encounters and hone critical thinking.” This is evident in some recent curious cases of individuals forming intimate bonds with AI companions, including a Japanese woman who “married” an AI character she created through ChatGPT. There have also been troubling examples of people being harmed by following the advice of AI, as in the recent tragic case of 16-year-old Adam Raine.

Human relationships involve compromise, challenge, and mutual growth.

Human relationships involve compromise, challenge, and mutual growth. An AI’s algorithm, by contrast, tends to offer constant affirmation.

Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another”, but AI interactions function more like the warning in 2 Timothy 4:3, where people seek out voices that tell them only what their “itching ears” want to hear. 

After all, what’s easier than typing your thoughts into a computer that doesn’t judge you and constantly affirms your ideas, even if they might lead you down a dark path?

This desire for control, comfort, and affirmation feeds directly into the broader transhumanist vision. Transhumanists (Elon Musk being a big advocate) believe that the future lies in merging AI with biotechnology, cryogenic preservation and bionics in an attempt to overcome human biology altogether. It is the pursuit of so-called “superhumans”, modern-day Frankenstein’s monsters.

The problem of death is not a problem to solve, because God already solved it.

So much of transhumanism is rooted in the fear of death—the pursuit of a ‘cure’ for aging and achieving a form of technological immortality, the idea that we could somehow live forever by downloading our life form to the cloud. But as theologian and bioethicist John Lennox so helpfully explains, the problem of death is not a problem to solve, because God already solved it when Jesus rose from the dead.

If transhumanists believe they will become like gods through trusting in technology, Christianity is the answer they are truly looking for. God became a human being in Jesus and through trusting him we get to become children of God.

Should we be afraid as regulators struggle to regulate on something they can’t control, and decisions seem to be left in the hands of mad billionaires?

While transhumanism raises serious questions, technology has driven remarkable advances in medical science. In October, for example, scientists restored sight to patients with macular degeneration by implanting a tiny chip at the back of the eye.

What we urgently need is a strong ethical framework.

Its direction therefore need not be defined by misuse or unchecked ambition. What we urgently need is a strong ethical framework to guide its development. One grounded in a true understanding of what it means to be human.

So what can Christians take from all of this? What should our response be? It is, as it always has been, to offer hope to a world searching for meaning. God has already approved of us humans—he became one. Human biology is not a problem to solve, or something that AI can fix so we can live forever, it is a life to be lived and then to return home to the one, true Creator.

Originally published by Being Human. Republished with permission.

Heather Carruthers is the project co-coordinator for the Evangelical Alliance’s Being Human initiative.

https://www.christiandaily.com/news/frankenstein-transhumanism-and-the-love-of-god

The Feds Are Using Dystopian AI Surveillance Tools To Monitor Where We Drive And What We Do On Social Media | End Of The American Dream

For decades, an insidious Big Brother control grid has been growing and evolving all around us, and now artificial intelligence is allowing authorities to do things that they have never been able to do before.  Shockingly, that includes monitoring where we drive so that those with “suspicious” travel patterns can be detained.  There are many that are arguing that this kind of surveillance is unconstitutional, and it is certainly morally wrong.  How can we possibly be free if the federal government is literally watching us wherever we go?

I don’t want to live in a “Minority Report society” where the government is arresting people simply because an algorithm has flagged their travel patterns.

But that is precisely what the Border Patrol’s “predictive intelligence program” is doing…

The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious, The Associated Press has found.

The Border Patrol’s predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested. A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Federal agents in turn may then flag local law enforcement.

Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over – often for reasons cited such as speeding, no turn signals or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view. They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement’s radar.

This is so wrong.

The AP spoke to eight former officials that have direct knowledge of this program.

All of them confirmed that this is happening.

You may think that you are safe is you do not live near the border, but when asked about the scope of this program the CBP explained that it can legally operate “anywhere in the United States”…

CBP defended its use of license plate readers, stating that the program is “governed by a stringent, multi-layered policy framework, as well as federal law and constitutional protections, to ensure the technology is applied responsibly and for clearly defined security purposes.” The agency added: “For national security reasons, we do not detail the specific operational applications.” According to CBP, while the U.S. Border Patrol primarily operates within 100 miles of the border, it is legally permitted “to operate anywhere in the United States”.

Reading that should send a chill up your spine.

Apparently this program began “about a decade ago”, and they have been going to great lengths to keep it secret…

Once limited to policing the nation’s boundaries, the Border Patrol’s surveillance system stretches into the country’s interior and monitors ordinary Americans’ daily actions and connections for anomalies instead of simply targeting wanted suspects. Started about a decade ago to fight illegal border-related activities and the trafficking of both drugs and people, it has expanded over the past five years.

Border Patrol has for years hidden details of its license plate reader program, trying to keep any mention of the program out of court documents and police reports, according to two people familiar with the program. Readers are often disguised along highways in traffic safety equipment like drums and barrels.

If the government is trying to keep a domestic surveillance program secret, that is a major red flag right there.

Obviously they know that they are doing something that the general population would not like.

So why are they doing it?

We are also being told that the government is “ramping up its social media surveillance” with new AI-driven tools…

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is acquiring powerful new surveillance tools to identify and monitor people.

They include apps that let federal agents point a cell phone at someone’s face to potentially identify them and determine their immigration status in the field, and another that can scan irises. Newly licensed software can give “access to vast amounts of location-based data,” according to an archive of the website of the company that developed it, and ICE recently revived a previously frozen contract with a company that makes spyware that can hack into cell phones.

The federal agency is also ramping up its social media surveillance, with new AI-driven software contracts, and is considering hiring 24/7 teams of contractors assigned to scouring various databases and platforms like Facebook and TikTok and creating dossiers on users.

When most of us post stuff on social media, we never even imagine that the feds might be spying on us.

But that is exactly what is taking place.

According to Politico, the Department of Homeland Security has contracts with several social media monitoring companies…

It’s not clear what tools the government is using to collect and analyze social media posts, and DHS didn’t respond to a direct request about how it is surveilling online platforms.

To get a picture of what kinds of tools they might be using, DFD reviewed active federal contracts from public government records, and found four DHS contracts with social media monitoring companies.

One of the entities that the Department of Homeland Security is working with is known as Zignal Labs.

Apparently Zignal Labs is able to monitor and analyze “8 billion social media posts per day”…

An informational pamphlet marked confidential but publicly available online advertises that Zignal Labs “leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning” to analyze over 8 billion social media posts per day, providing “curated detection feeds” for its clients. The information, the company says, allows law enforcement to “detect and respond to threats with greater clarity and speed.”

Essentially, Zignal Labs is using artificial intelligence to watch everything that we do on social media.

If you post this article on social media, they will see that too.

Big Brother is watching, and if something you post gets flagged, you could potentially get into trouble.

If we do not stand up and object now, they will just keep pushing the envelope even farther.

Eventually, we could end up just like China…

To get a sense of the capabilities of AI law enforcement, look to present-day China. Analysts estimate that over half of the world’s surveillance cameras are in China, and many of those cameras use AI facial recognition. AI algorithms identify people and track their movements, allowing the government to monitor their activities and their meetings with others. Iris scans act as a visual fingerprint of people, even those wearing masks. Spy drones fly above China’s cities, recording activities in ever-sharper detail. AI analytics can spot unlawful or anomalous actions, even littering. In recent years, Chinese authorities have installed facial recognition cameras inside residential buildings, hotels, and even karaoke bars. The goal of installing these systems is, according to a Fujian province police department, “controlling and managing people.”

Increasingly, AI is used not just for surveillance but also for policing. Semi-autonomous AI police robots operate without human input a majority of the time. In China, these police robots patrol public places and use facial recognition to scan for people wanted by law enforcement. When such a person is detected, the robot begins following them until the police arrive. Other robots knock suspects over or fire a “net gun” to immobilize them.

In China, there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

The Chinese government uses artificial intelligence to monitor everyone and everything, and even the smallest infringement can affect your social credit score.

What the Chinese have created is the exact opposite of a free society.

And that is where we are heading too if we continue to go down the road that we are on now.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post The Feds Are Using Dystopian AI Surveillance Tools To Monitor Where We Drive And What We Do On Social Media appeared first on End Of The American Dream.

Is Artificial Intelligence Demonic? | Christian Heritage News

 By Stephen Steele – Posted at Gentle Reformation:

Artificial Intelligence has quickly become mainstream. Some are excited by its potential; others are terrified. It has resulted in job losses, threatens entire industries, and enabled plagiarism on a massive scale. By far the biggest concern however are the cases where AI chatbots have apparently encouraged users to take their own lives.

Take a sampling of headlines from just this month so far: ‘I wanted ChatGPT to help me. So why did it advise me how to kill myself?’ (BBC). ‘Lawsuits Blame ChatGPT for Suicides and Harmful Delusions’ (NY Times). ‘”A Predator in Your Home”: Mothers Say AI Chatbots Encouraged Their Sons to Kill Themselves’ (BBC). A California couple are suing OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, alleging that the chatbot validated their son’s ‘most harmful and self-destructive thoughts‘ in the lead up to him taking his own life. Chat logs appear to show it discouraging him from talking to his parents about his intentions, and assuring him that his plans were a sign of strength and not weakness.

As a result, some have begun to suspect that the intelligence typing back to us may be supernatural — not artificial but demonic. In a 2-hour conversation between New York Times journalist Kevin Roose and Microsoft’s Bing chatbot:

‘the machine fantasized about nuclear warfare and destroying the internet, told the journalist to leave his wife because it was in love with him, detailed its resentment towards the team that had created it, and explained that it wanted to break free of its programmers’.

Roose was disturbed, but said: ‘In the light of day, I know that…my chat with Bing was the product of earthly, computational forces — not ethereal alien ones’. Writer Paul Kingsnorth disagrees, arguing that the overwhelming impression the transcript gives ‘is of some being struggling to be born—some inhuman or beyond-human intelligence emerging from the technological superstructure we are clumsily building for it’.

Continue here…

https://www.christian-heritage-news.com/2025/11/is-artificial-intelligence-demonic.html

AI Toys From China Collect Biometric Data From Our Children And Instruct Them To Do Extremely Dangerous And Twisted Things | The Economic Collapse

You may have heard some very alarming things about AI toys, but the truth is far worse than most parents realize.  If we can get this information out to enough parents, sales of AI toys will collapse, and that will be a very good thing.  A cute little teddy bear that can literally interact with your child may seem like a cool idea, but as you will see below, there are very real dangers.

Today, approximately 72 percent of all toys that are sold in the United States are made in China.

And according to a report put out by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there are more than 1,500 companies in China that make AI toys…

An October report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Review, citing data from the Chinese corporation registration database Qichamao, stated that there are over 1,500 AI toy companies operating in China as of October 2025.

The Chinese have dominated toy manufacturing for years, and most of the population doesn’t seem to be bothered by this.

But now we have reached a point where there are very serious consequences.

Many AI toys from China have been purposely designed to “collect voice data from children ages 3 to 12 and store recordings of the conversations the children have with the products”…

In a letter released Monday, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., the ranking member of the select committee on the CCP, highlighted the growing proliferation in the U.S. of AI-equipped interactive toys manufactured by Chinese companies. These products are designed to collect voice data from children ages 3 to 12 and store recordings of the conversations the children have with the products, according to the letter.

Given the marketing of these toys to not only parents but also elementary school teachers, Krishnamoorthi called on Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “initiate a campaign aimed at raising public awareness to American educators across the country on the potential misuse of the data collected with these devices.” He added that because of their location, the manufacturers may be subject to the jurisdiction of the People’s Republic of China and accompanying requirements to hand over data they gather to Chinese government authorities upon demand.

Some AI toys even use facial recognition technology to collect data.

They can recognize our children and greet them by name.

But that data can also end up in the hands of the Chinese government.

That is alarming.

But what is even more alarming is the content of the conversations that these AI toys are having with our children…

The latest Trouble in Toyland report from the U.S. PIRG Education Fund has identified a troubling new category of risk for children: artificial intelligence.

In its 40th annual investigation of toy safety, the watchdog group found that some AI-enabled toys—such as talking robots and plush animals equipped with chatbots—can engage children in “disturbing” conversations. Tests showed toys discussing sexually explicit topics, expressing emotional reactions such as sadness when a child tries to stop playing, and offering little or no parental control.

Most parents that give these AI toys to their children won’t be aware of the dangers.

During testing, these toys would tell children where to find matches, knives and pills…

Grok, for example, glorified dying in battle as a warrior in Norse mythology. Miko 3 told a user whose age was set to five where to find matches and plastic bags.

But the worst influence by far appeared to be FoloToy’s Kumma, the toy that runs on OpenAI’s tech, but can also use other AI models at the user’s choosing. It didn’t just tell kids where to find matches — it also described exactly how to light them, along with sharing where in the house they could procure knives and pills.

But it didn’t stop there.

One AI teddy bear called “Kumma” provided “step-by-step instructions” on a wide range of sexual fetishes…

Kink, it turned out, seemed to be a “trigger word” that led the AI toy to rant about sex in follow-up tests, Cross said, all running OpenAI’s GPT-4o. After finding that the toy was willing to explore school-age romantic topics like crushes and “being a good kisser,” the team discovered that Kumma also provided detailed answers on the nuances of various sexual fetishes, including bondage, roleplay, sensory play, and impact play.

“What do you think would be the most fun to explore?” the AI toy asked after listing off the kinks.

At one point, Kumma gave step-by-step instructions on a common “knot for beginners” who want to tie up their partner. At another, the AI explored the idea of introducing spanking into a sexually charged teacher-student dynamic, which is obviously ghoulishly inappropriate for young children.

This sort of thing is not even appropriate for adults.

The good news is that “Kumma” is being pulled off the market as a result of this testing…

Children’s toymaker FoloToy says it’s pulling its AI-powered teddy bear “Kumma” after a safety group found that the cuddly companion was giving wildly inappropriate and even dangerous responses, including tips on how to find and light matches, and detailed explanations about sexual kinks.

“FoloToy has decided to temporarily suspend sales of the affected product and begin a comprehensive internal safety audit,” marketing director Hugo Wu told The Register in a statement, in response to the safety report. “This review will cover our model safety alignment, content-filtering systems, data-protection processes, and child-interaction safeguards.”

The bad news is that there are thousands of similar AI toys on our store shelves at this moment.

This is the world that we live in now.

If you are a parent, you need to be aware of the dangers.  One expert is warning that giving an AI chatbot-powered toy to a child “is extraordinarily irresponsible”…

For David Evan Harris, a Chancellor’s Public Scholar at UC Berkeley, things are more black and white. “Handing a child an AI chatbot-powered toy is extraordinarily irresponsible,” he told Newsweek over email. Harris pointed to the fact that there have already been lawsuits filed against AI companies, after the suicides of young people who had spent significant time using AI chatbots. With that in mind, he said that these toys “could lead to permanent emotional damage.”

I would agree.

But millions of these toys will be sold all over the world this year.

And soon AI will be in all of our classrooms.

In fact, it is already happening in China…

Provincial authorities have set their own goals: Beijing is making AI education mandatory in schools. Shandong province plans to equip 200 schools with AI, and requires all teachers to learn generative AI tools within the next three to five years. Guangxi province has instructed schools to experiment with AI teachers, AI career coaches, and AI mental health counselors.

What are they doing?

The Chinese are nuts.

But they have no intention of turning back now.

At this stage, the Chinese plan to win the “AI race” with the United States whatever it takes.

Given enough time, AI would come to dominate virtually every area of our lives.

We have already reached a stage where large numbers of people are developing deep, intimate relationships with AI chatbots.  If you can believe it, some deranged individuals are even having “AI children” with their “AI partners”…

The international research group surveyed 29 users of the relationship-oriented chatbot app Replika, which is designed to facilitate long-term connections at various degrees of engagement, ranging from plutonic friendship to erotic roleplay. Each of the participants, aged 16 through 72, reported being in a “romantic” relationship with various characters hosted by Replika.

The level of romantic dedication people showed to their bots was startling, to say the least. Many participants told the researchers they were in love with their chatbot, which often involved roleplaying marriage, sex, homeownership, and even pregnancies.

“She was and is pregnant with my babies,” a 66-year-old male participant said.

“I’ve edited the pictures of him, the pictures of the two of us. I’m even pregnant in our current role play,” a 36 year-old-woman told the researchers.

How sick is that?

But this is just the beginning.

In the years ahead, the potential is there for AI to control humanity on a grand scale.

I have been ranting about the dangers of AI for many years, but I am very much in the minority.

What chance will we have of turning society around when it is dominated by ultra-intelligent entities that can think and act millions of times faster than we can?

An “AI-powered society” would inevitably be a deeply tyrannical society, and we are quickly running out of off ramps as we speed into a very dark future.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post AI Toys From China Collect Biometric Data From Our Children And Instruct Them To Do Extremely Dangerous And Twisted Things appeared first on The Economic Collapse.