China, Russia chase US AI leadership & AI Praises Hitler's Mein Kampf (Issue 44, 2025)
Google backtracks on promise not to pursue AI weapons technology & people continue to battle AI against copyright infringement, poor content quality control and bad advice on the internet.
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In this edition:
Russia's National Bank Partners with China, Following DeepSeek AI Success Story
Google Owner Drops Promise Not to Use AI for Weapons
Open Source Project Creates Free Weapon Against AI Webscrapers
US AI — Good, Chinese AI — a Million Dollar Crime?
Low Quality Books Generated by AI Overrun Libraries
Stores Take Away Conveniences — Then Sell Them Back for Your Data
Lawyers Cite Non-Existent Cases as Internal AI Platform ‘Hallucinates’
Amazon, Google AI Praise Hitler’s Mein Kampf as ‘True Work of Art’
Russia's National Bank Partners with China, following DeepSeek AI Success Story
China and Russia are said to be at a disadvantage competing in the global race for AI leadership, no less due to the Biden-era sanctions on the sale of AI Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) which sought to hamper competition for US market dominance.
Just which side sanctions can harm more is under question - Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia — a US semiconductor company with a huge 80% share in the Chinese market — says “If China can’t buy from . . . the United States, they’ll just build it themselves.” The long-term implications might mean Chinese AI chip manufacturers will strive for import substitution through domestic technological innovation.
And this is exactly what happened with China’s revolutionary Deepseek AI — it runs without high-powered GPUs, as such turning restrictions into innovation. It’s more cost-efficient, with a fraction of GPU required, open source, and some have said more advanced than its American counterparts.
In part, this success story has led to Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, to seek partnership with China on AI research and development. Sberbank has, in recent years, transformed itself from a Soviet-style savings bank burdened by onerous bureaucracy, into one of Russia’s leading players in AI development.
With skill and resources combined, possible counterweights to US AI dominance are raising the stakes.
Google Owner Drops Promise Not to Use AI for Weapons
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has released an update to their policies around responsible AI progress. The document is stripped of prior wording around not pursuing technology that could ‘cause or are likely to cause overall harm.’
Google says the guidelines are being overhauled in a changing world and that AI should protect ‘national security.’
The company’s senior vice-president for technology, James Manyika, says that as global competition for AI leadership increases, the company believed ‘democracies should lead in AI development’ that was guided by ‘freedom, equality, and respect for human rights.’
He adds: '“We believe that companies, governments and organisations sharing these values should work together to create AI that protects people, promotes global growth, and supports national security.” But is that synonymous with weapons?
Alphabet says it is planning to spend $75bn on capital expenditure in the next year, largely to build out its AI capabilities and infrastructure.
Open Source Project Creates Free Weapon Against AI Webscrapers
AI ‘crawlers’ are sophisticated tools designed to analyze web pages, extract data, and assess content relevance. They download the URL and scan all future URLS of the website.
‘Nepenthes’ is a piece of free software developed by an anonymous coder to block web crawlers, especially those used by the AI of large companies. There are currently few, if any, controls around scraping copyright works and other intellectual property. Nepenthes uses a technique called ‘tarpitting’ to trap crawlers in an ‘infinite maze’ of URLs that lead nowhere, slowing down their operations and consuming resources.
Simply adding the code to your website will automatically trap web scrapers in the maze. You can see how the code works for yourself, there isn’t any sense to the information given and the page loads incredibly slowly. The fight against data scraping is not yet lost!
US AI — Good, Chinese AI — a Million Dollar Crime?
AI technology is quickly making perversive steps into various spheres of our lives and it is becoming starkly obvious that competition for global AI leadership will be fierce.
Josh Hawley, a US Senator is proposing ‘up to 20 years in jail, a million dollar fine, or both’ for anyone who knowingly downloads Chinese-developed AI software. China’s recent Deepseek AI launch is arguably more advanced than its US counterpart and made with a fraction of the cost of its competitors — naturally, the consumer may choose for what’s easier, than deliberate where it’s made.
But it’s not only about the consumer — a senior advisor at the Center for Democracy & Technology says this is “… a broad attack on the very idea of scientific dialogue and technology exchange… with potentially ruinous penalties for AI researchers…and deeply troubling implications for online speech and freedom of scientific inquiry.”
What will it be — market protectionism or sharing of knowledge in the name of progress?
Low Quality Books Generated by AI Overrun Libraries
According to the e-book lending industry AI ‘books’ are flooding the market, overwhelming both automated filters and human reviewers with an almost impossible challenge.
The problem primarily affects services like Hoopla and OverDrive, the two leading companies that US public libraries rely on for e-book lending. The core issue is the rising presence of fake content, referred to as ‘vendor slurry.’ For years, individuals have churned out ‘summaries’ of popular books with no original content — now, with AI, the mass production of meaningless content is at a new level.
Hoopla has also had an incident where ‘fascist content’ missed by both human and bot censors on their platform, displayed titles denying the Holocaust and books that promoted hate against minority groups. The declining library budgets and staff have led to poorly moderated platforms, leaving room for inaccurate materials or other harmful products.
Nevertheless, it would be unproductive to advocate for an outright ban on AI-generated books, but content should be clearly labeled in catalogs so readers are aware that what they’re reading was not at all planned out, written and edited by a human.
Stores Take Away Conveniences — Then Sell Them Back for Your Data
Starting last year, Walmart locations began locking cabinets with essentials, to prevent a surge in retail theft, they say. Walmart is testing their new in-store technology that would let customers unlock security cases directly from their smartphones. This requires signing up on an app and creating logs of every cabinet you open.
In 2025, CVS pharmacy chain has taken a similar approach, locking up almost everything. In order to unlock the items, you must connect to the store’s wifi and turn bluetooth on, creating a digital footprint of every cabinet you open.
Companies are setting a worrying example for others who have bought in to the locking up of items, such as Target — meaning even physical stores are beginning to force digital recordings of every item you look at or are interested in.
Amazon, Google AI Praise Hitler’s Mein Kampf as ‘True Work of Art’
A case of AI lacking understanding comes in the form of AI reviews and summaries, spotted on both Amazon and Google. ‘Readers describe this book as a true work of art’ - AI said of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, except readers didn’t say that.
Using Google’s search engine, AI had published that people ‘consider the book a fascinating glimpse into something most people would rather not look at.’ While Amazon’s AI summary was more enthusiastic, stating people ‘appreciate the insightful and intelligent rants.’
Since this was reported on, both AI’s simply do not generate any summaries for the book at all, but the occurrences say a lot. The book on Amazon does have many positive reviews by humans, rated 4.4. People note it was ‘very interesting to learn about the way his mind processed things’ and ‘we are bound to repeat history if we don’t understand mistakes that were made in the past.’
For now, AI cannot understand nuance of language like humans can, drawing incorrect conclusions from the information it consumes. It repeats buzzwords such as ‘fascinating, interesting and insightful’, but with little meaning as it pertains to the rest of the sentence. The spread of misinformation and bad advice remains a serious risk.
Lawyers Cite Non-Existent Cases as Internal AI Platform ‘Hallucinates’
A Wyoming District Judge demands that attorneys explain why they shouldn’t be disciplined, having caught the firm red-handed citing made-up information.
The lawsuit, first filed in 2023, is against Walmart and Jetson Electronic Bikes, Inc., which makes hoverboards for sale at Walmart. The plaintiffs claim a hoverboard’s lithium ion battery malfunctioned and caught fire while they were sleeping and burned down their entire house.
Lawyers defended the case with 8 non-existent cases. ‘Our internal AI platform ‘hallucinated’ while assisting our attorney in drafting the motion. This matter comes with great embarrassment and has prompted discussion around future use of AI, serving as a cautionary tale for our firm and others’ - the law firm responded.
Lawyers increasingly use AI tools for research & analyzing materials, once again demonstrating that at the current time, nothing but a human eye can offer total quality assurance.
That concludes this edition of Your Worldwide INTERNET REPORT!
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