By Amy Miller ( September 15, 2025, 23:52 GMT | Insight) — The deep-pocketed tech industry has proven once again that it can block efforts to regulate artificial intelligence, even in California. Even though California legislators approved more than a dozen bills aimed at regulating AI, from chatbot safety, to transparency, to data centers, several proposals attempting to put guardrails around AI died after facing concerted opposition, including the closely watched Automated Decisions Safety Act, which would have set new rules for AI systems that make consequential decisions about individuals.The deep-pocketed tech industry has proven once again that it can block efforts to regulate artificial intelligence, even in California….
AI Insights
Darwin Awards For AI Celebrate Epic Artificial Intelligence Fails
As the AI Darwin Awards prove, some AI ideas turn out to be far less bright than they seem.
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Not every artificial intelligence breakthrough is destined to change the world. Some are destined to make you wonder “With all this so-called intelligence flooding our lives, how could anyone think that was a smart idea?” That’s the spirit behind the AI Darwin Awards, which recognize the most spectacularly misguided uses of the technology. Submissions are open now.
Reads an introduction to the growing list of nominees, which include legal briefs replete with fictional court cases, fake books by real writers and an Airbnb host manipulating images with AI to make it appear a guest owed money for damages:
“Behold, this year’s remarkable collection of visionaries who looked at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence and thought, ‘Hold my venture capital.’ Each nominee has demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to the principle that if something can go catastrophically wrong with AI, it probably will — and they’re here to prove it.”
A software developer named Pete — who asked that his last name not be used to protect his privacy — launched the AI Darwin Awards last month, mostly as a joke, but also as a cheeky reminder that humans ultimately decide how technology gets deployed.
Don’t Blame The Chainsaw
“Artificial intelligence is just a tool — like a chainsaw, nuclear reactor or particularly aggressive blender,” reads the website for the awards. “It’s not the chainsaw’s fault when someone decides to juggle it at a dinner party.
“We celebrate the humans who looked at powerful AI systems and thought, ‘You know what this needs? Less testing, more ambition, and definitely no safety protocols!’ These visionaries remind us that human creativity in finding new ways to endanger ourselves knows no bounds.”
The AI Darwin Awards are not affiliated with the original Darwin Awards, which famously call out people who, through extraordinarily foolish choices, “protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives.” Now that we let machines make dumb decisions for us too, it’s only fair they get their own awards.
Who Will Take The Crown?
Among the contenders for the inaugural AI Darwin Awards winner are the lawyers who defended MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell in a defamation lawsuit. They submitted an AI-generated brief with almost 30 defective citations, misquotes and references to completely fictional court cases. A federal judge fined the attorneys for their misstep, saying they violated a federal law requiring that lawyers certify court filings are grounded in the actual law.
Another nominee: the AI-generated summer reading list published earlier this year by the Chicago Sun Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer that contained fake books by real authors. “WTAF. I did not write a book called Boiling Point,” one of those authors, Rebecca Makkai, posted to BlueSky. Another writer, Min Jin Lee, also felt the need to issue a clarification.
“I have not written and will not be writing a novel called Nightshare Market,” the Pachinko author wrote on X. “Thank you.”
Then there’s the executive producer at Xbox Games Studios who suggested scores of newly laid-off employees should turn to chatbots for emotional support after losing their jobs, an idea that did not go over well.
“Suggesting that people process job loss trauma through chatbot conversations represents either breathtaking tone-deafness or groundbreaking faith in AI therapy — likely both,” the submission reads.
What Inspired The AI Darwin Awards?
The creator of the awards, who lives in Melbourne, Australia, and has worked in software for three decades, said he frequently uses large language models, including to craft the irreverent text for the AI Darwin Awards website. “It takes a lot of steering from myself to give it the desired tone, but the vast majority of actual content, probably 99%, is all the work of my LLM minions,” he said in an interview.
Pete got the idea for the awards as he and co-workers shared their experiences with AI on Slack. “Occasionally someone would post the latest AI blunder of the day and we’d all have either a good chuckle, or eye-roll or both,” he said.
The awards sit somewhere between reality and satire.
“AI will mean lots of good things for us all and it will mean lots of bad things,” the contest’s creator said. “We just need to work out how to try and increase the good and decrease the bad. In fact, our first task is to identify both the good and the bad. Hopefully the AI Darwin Awards can be a small part of that by highlighting some of the ‘bad.’”
He plans to invite the public to vote on candidates in January, with the winner to be announced in February.
For those who’d rather not win an AI Darwin Award, the site includes a handy guide for how for avoiding the dubious distinction. It includes these tips: “Test your AI systems in safe environments before deploying them globally,” “consider hiring humans for tasks that require empathy, creativity or basic common sense” and “ask ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ and then actually think about the answer.”
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AI Insights
This Artificial Intelligence (AI) ETF Has Outperformed the Market By 2.4X Since Inception and Only Holds Profitable Companies
For well under $100, you can buy one share of this under-the-radar AI exchange-traded fund (ETF) that looks poised to continue to outperform the market.
For this article, I asked myself: Where would I start investing if I had less than $100 to invest?
Image source: Getty Images.
An AI ETF that’s concentrated and full of leading and profitable companies
This answer to my question popped into my head: I’d want a concentrated exchange-traded fund (ETF) focused on leading and profitable companies heavily involved in artificial intelligence (AI), but with enough differences among themselves.
Why an ETF? Because I’d not want to put all my (investing) eggs in one basket.
Why AI? Because it’s poised to be the biggest secular trend in many decades or even generations.
Why concentrated? Because I believe if investors are going to buy a very diversified ETF, they might as well buy the entire market, so to speak, and buy an S&P 500 index ETF. Indeed, buying an S&P 500 index fund is a good idea for many investors, and recommended by investing legend Warren Buffett. That said, over the long run, I think an AI ETF full of only leading and profitable companies will beat the S&P 500 index.
Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF (MAGS): Overview
And bingo! There is such an ETF — the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF (MAGS 1.92%). It has seven holdings — the so-called “Magnificent Seven” stocks: Alphabet (GOOG 4.38%) (GOOGL 4.53%), Amazon (AMZN 1.42%), Apple (AAPL 1.06%), Meta Platforms (META 1.18%), Microsoft (MSFT 1.01%), Nvidia (NVDA -0.10%), and Tesla (TSLA 3.54%). This ETF closed at $62.93 per share on Friday, Sept. 12.
These megacap stocks (stocks with market caps over $200 billion) were given the Magnificent Seven name a couple of years ago by a Wall Street analyst due to their strong growth and large influence on the overall market. The name comes from the title of a 1960 Western film.
Two other main traits I like about this ETF:
- Its expense ratio is reasonable at 0.29%.
- It provides equal-weight exposure to the seven stocks. At each quarterly rebalancing, the stocks will be reset to an equal weighting of about 14.28% (100% divided by 7).
Since its inception in April 2023 (almost 2.5 years), the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF has returned 160% — 2.4 times the S&P 500’s 65.9% return.
Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF (MAGS): All stock holdings
Stocks are listed in order of current weight in portfolio. Keep in mind the ETF is rebalanced quarterly to make stocks equally weighted.
|
Holding No. |
Company |
Market Cap |
Wall Street’s Projected Annualized EPS Growth Over Next 5 Years |
Weight (% of Portfolio) |
1 Year/ 10-Year Returns |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1 |
Alphabet | $2.9 trillion | 14.7% | 17.72% | 55.9% / 677% |
|
2 |
Nvidia | $4.3 trillion | 34.9% | 15.00% | 49.3% / 32,210% |
|
3 |
Apple | $3.5 trillion | 8.8% | 14.13% | 5.6% / 812% |
|
4 |
Tesla | $1.3 trillion | 13.4% | 13.81% | 72.3% / 2,270% |
|
5 |
Amazon | $2.4 trillion | 18.6% | 13.30% | 22% / 762% |
| 6 | Meta Platforms | $1.9 trillion | 12.9% | 13.16% | 44.3% / 725% |
| 7 | Microsoft | $3.8 trillion | 16.6% | 12.76% | 20.3% / 1,250% |
|
Overall ETF |
N/A |
Total net assets of $2.86 billion |
N/A |
100% |
40.5% / N/A |
|
N/A |
S&P 500 |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
19.2% / 300% |
Data sources: Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF, finviz.com, and YCharts. EPS = earnings per share. Data as of Sept. 12, 2025.
All these companies are profitable leaders in their core markets, and heavily involved in AI. Nvidia produces AI tech that enables others to use AI, while the other companies mainly use AI to improve their existing products and develop new ones.
Alphabet’s Google is the world leader in internet search. Its cloud computing business is No. 3 in the world, behind Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. The company also has other businesses, notably its driverless vehicle subsidiary, Waymo. (You can read here why I believe Nvidia is the best driverless vehicle stock.)
Nvidia is often described as the world’s leading maker of AI chips — and that it is. But it’s much more. It’s the world leader in supplying technology infrastructure for enabling AI. It’s also the global leader in graphics processing units (GPUs) for computer gaming.
Apple’s iPhone holds the No. 2 spot in the global smartphone market, behind Samsung. However, it dominates the U.S. market. The company’s services business is attractive, as it consists of recurring revenue and has been steadily growing.
Amazon operates the world’s No. 1 e-commerce business and the world’s No. 1 cloud computing business. It also has many other businesses, notably its Fresh and Amazon Prime Now (Whole Foods) grocery delivery operations.
Meta Platforms operates the world’s leading social media site, Facebook, as well as Instagram, Threads, and messaging app WhatsApp.
Microsoft’s Word has long been the world’s leading word processing software. Word is part of Microsoft Office, a suite of popular software for personal computers (PCs). Its Azure is the world’s second-largest cloud computing business.
Tesla remains the No. 1 electric vehicle (EV) maker, by far, in the U.S. despite struggling recently. In the first half of 2025, China’s BYD surpassed Tesla as the world’s leader in all-electric vehicles by number of units sold. CEO Elon Musk touts that the company’s robotaxi and Optimus humanoid robot businesses will eventually be larger than its EV sales business.
In short, the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF is poised to continue to benefit from the growth of artificial intelligence. Technically, it doesn’t have a long-term history. But if it had existed many years ago, it’s easy to tell that its long-term performance would be very strong because the long-term performances of all its holdings have been anywhere from great to spectacular.
Beth McKenna has positions in Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends BYD Company and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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Artificial intelligence has some excited and others scared, as the rapidly evolving technology impacts the job market.
Lucas Shriver is working hard at LEMA in St. Paul. A solar-powered battery station can now be used as a power source in a desert. It’s a project and a job that’s been a long time coming.
“I think I was about 7 years old when I built a tree house by myself,” Shriver said.
He earned his engineering degree from the University of St. Thomas in June. As a full-time employee, he is one of the lucky ones.
“In my own searching for jobs and my friends, the job market right now is quite difficult, and it does seem like people are looking for someone with five years of experience,” Shriver said.
His professor, John Abraham, agrees.
“The jobs at the bottom rung of a ladder for people to climb up to a corporation. Those are going away in the last two years,” Abraham said. “There’s 35% fewer entry-level, you’re a recent college graduate and you’re looking for a job, you’re up a creek, you’re up a creek.”
Federal data suggests three fields that will feel potential cuts because of AI: Insurance adjusting, credit analysis and paralegals. The data also suggests growth could come in the software, personal finance and engineering fields.
For job seekers of any age or field, Abraham suggests learning how to use artificial intelligence.
“This is a tool that increases effectiveness so much, you just have to know it if you’re going to compete,” he said.
And Shriver has the job to prove it.
“I have no idea where this is going, but as for today, I am gonna use AI,” he said.
Abraham says jobs with empathy, like counseling and health care may be safer from AI; he also says the trades will likely still be in demand.
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