• WalletHub released a ranking of the safest cities in the US, examining a total of 182 cities.
• The ranking examined safety categories of home and community, natural-disaster risk, and financial.
• It named Warwick, Rhode Island, Overland Park, Kansas, and Burlington, Vermont, the safest cities.

If you’re looking for a place to live where you can sleep soundly at night without worrying too much about crime, natural disasters, or financial ruin, these are the top 10 contenders, according to a new WalletHub analysis.

WalletHub examined a total of 182 US cities — the 150 most populated cities in the country, plus at least two of the most populated cities in each state — to determine the safest cities in the US.

The cities were evaluated based on 41 metrics in three main categories: home and community safety, natural-disaster risk, and financial safety.

To determine home and community safety rankings, WalletHub examined factors in each city including murders, thefts, and assaults per capita, traffic and pedestrian fatalities per capita, and the number of mass shootings.

Natural-disaster risk factors measured the risk indexes of earthquakes, hail, flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes, and wildfires.

For financial safety rankings, WalletHub looked at the rates of unemployment, poverty, and foreclosure, as well as the number of fraud and identity theft complaints per capita.

The analysis used data from the US Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Emergency Management Agency, The Pew Charitable Trusts, and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. among other sources.

Here are the top 10 safest cities in the US.

10. Salem, Oregon

Salem, Oregon, has the fewest law-enforcement employees per capita, contributing to its home and community safety ranking of 52nd overall, per WalletHub’s study.

It had the 13th-lowest natural-disaster risk ranking and placed 31st in financial safety among the 182 cities studied.

9. Lewiston, Maine

Lewiston, Maine, was found to have the fourth-lowest natural-disaster risk level and the second-highest financial safety rank of the cities analyzed. It placed 63rd in home and community safety.

8. Columbia, Maryland

WalletHub’s analysis awarded Columbia, Maryland, the second-highest home and community safety ranking.

It also ranked 11th in natural-disaster risk and 51st in financial safety.

7. South Burlington, Vermont

South Burlington — which was named the No. 1 safest city in WalletHub’s 2024 report — features one of the lowest unemployment rates of the cities included in WalletHub’s analysis, tied for first place with Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Rapid City, South Dakota, Burlington, Vermont, and Miami, Florida.

It also has the lowest percentage of uninsured people, contributing to its financial safety ranking of third overall.

It ranked 46th in home and community safety and sixth in natural-disaster risk.

6. Casper, Wyoming

Casper, Wyoming, featured the fifth-lowest natural-disaster risk in WalletHub’s analysis. It was ranked 51st in home and community safety and seventh in financial safety.

5. Yonkers, New York

Yonkers, which is just north of the Bronx, moved up a spot from its No. 6 position in WalletHub’s 2024 ranking.

This year, it placed third in home and community safety, 29th in natural-disaster risk, and 118th in financial safety.

4. Juneau, Alaska

Juneau jumped from the 16th-safest city in WalletHub’s 2024 ranking to the fourth safest in its 2025 list.

It features the lowest natural-disaster risk level out of the 182 cities named in WalletHub’s study. It ranked 86th in home and community safety and 57th in financial safety.

3. Burlington, Vermont

Burlington features the 14th-lowest risk of flooding, 21st-lowest risk of tornados, and the 31st lowest risk of wildfires, contributing to its overall natural-disaster risk ranking of sixth place.

It ranked 33rd in home and community safety thanks to its 26th-lowest murder rate. Burlington also placed ninth in financial safety.

All told, WalletHub named Burlington the third-safest city in the US.

2. Overland Park, Kansas

Overland Park earned the title of second-safest city in the US with statistics such as the 15th-lowest rate of traffic fatalities, the fifth-lowest pedestrian fatality rate, and the lowest percentage of residents living in poverty.

In WalletHub’s overall category ranking, Overland Park placed fourth in home and community safety, 118th in natural-disaster risk, and 16th in financial safety.

1. Warwick, Rhode Island

WalletHub named Warwick, Rhode Island, the safest city in the US.

With the 10th-lowest risk of wildfires, the seventh-lowest number of thefts per capita, and the third-lowest number of aggravated assaults per capita, both its natural disaster and home and community safety rankings earned top 10 placements in the overall ranking.

It also has the fourth-lowest percentage of residents living in poverty and living without health insurance, contributing to its financial safety ranking of 44th out of the 182 total cities named in WalletHub’s analysis.

• The 74th annual Miss USA pageant will take place in Reno, Nevada, on October 24.
• The pageant has crowned a winner every year since 1952.
• Past winners include Ali Landry, Olivia Culpo, and Noelia Voigt, who became the first Miss USA to resign.

It’s almost time to crown the next Miss USA.

On October 24, a new winner will be named among the 51 contestants at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno, Nevada.

It will be the first Miss USA under Thom Brodeur, who replaced Laylah Rose as CEO and president of the pageant following her tumultuous reign.

Miss USA has always found time to crown a new queen, no matter what’s going on behind the scenes. So in honor of the coming pageant, Business Insider took a look back at every Miss USA winner since its inception in 1952.

1952: Miss New York Jackie Loughery

Loughery was crowned the winner of the pageant after a second round of voting, as the initial vote ended in a tie, according to Reader’s Digest.

Loughery died in February 2024.

1953: Miss Illinois Myrna Hansen

Hansen represented Illinois in the Miss USA pageant, and she was runner-up in the 1953 Miss Universe pageant.

1954: Miss South Carolina Miriam Stevenson

Stevenson became the first American to win the Miss Universe pageant after being crowned Miss USA.

1955: Miss Vermont Carlene King Johnson

Johnson is the only Miss Vermont to win the Miss USA pageant to date.

1956: Miss Iowa Carol Morris

Morris was also crowned Miss Universe in 1956, and she is the only Miss Iowa to win Miss USA to date.

1957: Miss Maryland Mary Leona Gage

Although she won, Gage’s title was revoked because she lied about being married, having two children, and her age. The crown then passed to first runner-up Charlotte Sheffield, who represented Utah.

1958: Miss Louisiana Eurlyne Howell

Howell went on to pursue a career in acting after winning Miss USA.

1959: Miss California Terry Huntingdon

Huntingdon was the first Miss USA to win the pageant in her home state.

1960: Miss Utah Linda Bement

Bement went on to be crowned Miss Universe during the first Miss Universe pageant that was televised live.

1961: Miss Louisiana Sharon Brown

In addition to being Miss USA, Brown was crowned queen of the Sugar Bowl in 1962.

1962: Miss Hawaii Macel Wilson

Wilson was the first Miss Hawaii to win the Miss USA pageant, as well as the first woman of color to win the pageant.

1963: Miss Illinois Marite Ozers

Ozers was born in Latvia, and her family relocated to Illinois because of World War II. She went on to represent the state in Miss USA.

1964: Miss District of Columbia Bobbi Johnson

Johnson was the first contestant from DC to win the pageant.

1965: Miss Ohio Sue Ann Downey

After winning Miss USA, Downey won the National Costume Contest at the Miss Universe pageant.

1966: Miss California Maria Remenyi

Remenyi returned to the pageant world in 1973 when she served as a judge at Miss Universe.

1967: Miss Alabama Sylvia Louise Hitchcock

Hitchcock went on to win the Miss Universe pageant, and she returned to judge the pageant in 1972.

Cheryl Patton, who was second runner-up at Miss USA, became queen in Hitchcock’s stead.

1968: Miss Washington Dorothy Anstett

In addition to participating in the pageant, Anstett was married to famous NBA player Bill Russell for three years.

1969: Miss Virginia Wendy Dascomb

Dascomb was the first Miss Virginia to win the Miss USA pageant.

1970: Miss Virginia Deborah Shelton

After the pageant, Shelton went on to star on “Dallas” as Mandy Winger from 1984 to 1987.

1971: Miss Pennsylvania Michele McDonald

McDonald was the first representative from Pennsylvania to win Miss USA.

1972: Miss Hawaii Tanya Wilson

Wilson competed in the Miss Nevada pageant twice before she relocated to Hawaii and won the state’s pageant, leading her to the Miss USA crown.

1973: Miss Illinois Amanda Jones

Jones told the South Eastern Missourian in 1973 that she only applied to the pageant at the encouragement of her modeling agent.

1974: Miss Illinois Karen Jean Morrison

Morrison was one of few Miss USA contestants to be crowned by a winner from her same state.

1975: Miss California Summer Bartholomew

Following her win, Bartholomew had a brief career as a game-show host, appearing on “Sale of the Century” and “The Price is Right.”

1976: Miss Minnesota Barbara Elaine Peterson

Peterson was the first Miss Minnesota to win the Miss USA pageant.

1977: Miss Texas Kimberly Tomes

Tomes was the first Miss Texas to win the pageant, and she later served as a host for the Miss Texas pageant.

1978: Miss Hawaii Judi Andersen

Andersen appeared on TV shows like “Magnum, P.I.” and “Fantasy Island” after winning Miss USA.

1979: Miss New York Mary Therese Friel

Less than a decade after winning the pageant, Friel founded her own modeling agency and helped train other pageant contestants.

1980: Miss South Carolina Shawn Weatherly

Weatherly became Miss Universe after winning Miss USA, and she later appeared on “Baywatch” as Jill Riley.

As first runner-up in the pageant, Miss Arizona Jineane Ford became Miss USA when Weatherly began her reign as Miss Universe.

1981: Miss Ohio Kim Seelbrede

Seelbrede’s winnings were valued at around $100,000, according to UPI.

1982: Miss Arkansas Terri Lea Utley

Utley was the first Miss Arkansas to win the Miss USA pageant.

1983: Miss California Julie Hayek

Hayek placed first runner-up at Miss Universe in 1983. Her Miss USA reign launched an acting career, and she appeared on shows including “Dallas,” “Twin Peaks,” and “As the World Turns,” according to her IMDb.

1984: Miss New Mexico Mai Shanley

To date, Shanley is the only Miss New Mexico to win the Miss USA pageant.

1985: Miss Texas Laura Harring

Harring became a successful model and actor after winning the pageant, appearing on the cover of magazines like Elle and Cosmopolitan and in films like “Mulholland Drive.”

1986: Miss Texas Christy Fichtner

Fichtner competed against Halle Berry the year she became Miss USA.

1987: Miss Texas Michelle Royer

The year Royer was crowned queen, Bob Barker quit his job hosting the pageant because it allowed contestants to wear real fur coats, as Live Now Fox reported.

1988: Miss Texas Courtney Gibbs

Gibbs placed eighth at Miss Universe 1988. She then pursued an acting career and, according to her IMDb, appeared in the soap opera “All My Children” and films including “Naked Truth.”

1989: Miss Texas Gretchen Polhemus

Polhemus was the fifth Miss Texas in a row to win Miss USA from 1985 to 1989. She placed second runner-up at Miss Universe 1989. Polhemus’ daughter followed in her pageant footsteps and won Miss Utah USA in 2017.

1990: Miss Michigan Carole Gist

Gist was the first African-American woman to win the Miss USA crown. She was also the first winner from Michigan, breaking a five-year winning streak by contestants from Texas. She placed first runner-up at Miss Universe 1990.

1991: Miss Kansas Kelli McCarty

McCarty was the first Miss Kansas to win Miss USA, and she placed in the top six at Miss Universe 1991. She went on to star in the soap opera “Passions” for seven years.

1992: Miss California Shannon Marketic

Before she won Miss USA, Marketic had been crowned Miss Arizona Teen USA in 1989. She lost the title a week later after it was discovered she had actually placed first runner-up.

1993: Miss Michigan Kenya Moore

Moore’s big pageant win kicked off a Hollywood acting career that included stints on TV shows like “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “Living Single,” and “Girlfriends.” In 2012, she became a Bravo star, appearing on “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.”

1994: Miss South Carolina Lu Parker

Parker placed in the top six at Miss Universe 1994. She’s been a co-anchor on KTLA for more than a decade and has won six Emmys for her work.

1995: Miss Texas Chelsi Smith

Following her success at Miss USA, Smith also won Miss Universe 1995. She was the sixth American woman to capture the coveted crown and the first to win since 1980.

First runner-up Shanna Moakler of New York became Miss USA when Smith’s reign as Miss Universe started.

1996: Miss Louisiana Ali Landry

Landry transferred her pageant success into a career in Hollywood. Her biggest role was as Rita Lefleur on UPN’s “Eve,” which she appeared in from 2003 to 2006, according to her IMDb page, and she most recently appeared in the controversial film “Sound of Freedom.”

1997: Miss Hawaii Brook Lee

After she took the Miss USA crown, Lee went on to win Miss Universe 1997.

Her first runner-up, Miss Idaho Brandi Sherwood, then became Miss USA.

1998: Miss Massachusetts Shawnae Jebbia

Jebbia was the first Miss Massachusetts to win Miss USA. She placed in the top five at Miss Universe 1998 and went on to become a “Barker Beauty” on “The Price is Right.”

1999: Miss New York Kimberly Pressler

In addition to Miss USA 1999, Pressler also won Miss New York Teen USA in 1994.

After her pageant career came to an end, Pressler hosted MTV shows, including “Senseless Acts of Video” and “Total Request Live.” She also hosted “Adrenaline X” on NBC and has worked as a correspondent for ESPN.

2000: Miss Tennessee Lynnette Cole

Cole was the first Miss Tennessee to win Miss USA. She also won Miss Tennessee Teen USA in 1995, and placed fifth at Miss Universe 2000.

The pageant queen has since worked as a TV host for major channels including NBC, MTV, and ESPN.

2001: Miss Texas Kandace Krueger

Krueger placed second runner-up at Miss Universe 2001, narrowly missing the crown to Miss Puerto Rico Denise Quiñones.

2002: Miss District of Columbia Shauntay Hinton

Miss USA 2002 was only the second pageant Hinton had ever competed in. She has appeared in shows including “Criminal Minds” and “iCarly.”

2003: Miss Massachusetts Susie Castillo

Castillo was the first Latina woman to win Miss Massachusetts USA. She had previously won Miss Massachusetts Teen USA in 1998.

Following her Miss USA reign, Castillo became an MTV VJ and host for “Total Request Live.”

2004: Miss Missouri Shandi Finnessey

Finnessey placed first runner-up in the 2004 Miss Universe competition. She has since appeared on reality shows including “The Apprentice,” “Dancing with the Stars,” and “Ready for Love,” which she won.

2005: Miss North Carolina Chelsea Cooley

Cooley defended Donald Trump, who previously owned the Miss USA pageant, during his 2016 presidential campaign. She told the Daily Mail that he had been her personal business mentor for years.

2006: Miss Kentucky Tara Conner

Conner almost lost her Miss USA crown after tabloids ran stories about her underage drinking and partying at New York City clubs. Trump allowed Conner to continue her reign after she went to rehab.

2007: Miss Tennessee Rachel Smith

Smith starred in Trump’s 2007 MTV reality show “Pageant Place” alongside Miss USA 2006 Tara Conner and Miss Universe 2007 Riyo Mori.

2008: Miss Texas Crystle Stewart

Stewart went on to become president of Miss USA in 2020. She ran the pageant for two years but was suspended in October 2022 after contestants claimed that year’s Miss USA competition was rigged.

The Miss Universe Organization announced in August 2023 that it had found no evidence of rigging but said Stewart would no longer be with the organization.

2009: Miss North Carolina Kristen Dalton

Dalton comes from a big pageant family. Her mother was Miss North Carolina USA in 1982 and her sister Julia competed at Miss USA 2015 as Miss North Carolina.

2010: Miss Michigan Rima Fakih

Fakih was the first Muslim woman to win the Miss USA crown. She became the national director of Miss Universe Lebanon in 2018.

2011: Miss California Alyssa Campanella

Campanella had previously placed first runner-up at Miss Teen USA 2007.

2012: Miss Rhode Island Olivia Culpo

Olivia Culpo was the first Miss USA to win Miss Universe in 15 years when she took the crown in 2012. She was just 20 years old at the time.

Miss Maryland Nana Meriwether was the first runner-up, so she was crowned Miss USA after Culpo became Miss Universe.

Culpo has since amassed a huge social media following, dipped her toe into acting, and starred on the TLC reality series “The Culpo Sisters” with her family. She is married to Christian McCaffrey, who plays for the San Francisco 49ers.

2013: Miss Connecticut Erin Brady

Brady was the first woman from Connecticut to win Miss USA. The finance worker had to postpone her wedding to compete at Miss Universe, which was scheduled on the same day.

2014: Miss Nevada Nia Sanchez

Sanchez was the first Miss Nevada to win Miss USA and she placed first runner-up in Miss Universe 2014. She previously worked as a Disney princess in Hong Kong Disneyland.

2015: Miss Oklahoma Olivia Jordan

Jordan was crowned after months of controversy at Miss USA. The show was dropped by NBC, and multiple guests and judges backed out from appearing at the pageant because of comments Trump made about Mexican immigrants during his presidential campaign.

2016: Miss District of Columbia Deshauna Barber

Barber joined the Army when she was 17 and was serving as a logistics commander when she won Miss USA.

“As a commander of my unit, I’m powerful, I am dedicated, and it is important that we recognize that gender does not limit us in the United States,” she said during the pageant finals.

2017: Miss District of Columbia Kára McCullough

McCullough was the talk of social media during the Miss USA 2017 pageant when she said she prefers the word “equalism” to “feminism.”

The pageant queen later told Business Insider that she believed the word “feminist” can sometimes have a negative connotation in the media, and that’s why she wanted to “just change the word to equalist.”

2018: Miss Nebraska Sarah Rose Summers

Summers made headlines while competing at Miss Universe after she was accused of mocking some of her fellow contestants’ English language skills.

“In a moment where I intended to admire the courage of a few of my sisters, I said something that I now realize can be perceived as not respectful, and I apologize,” Summers wrote in an apology she posted to Instagram at the time.

2019: Miss North Carolina Cheslie Kryst

Kryst was a complex litigation attorney who helped free a man who was sentenced to life in prison for a drug offense. Her death in January 2022 shocked the tight-knit pageant community.

2020: Miss Mississippi Asya Branch

Branch was the first African-American woman to win the title of Miss Mississippi USA.

2021: Miss Kentucky Elle Smith

Smith, a journalist from Kentucky, won Miss USA just six months after she began competing in pageants.

2022: Miss Texas R’Bonney Gabriel

Gabriel was the first Filipino American to win the Miss USA crown. Her reign was consumed with controversy after contestants claimed the pageant had been rigged in her favor.

But Gabriel then went on to win Miss Universe, becoming the first American to take the crown in a decade.

Miss North Carolina Morgan Romano took over for Gabriel as Miss USA.

2023: Miss Utah Noelia Voigt

Voigt was the first Venezuelan American to become Miss USA when she won in September 2023. She also became the first Miss USA to give up the crown, relinquishing her title in May 2024. Miss Teen USA UmaSofia Srivastava resigned two days later, saying her “personal values no longer fully align with the direction of the organization.” Miss Hawaii Savannah Gankiewicz became queen in Voigt’s stead.

Voigt and Srivastava’s mothers told Business Insider that their daughters endured “eight months of torture and abuse” from Laylah Rose, who was the CEO of Miss USA and Miss Teen USA during their reigns. Rose denied the allegations.

The Miss Universe Organization recently sued Rose, alleging she created a “toxic workplace environment” and had failed to provide prize packages to winners of Miss USA and Miss Teen USA. Voigt told Business Insider that she felt “vindicated” by the lawsuit.

2024: Alma Cooper

Cooper is a second lieutenant and military intelligence officer in the US Army and a graduate of the West Point Military Academy.

She is also a Knight-Hennessy Scholar at Stanford University, where she is currently pursuing a master’s degree in data science.

Following her win, Cooper told Business Insider that she believes the military and pageantry go hand in hand.

“I think discipline is a firm aspect between pageantry and the military,” Cooper said. “Being able to be intrinsically motivated, to have personal courage, is one of the Army values.”

“And to get onstage in front of millions of people, a nationally televised audience, and wear a swimsuit — that, in and of itself, is one way to display personal courage and believe in oneself,” she added.

• A major AWS outage appeared to impact many online services, including Amzon, Snapchat, Venmo, Reddit, and Perplexity.
• AWS said it had mitigated the underlying issue and its services were showing “significant signs of recovery.”
• But “significant” connectivity issues remain “across multiple services in the US-EAST-1 Region,” AWS later added.

Americans continued to run into issues accessing many online services early Monday afternoon as Amazon worked to mitigate a major Amazon Web Service outage.

The AWS outage brought down major online services in the early hours of the morning, including Amazon, Snapchat, Signal, and Perplexity.

A status page for Amazon’s cloud unit showed more than 80 of its own services were affected at the outage’s peak Monday morning.

While the company said the underlying issue had been “fully mitigated” and that most AWS service operations were “succeeding normally now” at 6:35 am ET, a fresh wave of outage reports spiked in the US later Monday morning on outage-tracking website DownDetector.

At 10:14 a.m. ET, AWS reported “significant API errors and connectivity issues across multiple services in the US-EAST-1 Region.” The severity status on the AWS status page is currently “degraded.”

Reports on Downdetector trended up for Amazon, Venmo, and Pinterest.

Many other online services that use AWS’ cloud services and infrastructure, including Zoom, Strava, and Amazon’s Alexa assistant, appeared to experience outages early Monday morning, according to Downdetector.

Among other services that showed issues on Downdetector earlier on Monday were financial service providers Venmo and Robinhood; airlines including United and Delta; and telecoms giants AT&T and Verizon. User reports also indicated problems with workplace tools, including Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Asana.

Aravind Srinivas, the CEO of AI startup Perplexity, said in an X post at 3:22 a.m. ET that its service is down. “The root cause is an AWS issue,” he said. “We’re working on resolving it.”

A United spokesperson told Business Insider that the AWS outage disrupted access to its app and website overnight, and that the airline implemented backup systems to “end the technology disruption.”

Robinhood said in a post on X that its services are “back online and recovering,” while a Snapchat spokesperson told Business Insider the company is aware that some users are experiencing issues with the app and advised them to “hang tight” while it investigates.

T-Mobile was listed as showing issues on Downdetector but a company spokesperson told Business Insider that it didn’t experience an outage on its own service, and that its customers “had issues when trying to use other sites or services due to a third party’s outage early this morning.”

An Amazon spokesperson directed Business Insider to its service status page.

What we know so far

On Monday morning, AWS’s status page showed that DynamoDB, its database service underpinning many online applications, was experiencing “significant error rates” for requests to its data centers located on the US East Coast.

The issue stemmed from a problem with DNS, the company said, which translates website names to IP addresses and is often described as a phone book for the internet.

The company’s status page first reported that it was investigating the issue at 3:11 a.m. ET on Monday.

At 12:13 p.m. ET, Amazon reported progress had been made.

“We have taken additional mitigation steps to aid the recovery of the underlying internal subsystem responsible for monitoring the health of our network load balancers and are now seeing connectivity and API recovery for AWS services,” the company said.

At 11:43 a.m. ET, AWS said that it had “narrowed down the source of the network connectivity issues that impacted AWS Services,” and that the “root cause is an underlying internal subsystem responsible for monitoring the health of our network load balancers.”

As of 1:38 p.m. ET, the company said that mitigation efforts were “progressing” with some internal systems “now showing early signs of recovering in a few Availability Zones (AZs) in the US-EAST-1 Region.”

“We are applying mitigations to the remaining AZs at which point we expect launch errors and network connectivity issues to subside,” the company added.

Another online outage

It’s not the first time an outage at one service provider has brought down large chunks of the internet.

In July last year, a faulty software update from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike caused computers around the world to crash, sparking chaos for airlines, hospitals, banks, and businesses.

There have also been notable online service outages in 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019 — typically stemming from faulty updates or misconfigurations at one underlying service provider.

“Today’s outage is another reminder that the digital world doesn’t stop at borders — a local fault can ripple worldwide in minutes,” said Charlotte Wilson, head of enterprise at Check Point Software, a cybersecurity company. “We’ve built convenience on shared systems, but resilience still depends on people and process.”

• OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy is not impressed with the state of AI agents.
• Karpathy appeared on the Dwarkesh Podcast last week to discuss his observations on AI development.
• Functional AI agents “will take about a decade,” he said.

Even in the fast-moving world of AI, patience is still a virtue, according to Andrej Karpathy.

The OpenAI cofounder, and de facto leader of the vibe-coding boom, appeared on the Dwarkesh Podcast last week to talk about how far we are from developing functional AI agents.

TL;DR — he’s not that impressed.

“They just don’t work. They don’t have enough intelligence, they’re not multimodal enough, they can’t do computer use and all this stuff,” he said. “They don’t have continual learning. You can’t just tell them something and they’ll remember it. They’re cognitively lacking and it’s just not working.”

“It will take about a decade to work through all of those issues,” he added.

Agents are among the most talked-about innovations in AI, with many investors dubbing 2025 “the year of the agent.” While definitions vary, agents are virtual assistants capable of completing tasks autonomously — breaking down problems, outlining plans, and taking action without user prompts.

Karpathy is a famously fast talker. So he wrote a follow-up post on X for listeners who couldn’t quite parse everything he said. On the topic of agents, he reiterated his earlier frustrations.

“My critique of the industry is more in overshooting the tooling w.r.t. present capability,” he wrote. “The industry lives in a future where fully autonomous entities collaborate in parallel to write all the code and humans are useless.”

He doesn’t want to live there.

In Karpathy’s ideal future, humans and AI collaborate to code and execute tasks.

“I want it to pull the API docs and show me that it used things correctly. I want it to make fewer assumptions and ask/collaborate with me when not sure about something. I want to learn along the way and become better as a programmer, not just get served mountains of code that I’m told works,” he wrote.

The con of building the kind of agents that render humans useless, he said, is that humans are then useless, and AI “slop,” the low-quality content generated by AI, becomes ubiquitous.

Karpathy isn’t the only one to raise concerns about the functionality of AI agents.

In a post on LinkedIn last year, ScaleAI growth lead Quintin Au talked about how the errors agents make are compounded with every additional task they take on.

“Currently, every time an AI performs an action, there’s roughly a 20% chance of error (this is how LLMs work, we can’t expect 100% accuracy),” he wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “If an agent needs to complete 5 actions to finish a task, there’s only a 32% chance it gets every step right.”

While skeptical of the current state of AI agents, Karpathy said he isn’t an AI skeptic.

“My AI timelines are about 5-10X pessimistic w.r.t. what you’ll find in your neighborhood SF AI house party or on your twitter timeline, but still quite optimistic w.r.t. a rising tide of AI deniers and skeptics,” he said.

• Our family always bonded over getting the house ready for Halloween.
• We couldn’t wait until decorating season began in October.
• This year, my kids didn’t want to join in. So I did it myself.

Halloween is a big deal in our house. Or, as I discovered this year, it used to be.

I was never stumped about what to buy for my son’s birthday in late September. At the top of his list would be somewhat useless things, such as fake live wires that hiss and shake, or pricey licensed products, including a replica proton pack from the Ghostbusters franchise.

He loved to visit the local Spirit Halloween store and pick out his gifts for under a certain amount of cash. It was great to see his face light up when he reached the animatronics section, stamped on the touch pads, and recoiled as a giant spider or demented nun jumped out.

But not this year.

My son didn’t want to go into the Halloween store

This fall, a week before his 15th birthday, I literally had to drag him out of the car when we parked up. He wanted to stay inside to play on his iPhone, a tactic he pulls whenever we try to take him for a short hike.

His dad confiscated his devices, and he reluctantly entered the store. It was a treasure trove of killer clowns, decapitated pigs’ heads, and Harry Potter merchandise. My son showed about as much interest as a rap fan at a country music festival.

He rallied for a while, looking in the mirror at himself in a Jason Voorhees mask from Friday the 13th. Then he decided on Michael Myers and rushed to the checkout as if he couldn’t wait to get out.

I once made a 160-mile round trip to pick up an animatronic purchased on eBay

In 2024, he spent 90 minutes choosing between the scary, sleeping scarecrow and a one-armed zombie called Rick Ratman, who had rodents coming out of his head. He opted for the latter, which he proudly positioned on the stoop.

He joined a haunted, moving tree that I’d bought on eBay — it involved a 160-mile round trip to the seller’s home in a neighboring state— and a giant, talking triffid from Home Depot.

It’s a tradition to install a new animatronic ahead of every October 31. Kids from the neighborhood ride past on their bikes to admire it. Some have been known to photograph or video it, and that’s why I bought a 6ft screeching night owl statue on special offer last month.

I told everyone that October 5th was Halloween decorating day. It was one of the highlights of the year, second only to putting up our Christmas stuff.

My teenage daughter said, ‘Less is more, Mom’

As time passes, my 17-year-old daughter has become less hands-on than her younger brother. But she still got a kick out of draping black lace fabric around our lampshades for that sinister Victorian seance look.

This year, she didn’t even want to do that. She said that our decorations were tasteless and tacky. “Less is more, Mom,” she scoffed before bolting to Starbucks with her friends.

It wasn’t too long ago that she’d sit at the kitchen table making “mummy lanterns” from Mason jars, gauze bandages, fairy lights, and googly eyes. She’d excitedly bake headless gingerbread men and splatter them with blood-red icing.

Excuse the horror pun, but it was my son who stuck the proverbial knife in my heart. I dragged in the boxes of decorations from the garage. He sat on the sofa playing Nintendo without looking up from the switch.

I asked if he wanted to help twist the bendy spiders’ legs around the staircase. “You do it, Mom,” he said. This was a stark contrast to when he was younger, and it was a ritual we enjoyed together.

“Shall we assemble the owl?” I asked. He shook his head. Eventually, I forced him into the front yard to hold the ladder while I hung up two corpses in cocoons.

It wasn’t the same as previous years

It wasn’t much fun putting up the decorations by myself. I missed the banter, the laughter, and camaraderie of family. Our au pair and his friend came to the rescue by building the new animatronic and zip-tying the skeleton to the swing on our tree.

But it wasn’t quite the same. I know that many children become more distant toward their parents as they grow up. But as I stuck another AA battery into a groaning plastic chandelier, I felt sad that I was losing my kids — or had already lost them —over time.

Do you have an interesting story about parenting to share with Business Insider? Please email Jane Ridley at jridley@insider.com

• Jack Buser, global director for games at Google Cloud, said AI is changing the industry.
• Buser said AI is streamlining business operations and speeding up projects.
• “AI can be used to create entirely new gameplay experiences,” he said.

Gamers have been waiting over a decade for the release of Grand Theft Auto 6. It is probably the most highly anticipated game of all time.

AI could speed things up.

Google Cloud’s Global Director for Games, Jack Buser, said AI has arrived at an important time for the gaming industry, and could help developers release new and better games more quickly.

“We’re just very, very fortunate that AI has arrived on the scene at a time when the games industry really needs it more than ever before,” he said recently on the “Strictly Business” podcast.

While layoffs and a post-pandemic decline hit the gaming community hard, Boston Consulting Group said industry revenues are expected to reach $266 billion by 2028, driven in part by the adoption of artificial intelligence. Major gaming companies like Ubisoft and King are already using AI in their operations.

Buser said one of the key impacts AI could have on the industry is ramping up the time it takes to go from an idea to a release date, something fans of the GTA franchise can almost certainly get behind.

“It is not unusual to find video games that take years and years and years and years to develop. Some take a decade to develop. It’s wild how long it can take to develop a video game,” Buser said. “And oftentimes, that’s because in development, the time it takes for you to get an idea to reality in a game — it’s what they call iteration time — can be quite lengthy. But with AI, you’re able to actually get your ideas into the game much more quickly. You’re able to accelerate that iteration loop.”

Buser said AI’s potential impact on gameplay is what excites him the most.

“This is where AI can be used to create entirely new gameplay experiences, right? So, we’ve actually seen AI land first in development and analytics, but where it’s ultimately going to go is this idea of providing experiences for players that simply would have been impossible before. Probably the most famous example of this is what we call a smart NPC,” Buser said.

Buser said NPCs, or non-player characters, typically rely on preset responses and actions when interacting with users in a game.

“Oftentimes, the way games are designed today and in the past, you would go up to one of these characters and they would say something to you. Then you get to choose like two or three, four different things to say back,” Buser said.

With AI, Buser said NPCs could evolve.

“However, with AI, you can actually make these conversations in natural language,” he said. “You can talk to a player in the game, they stay within character, and you’re actually having an ongoing dialogue with them as if it’s another human being, but it’s not.”