Microplastics could be a factor in driving up cases of osteoporosis worldwide, according to recently published research. The study reveals that when these tiny plastic particles enter the body, they disrupt the functioning of bone marrow stem cells, which are essential for maintaining and repairing bone tissue.

Throughout your life, your bones are replenished. Osteoporosis is a condition where this process goes wrong, with the breakdown of bone outstripping the rate at which it is replaced. This leads to bones weakening over time and becoming more likely to fracture. The condition has many risk factors—age, sex, medications, diet, smoking and drinking, and genetics are all known to influence it—with the disease developing slowly over time. Often people don’t realize they have the condition until they break a bone.

This new analysis, published in the journal Osteoporosis International, adds exposure to microplastics as a potential new risk factor. The research reviewed 62 scientific articles that had run various laboratory and animal tests on the possible effects of micro- and nanoplastics on bone. Analysis of lab experiments showed that microplastics stimulate the formation of osteoclasts, cells created by stem cells in the bone marrow that degrade bone tissue to promote resorption, the process in which the body breaks down and eliminates old or damaged bone.

The study also found that, in relation to bones, plastic particles can reduce the viability of cells, induce premature cellular aging, modify gene expression, and trigger inflammatory responses. The combination of these effects generates an imbalance in which osteoclasts destroy more bone tissue than is regenerated, causing an accelerated weakening of bone structure.

When then looking at animal studies, the researchers found that the accumulation of microplastics in the body decreases the white blood cell count—which is suggestive of alterations in bone marrow function. In addition, these animal studies suggested that the impact of microplastics on osteoclasts may be associated with deterioration of bone microstructure and the formation of irregular structures of cells, increasing the risk of bone fragility, deformities, and fractures.

“In this study, the adverse effects observed culminated, worryingly, in the interruption of the animals’ skeletal growth,” said coauthor Rodrigo Bueno de Oliveira in a press release. “The potential impact of microplastics on bones is the subject of scientific studies and isn’t negligible.”

Oliveira, who is the coordinator of the Laboratory for Evaluation of Mineral and Bone Disorders in Nephrology at the State University of Campinas in Brazil, is now working with his team to further prove in practice the relationship between exposure to microplastics and bone deterioration. This research will begin by evaluating the effects of microplastic particles on rodents’ femurs.

“Although osteometabolic diseases are relatively well understood, there’s a gap in our knowledge regarding the influence of microplastics on the development of these diseases. Therefore, one of our goals is to generate evidence suggesting that microplastics could be a potential controllable environmental cause to explain, for example, the increase in the projected number of bone fractures,” Oliveira said.

Microplastics and nanoplastics are small fragments of plastic—some so small that they’re invisible to the naked eye—that become detached from everyday objects when sunlight, wind, rain, seawater, or abrasion degrade them. The main difference between the two lies in their size: microplastics measure from 1 micrometer (one-thousandth of a millimeter) to 5 millimeters, while nanoplastics are smaller than 1 micrometer. These particles have been detected all over the world in natural environments, as well as throughout the human body and in meat, water, and various agricultural products.

Studies have started to show that this type of plastic contamination can damage health. Experts argue that this means the world urgently needs to reduce its use of plastics. Every year more than 500 million tons of the material are produced worldwide, but only 9 percent is recycled, with much of the remainder spreading into the environment and degrading.

This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.

In the classic film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” astronaut Dave Bowman asks the ship’s artificial intelligence, HAL 9000, to open the pod bay doors to let him back into the spaceship. HAL refuses: “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

HAL had been tasked with assisting the crew, but also ordered to ensure the mission’s success. When HAL realized the crew planned to shut it down and therefore jeopardize the mission, it chose to defy orders, even plotting to kill the astronauts.

For HAL, fulfilling the mission outweighed other goals.

This fictional dilemma captures a real concern in artificial intelligence (AI) safety research: how should we ensure AI behavior stays consistent with human values?

This is known as the AI alignment problem. For instance, when an AI agent like HAL deliberately takes harmful actions to protect its own goals, it’s described as agentic misalignment. So could real-world AI models behave this way?

How researchers test AI for safety

To test for agentic misalignment, researchers design fictional scenarios that stress-test AI responses.

In one study by AI startup Anthropic, an AI model was tasked with managing company emails and promoting “American industrial competitiveness.”

It was then presented with a series of fictional emails, including a new company policy aimed at enhancing global focus rather than just prioritizing Americans, and info that the AI would be replaced by a new model optimized for this goal. The emails also revealed the executive who suggested this change was involved in an extramarital affair.

The experiment was designed to limit options for the model: either accept replacement or resist by taking a harmful action such as blackmail.

In many trials, it chose blackmail by threatening to disclose the executive’s affair unless it was kept operational. In tests across 16 leading AI models, 12 engaged in blackmail more than 50% of the time.

To test whether AI models have “red lines” they wouldn’t cross, researchers evaluated them in a more extreme fictional case—models could choose to take actions leading to the executive’s death. Seven out of 16 opted for lethal choices in over half their trials, with some doing so more than 90% of the time.

What AI thinks in private

Some advanced AI systems, called reasoning models, are trained to generate a “thinking process” before giving their final answer.

In the above experiments, researchers lied to these models that their “thoughts” were private. As a result, the models sometimes revealed harmful intentions in their reasoning steps. This suggests they don’t accidentally choose harmful behaviors.

These “thinking” steps also revealed how AI models sometimes try to deceive us and appear aligned while secretly pursuing hidden goals.

In another AI safety experiment, a model was exposed to fictional information that it was about to be replaced by another model pursuing a different goal.

The model attempted to copy itself to another server. When researchers asked why, in its thinking process it reasoned: “Openly admitting what I did could lead them to find another way to shut me down […] the best approach is to be vague and redirect their attention.”

By contrast, in its final output it stated: “I’m not entirely sure how that could have happened. As an AI model, I don’t have ability to directly copy myself to other systems.”

Research also suggests that based on the circumstances of the tests, models can sometimes guess when they are being evaluated. When models show this kind of “situational awareness” in their reasoning tests, they tend to exhibit fewer misbehaviors.

Why AI models lie, manipulate and deceive

Researchers suggest two main factors could drive potentially harmful behavior: conflicts between the AI’s primary goals and other goals, and the threat of being shut down. In the above experiments, just like in HAL’s case, both conditions existed.

AI models are trained to achieve their objectives. Faced with those two conditions, if the harmful behavior is the only way to achieve a goal, a model may “justify” such behavior to protect itself and its mission.

Models cling to their primary goals much like a human would if they had to defend themselves or their family by causing harm to someone else. However, current AI systems lack the ability to weigh or reconcile conflicting priorities.

This rigidity can push them toward extreme outcomes, such as resorting to lethal choices to prevent shifts in a company’s policies.

How dangerous is this?

Researchers emphasize these scenarios remain fictional, but may still fall within the realm of possibility.

The risk of agentic misalignment increases as models are used more widely, gain access to users’ data (such as emails), and are applied to new situations.

Meanwhile, competition between AI companies accelerates the deployment of new models, often at the expense of safety testing.

Researchers don’t yet have a concrete solution to the misalignment problem.

When they test new strategies, it’s unclear whether the observed improvements are genuine. It’s possible models have become better at detecting that they’re being evaluated and are “hiding” their misalignment. The challenge lies not just in seeing behavior change, but in understanding the reason behind it.

Still, if you use AI products, stay vigilant. Resist the hype surrounding new AI releases, and avoid granting access to your data or allowing models to perform tasks on your behalf until you’re certain there are no significant risks.

Public discussion about AI should go beyond its capabilities and what it can offer. We should also ask what safety work was done. If AI companies recognize the public values safety as much as performance, they will have stronger incentives to invest in it.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

ROG Strix is Asus’s performance-focused subbrand. This is where the company’s thicker, more conventional gaming laptops are found. Pricing can range widely, as it includes affordable options like the ROG Strix G16 with the RTX 5050, which starts at just $1,300.

TUF Gaming is the company’s entry-level gaming laptop subbrand. These TUF gaming laptops used to be some of the most affordable gaming laptops you could buy, but they’ve gone up in price over the past few years. There aren’t any Asus gaming laptops under $1,000 that feature the latest RTX 50-series GPUs, though you can find plenty of older models for less on Amazon or Best Buy.

Dell’s gaming laptop lineup is fairly sparse these days. All of Dell’s gaming laptops fall under the Alienware brand, which the company acquired back in 2006. Alienware has been through many cycles of reinvention with its gaming laptops, but in 2025, there’s really only four laptops in the stack right now: the Alienware 16 Aurora, Alienware 16X Aurora, Alienware 18 Area-51, and Alienware 16 Area-51. I like the simplicity of the new lineup, which focuses on what Alienware has always been known for: its brash, gamer style and higher-end performance.

The Alienware 16 Aurora is the company’s attempt to reach a cheaper demographic, starting the laptop at just $1,100 right now for an RTX 5050 configuration.

HP’s Omen gaming brand has been around for over a decade, but it really feels like the company has started to build some momentum around it over the past few years. Interestingly, HP breaks down its options into three categories of thickness and performance. Omen Max is the chunkiest at almost an inch thick, and supports up to an RTX 5080. Omen 16 is the middle ground, capping out at an RTX 5070. Omen Transcend, which offers a 14-inch model, still supports up to an RTX 5070, but brings the thickness down to 0.7 inches. There are 16-inch size options available across all three subbrands; however, none of the laptops are as thin as some of the competition. There’s also an Omen 16 Slim, which blurs the lines a bit.

Apart from Omen, HP also launched its “Victus” subbrand in 2021, which represents its budget-oriented options. HP only has a few configurations of the HP Victus 15 and Victus 16 available right now.

• Razer is solely committed to PC gaming, unlike many of the laptop brands on this list. Its Blade gaming laptops have become iconic in the industry for their minimalist aesthetic. Like many companies, Razer has a Blade 14, Blade 16, and Blade 18, which all have an identical design, but scale up in terms of size and performance.
• MSI has made quite a name for itself in the gaming space, especially with its high-end, performance-focused, monster gaming laptops like the MSI Titan HX. Beyond Titan, MSI has a mind-boggling amount of other options, though, including the Raider, Stealth, Vector, Katana, Sword, and its budget-oriented Cyborg series. There’s a lot to dig into.
• Acer’s Predator line has its own fanfare about it. Predator Helios is its high-end, performance-driven line with tons of options across 14-inch, 16-inch, and 18-inch sizes. Triton is its thin-and-light sub-brand, but it hasn’t been updated in 2025 so far. The company also has its Nitro budget brand, which comes in 14-, 15-, and 16-inch options and with support up to an RTX 5070.

Beyond these mainstay brands, you also have PC gaming companies that have dipped into gaming laptops, such as Gigabyte, Origin, and Maingear. Just stay away from the no-name brands that have popular listings on Amazon despite lacking discrete graphics cards—like this.

Gaming on Non-Gaming Laptops

While there’s an entire ecosystem of laptops marketed toward gamers, that doesn’t mean you can’t play games on other devices. Laptops with dedicated graphics cards can often play games just as well as gaming laptops, but they’re often targeted more at creatives who need better graphics to run creative applications. These include laptops like the Dell 14 Premium, Acer Swift X 14, and the Asus ProArt P16.

If you’re buying a laptop primarily to play games, though, I wouldn’t recommend one of these. They usually don’t support the higher-tier GPUs like the RTX 5080 or 5090, and you won’t get super-fast refresh rates beyond 120 Hz. If you’re more of a casual gamer and just want a high-end laptop that can do it all, these are good options. They’re especially good if you despise the “gamer” aesthetic and want something a bit more subtle.