Tag: ai

AI haters build tarpits to trap and trick AI scrapers that ignore robots.txt

Last summer, Anthropic inspired backlash when its ClaudeBot AI crawler was accused of hammering websites a million or more times a day.

And it wasn’t the only artificial intelligence company making headlines for supposedly ignoring instructions in robots.txt files to avoid scraping web content on certain sites. Around the same time, Reddit’s CEO called out all AI companies whose crawlers he said were “a pain in the ass to block,” despite the tech industry otherwise agreeing to respect “no scraping” robots.txt rules.

Watching the controversy unfold was a software developer whom Ars has granted anonymity to discuss his development of malware (we’ll call him Aaron). Shortly after he noticed Facebook’s crawler exceeding 30 million hits on his site, Aaron began plotting a new kind of attack on crawlers “clobbering” websites that he told Ars he hoped would give “teeth” to robots.txt.

Building on an anti-spam cybersecurity tactic known as tarpitting, he created Nepenthes, malicious software named after a carnivorous plant that will “eat just about anything that finds its way inside.”

Aaron clearly warns users that Nepenthes is aggressive malware. It’s not to be deployed by site owners uncomfortable with trapping AI crawlers and sending them down an “infinite maze” of static files with no exit links, where they “get stuck” and “thrash around” for months, he tells users. Once trapped, the crawlers can be fed gibberish data, aka Markov babble, which is designed to poison AI models. That’s likely an appealing bonus feature for any site owners who, like Aaron, are fed up with paying for AI scraping and just want to watch AI burn.

Tarpits were originally designed to waste spammers’ time and resources, but creators like Aaron have now evolved the tactic into an anti-AI weapon. As of this writing, Aaron confirmed that Nepenthes can effectively trap all the major web crawlers. So far, only OpenAI’s crawler has managed to escape.

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ERROR: The U.S. Artificial Intelligence Industry Is About to Fall Off a Cliff

The coolest thing about being a PR “hired gun” is that it requires you to learn the ins and outs of all kinds of different industries: sports, tech, financial, entertainment, etc. It’s absolutely mandatory when PR pros onboard new clients. (Which, if you stop and think about it, makes sense: you can’t optimize a company’s brand until you know how its profit model is supposed to work.)

In fact, I always warn people: Beware any marketing “expert” who tells you how to run your company before he bothers to learn your profit model! It’s almost always stupid, off-target advice.

The most common reason why most businesses fail is because they create products and campaigns for their own amusement instead of being laser-focused on the desires and aspirations of their customers. That’s also why most marketing efforts fail: The marketer is marketing to himself, not to his audience.

This brings us to the multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence (AI) industry.

Until just a few weeks ago, the conventional wisdom was that it was an investment-driven enterprise: the country with the most capital would upscale the fastest. The future, we were told, would belong to the first country that achieves AGI — artificial general intelligence.

And the two frontrunners are the United States of America (hooray!)… and communist China (boo!).

Supposedly, AGI is an inevitable landmark on the roadmap to ASI — artificial superintelligence. When ASI occurs, the reasoning and intelligence of our AI systems won’t just be on par with the world’s smartest humans; it will exponentially surpass it.

And before long, these AIs would become hi-tech gods, capable of calculations and breakthroughs that far exceed a million-trillion Albert Einsteins. The possibilities are near endless: cures for diseases, new solutions to complex social problems — who knows what our AI gods might do!

It’s a cool story. And it still might happen. But most people — and certainly most businesses — aren’t demanding an AI that’s a million-trillion times smarter than Albert Einstein. Instead, they simply want an AI that helps them finish a book report or summarize long, boring business emails or help their company with a handful of specific tasks. 

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Destroyer Has Become First U.S. Navy Ship To Deploy Artificial Intelligence System

The Navy destroyer USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) became the first warship to deploy with a program-of-record artificial intelligence (AI) platform. Its creators say the system will help the fleet predict and tackle maintenance needs in a far less disruptive fashion. The system aims to reduce surprise equipment casualties while ensuring that more of the fleet is available should an all-out war break out, requiring a surge of forces. 

Known as Enterprise Remote Monitoring Version 4 (ERM v4), the system is the shipboard aspect of a Pentagon program called Condition Based Maintenance Plus, which in part aims to leverage machine learning to help ship crews, ashore commands, logistical nodes, and other units keep more assets ready to fight, Zac Staples, a retired Navy officer whose Austin-based company, Fathom5, created the system, told TWZ Wednesday. Staples spoke at the annual WEST conference in San Diego this week, which TWZ attended, about his company’s innovation before chatting with TWZ. 

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The Nvidia Story Is A Narrative Scam Attack On US Markets

Simple fact: You must have maximum powered servers, high speed computing (HSC), and superconductor chip production to make AI. Where did this “small China lab” get the chips and power

CNBC reported that perhaps the Chinese lab “found a way to work around the rules, or that the export controls were not the chokehold Washington intended.”

They are referring to ITARs, and with such demand and control on the GPUs, there is absolutely NO WAY. Nvidia or other such tech chip firms had to have facilitated this Chinese effort to produce this AI. PERIOD.

And that is against FEDERAL LAW.

This was an attack on the US Market and the new Trump Administration.

If I were a betting man, I would expect that the Deep State of the US that was just unseated, assisted the CCP to build this AI. It’s the ONLY way China would have been able to put this perfect storm together.

Remember the Wuhan lab and U.S. cooperation to develop a gain-of-function enhanced coronavirus?

Get ready, the truth is going to come out fast.

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Davos: UN Introduces AI As “The Next Existential Threat”

At Davos, Guterres slams backsliding on climate commitments

22 January 2025

The world’s political and business elite present in Davos on Wednesday faced an uncompromising address from UN chief António Guterres as he rounded on a lack of multilateral collaboration in an “increasingly rudderless world” at risk from two existential dangers: climate change and unregulated Artificial Intelligence (AI).

…

‘Fossil fuel addiction’

Likening fossil fuel addiction to Frankenstein’s monster – “sparing nothing and no one” – the Secretary-General noted the irony that 13 of the world’s biggest ports for oil supertankers are set to be overwhelmed by rising sea levels, a consequence of rising temperatures and sea ice melt, caused overwhelmingly by burning coal, crude oil and natural gas.

….

AI’s untold promise 

The next existential threat, AI, is a double-edged sword, Mr. Guterres continued, as it is already revolutionizing learning, diagnosing illnesses, helping farmers to increase their yields and improving the targeting of aid.

But it comes with profound risks if it is left ungoverned: it can disrupt economies, undermine trust in institutions and deepen inequalities, the Secretary-General warned.

…Read more: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/01/1159271

OK, maybe by “the next existential threat”, the UN just meant “another existential threat”. But it is an interesting turn of phrase.

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Hot Topics at Davos: Long-acting Injectables, ‘Climate-sensitive’ Vaccines and ‘Misinformation’

Tech-driven precision medicine, long-acting injectables, “climate-sensitive” vaccines, and mRNA therapeutics for non-communicable diseases were among the topics of discussion at this week’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

“Misinformation” is also high on this year’s agenda. The WEF’s Global Risks Report 2025, released alongside this year’s annual meeting, named misinformation as the greatest global risk over the next two years.

President Donald Trump, in a speech to WEF participants on Thursday, said “misinformation” is a label used to censor people.

The meeting, held in Davos, Switzerland, focused on artificial intelligence (AI), as reflected by this year’s theme, “A Call for Collaboration in the Intelligent Age.” Over 350 governmental figures, 60 national leaders and 1,600 business leaders attended.

This year’s meeting was relatively subdued compared to previous years. Several key global figures, including the leaders of the U.K., China, France, India and Italy, were absent from the event, as were prominent figures like Bill Gates.

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Meta to spend up to $65 bln this year to power AI goals, Zuckerberg says

Meta Platforms plans to spend between $60 billion and $65 billion this year to build out AI infrastructure, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday, joining a wave of Big Tech firms unveiling hefty investments to capitalize on the technology.

As part of the investment, Meta (META.O) will build a more than 2-gigawatt data center that would be large enough to cover a significant part of Manhattan. The company — one of the largest customers of Nvidia’s (NVDA.O) coveted artificial intelligence chips — plans to end the year with more than 1.3 million graphics processors.

“This will be a defining year for AI,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. “This is a massive effort, and over the coming years it will drive our core products and business.”

Zuckerberg expects Meta’s AI assistant — available across its services, including Facebook and Instagram — to serve more than 1 billion people in 2025, while its open-source Llama 4 would become the “leading state-of-the-art model”.

Shares of the company were 1.6% higher in early trading.

Big technology companies have been investing tens of billions of dollars to develop AI-related infrastructure after the meteoric success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT highlighted the potential for the technology.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that OpenAI, SoftBank Group (9984.T) and Oracle (ORCL.N) will form a venture called Stargate and invest $500 billion in AI infrastructure across the United States.

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How is Stargate’s $500B getting funded?

OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and the UAE’s MGX on unveiled a company on Tuesday that plans to invest $500 billion in AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the U.S.

Why it matters: SoftBank is doubling down on its OpenAI bet, and it reduces OpenAI’s reliance on the infrastructure of Microsoft, its largest investor.

Context: The Stargate project will invest an initial $100 billion, with another $400 billion over the next four years.

Between the lines: A portion of the $100 billion is expected to be funded via third-party debt rather than equity, Axios has learned.

  • SoftBank will be responsible for raising the debt.
  • SoftBank and OpenAI are the largest equity investors in the first $100 billion in stargate yes, with Oracle and MGX also having contributed.
  • Similarly, the additional $400 billion is expected to be a mix of current investors, new investors, and debt providers.

OpenAI will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the business.

The big picture: SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son previously promised President Donald Trump that he would invest $100 billion in U.S. firms over the next four years. This is part of that promise.

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F-35 AI-Enabled Drone Controller Capability Successfully Demonstrated

Lockheed Martin says the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter now has a firmly demonstrated ability to act as an in-flight ‘quarterback’ for advanced drones like the U.S. Air Force’s future Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) with the help of artificial intelligence-enabled systems. The company states that its testing has also shown a touchscreen tablet-like device is a workable interface for controlling multiple uncrewed aircraft simultaneously from the cockpit of the F-35, as well as the F-22 Raptor. For the U.S. Air Force, how pilots in crewed aircraft will actually manage CCAs during operations has emerged as an increasingly important question.

Details about F-35 and F-22 related crewed-uncrewed teaming developments were included in a press release that Lockheed Martin put out late yesterday that wrapped up various achievements for the company in 2024.

The F-35 “has the capability to control drones, including the U.S. Air Force’s future fleet of Collaborative Combat Aircraft. Recently, Lockheed Martin and industry partners demonstrated end-to-end connectivity including the seamless integration of AI technologies to control a drone in flight utilizing the same hardware and software architectures built for future F-35 flight testing,” the press release says. “These AI-enabled architectures allow Lockheed Martin to not only prove out piloted-drone teaming capabilities, but also incrementally improve them, bringing the U.S. Air Force’s family of systems vision to life.”

“Lockheed Martin has demonstrated its piloted-drone teaming interface, which can control multiple drones from the cockpit of an F-35 or F-22,” the release adds. “This technology allows a pilot to direct multiple drones to engage enemies using a touchscreen tablet in the cockpit of their 5th Gen aircraft.”

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Trump highlights partnership investing $500 billion in AI

President Donald Trump on Tuesday talked up a joint venture investing up to $500 billion for infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence by a new partnership formed by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank.

The new entity, Stargate, will start building out data centers and the electricity generation needed for the further development of the fast-evolving AI in Texas, according to the White House. The initial investment is expected to be $100 billion and could reach five times that sum.

“It’s big money and high quality people,” said Trump, adding that it’s “a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential” under his new administration.

Joining Trump fresh off his inauguration at the White House were Masayoshi Son of SoftBank, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Larry Ellison of Oracle. All three credited Trump for helping to make the project possible, even though building has already started and the project goes back to 2024.

“This will be the most important project of this era,” said Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

Ellison noted that the data centers are already under construction with 10 being built so far. The chairman of Oracle suggested that the project was also tied to digital health records and would make it easier to treat diseases such as cancer by possibly developing a customized vaccine.

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