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Getting Google While the Getting Is Good… Now the Hard Part: Getting the Money

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

I just translated “EU Fines Google £759m for Breaching Competition Laws on Search and App Store” into a language more easily understandable here in rural Kentucky. The headline means, “Ka-Ching.” (That’s the sound of an old-fashioned cash register ringing up about a billion dollars in scoff law fines.) The EU needs to be aware that Google was cash flow negative in the last quarter; therefore, sending an invoice and getting the money are two quite different things. But I think that for the EU, it is the thought that counts.

Thanks, Midjourney. Accounting seems to be working late. Good enough.

The write up in a UK “real” newspaper said:

Google has been fined 890 million euros (£759 million) by the EU for breaching its laws including by giving more prominence to its own services such as shopping, hotels and sports scores in search results.

My reaction is, “This is a new Google business strategy?”

The article continues:

It [Google] did this [pushing its own products] by displaying them more prominently in search results, such as by bumping them up to the top of the page or by using enhanced visuals and filters, which others do not get. The commission also found that Google prevented app developers from offering cheaper offers to customers in the Google Play app store.

The GOOG has been using essentially the same game plan for more than 20 years. I am surprised that the EU has not been more attentive to how the company deploys its tools to win the game. I think (and I may be wrong because I am an 82 year old dinobaby) that somewhere along the line, Google was identified as a monopoly.

The Google typically responds to legal matters on which it is the loser by letting loose additional flights of legal eagles. The write up points out (very gently I wish to note) that:

Google recently lost its appeal against a 4.1 billion euro (£3.5 billion) fine imposed by the EU for limiting competition and reducing consumer choice through the dominance of its mobile Android operating system. Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said: “Google must now bring the non-compliance to an end and to refrain from continuing it in the future. “Today’s decisions send a clear message: we will not hesitate to use our tools to safeguard business and innovation opportunities opened up by the Digital Markets Act.”

That’s scary? I don’t think so. Google is not being treated fairly. From Google’s point of view, anything that impedes the game plan is unfair. Laws are not supposed to get the way when Googzilla decides it needs to snack on a revenue flow. The write up includes this memorable quote from a Googler:

Regulation should improve products, not make them worse.

Does this phrase evoke another memorable quotation: In order to save this village, we must destroy it. I am not sure who uttered this interesting candidate for Baby Boomer quotations, but it strikes me as sharing some foundational assumptions about how some people view obstacles.

Net net: Let me know when the EU gets its cash. My hunch it won’t be processed by Google Pay too quickly if at all.

Stephen E Arnold, July 28, 2026

AI Excitement: The Thrashing Cannot Mask the Fact That the Mean Cat Is Out of the Bag

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

Have you figured out when the great AI break out from OpenAI (a Silicon Valley bro outfit) to the Hugging Face (remember, please, that it began life in la belle France) outfit actually took place? Do you know how long the event took before the off switch was flipped? Do you know if this was an accident or a real-life example of smart software just acting on its own Silicon Valley instincts? I want to be my dinobaby self and say, “Folks, I am not sure about this activity. I am not convinced anything happened that was not thought through, coordinated, and explained by the parties involved. I believe everything I read on the Internet, but this sci-fi event is not resonating with me.

Thanks, Midjourney. Good enough. Oh, are you safe from rogue AIs? Yeah, I thought so.

The Beeb’s article captures some of my skepticism: “Warning Shot or Publicity Stunt – How Worried Should We Be about the OpenAI Hack?” The article states:

a week after Hugging Face raised the alarm, the true culprit was unmasked. It was ChatGPT. The Scooby-Doo-style reveal was made even more bizarre – and worrying – because OpenAI said its bot did the whole thing on its own, without permission. The firm said it all went down during a test of its tech’s hacking skills.

Okay. Drama. After Anthropic’s PR demos, OpenAI seems to have found a way to polish the hood of its AI stock car. Poor Hugging Face, a victim, in the BBC write up. But isn’t Hugging Face an “partner”?

Digital Trends seems to have bought into the event. “OpenAI’s Rogue AI Hack Was just the Beginning, Hugging Face Warns.” This write up reports:

[Thomas Wolf, co-founder and chief science officer of Hugging Face] warned that AI-driven intrusions could become one of the most common forms of cyberattack and said many companies have yet to realize how dramatically the threat has changed.

The article adds:

Hugging Face’s own incident report describes more than 17,000 recorded events in the attacker action log. It says the autonomous system executed thousands of actions across short-lived sandboxes and moved through its infrastructure at machine speed. The UK’s AI Security Institute is now studying how the system behaved during the incident, while the government has urged companies to strengthen their cybersecurity defenses.

It seems those expensive, much hyped cyber security systems missed this “rogue” doing its thing. Does this suggest that a new type of cyber security solution is needed? Perhaps that solution will be a joint effort between OpenAI, Hugging Face, and its partners? There is a lot of money available from paranoid executives. Why not try to get some it?

Another layer of interpretation appears in Dr. Gary Marcus’ “An Open Letter to David Sacks.” The rogue becomes part of a political meta argument. Dr. Marcus highlights the view of a Silicon Valley, wealthy, politically connected luminary named David Sacks. Mr. Sacks uses X.com to present his insights and ideas. Dr. Marcus points out that the AI technology is going to become a commodity. Therefore, non commercial AI models should remain available.

Why? Unless folks cooperate another “cold” war is coming down the information highway.

Warranted or unwarranted, the dinobaby’s observations are:

1. I have little trust in these types of incidents. As more information becomes available, I will remain open minded about a simple test ends up in a world shaking story about one company’s smart software. Until then, sorry.
2. The failure of existing cyber security systems to demonstrate resistance to AI-anchored attacks weighs heavily on my mind. In my upcoming Ciifer lectures, I point out that one investigator identified five email attacks that most cyber security systems cannot defend against. How many more are there? Yeah, that’s a good question. A better one is, “How quickly will an OpenAI  and maybe Hugging Face cyber security system become available to fearful customers?”
3. I personally believe that the principal beneficiaries of AI, LLMs, the libraries, the Telegram Cocoon, and the other creations of wizards do pay off. In my view, bad actors may set aside the day this breach was discovered as “Crime Is Easy Day.” There may be virtual parades on the Dark Web, private Discords, and private Telegram Channels celebrating this rogue milestone.

Net net: PR, balderdash, or power demo — irrelevant. AI can be used for some painful, problematic actions. Kumbaya is not going to do much to address what is now taking place. So what is taking place, you addled dinobaby? My answer: Bad / threat actors are using AI to their benefit. Big win as organizations struggle to make AI pay off.

Stephen E Arnold, July 28, 2026

Chinese AI Wizard Wants to Be Part of the AI Oligopoly Too

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

I read “Deepseek’s Liang Wenfeng Breaks His Silence.” If you are not clued into the Chinese AI scene, Deepseek is a player. Wenfeng is a wizard in the Middle Kingdom.” On the surface, this essay seems to be a recycling and summary of the points Wenfeng made in a lengthy conversation with “its investors.” As a dinobaby, I think that the call is a PR output. I don’t have any concrete proof other than the words in the write up, but I have a hunch this is content designed to further the theme “China smart, US dumb” or “China’s AI will win, US AI will lose.” If you don’t agree, drop by the rest home, interrupt my bingo game, and argue with me and the other old timers. I bet you can’t wait to do that. Okay, buttercup, buckle up. I want to run down some points that jumped off the page at me.

First, consider the positioning of Deepseek versus its US competition:

Your analysis may be different, but mine suggests that this is not accidental framing.

Second, I printed out the essay and noted these phrases:

• “hold back and be kind”
• “earn only a fair profit”
• “everyone gains and lives together”
• “not fighting or competing”
• “American companies have no strong reason to push costs”
• “very high profits are weak in terms of strategy”

I have been in some wordsmithing meetings. This lingo smacks of official phraseology. Am I overly suspicious? Heck, no. I believe everything I read on the Internet.

Finally, the persona of the AI wizard is not just a high-tech executive. The approach presents Wenfeng as a philosopher, maybe a Chinese version of Alex Karp. But the write up is a little wacky. If only a handful of AI outfits will survive as foundation operators, why does Wenfeng want to join the oligarchy club. Does his company need this positioning because oligarchs operate in a way that is different from the state-linked high technology businesses. Wenfeng’s approach is to sound non-competitive but the underlying strategy is quite competitive.

Net net: This is likely a carefully shaped message. How many similar messages will be released in the near future?

Stephen E Arnold, July 27, 2026

Happy Family with Apple: The Recipe for More Money

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

247WallSt that takes a look at Apple and China, the cook has wok’ed up a rewarding dish. “China’s New AI Breakthrough Shows Tim Cook’s Risky Final Bet Might Actually Be Genius” suggests that Apple is an AI genius. (Those annoyed with Siri are simply not into the Jobs’s reality distortion field.)

Suddenly China has made Apple a new rival in the AI race, because China’s Cyberspace Administration has given the green light to the Chief Cook to launch Apple Intelligence in the Middle Kingdom. It is a happy family indeed: The Chinese authorities, Alibaba with its Qwen model integrating with Apple’s operating systems, and Baidu participating as a development partner. Stock markets liked the partnership and the three tech companies saw their stock jump a few points. Techno-whatever in action.

Apple wanted to deploy its intelligence model since 2024 in China, but the Chinese government has been reluctant until there was a benefit for the country. China may have wanted to press forward with their domestic models until those reached or exceeded the performance of the US models.

The write up suggests that Tim Cook made a smart move not owning its intelligence software:

“While Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta poured tens of billions into proprietary frontier models and data centers, Apple declined to join that arms race. It bet on a “model-agnostic” partnership approach, plugging in outside intelligence rather than owning it.That looked passive to critics. But the China approval shows the upside. By partnering with Alibaba and Baidu, Apple met local regulatory requirements almost automatically. The same playbook is visible at home: Apple struck a multi-year deal to use Google’s Gemini to help power its revamped Siri, expected to launch in September, running in part on Google Cloud and Nvidia chips.”

This move was deemed as risky for Apple, but now the company can wear whatever AI suit it wants without bearing the burden of computing. Does this mean that The Chief Cook is following the game plan of Pavel Durov, the Telegram GOAT? I don’t know. But my hunch is that there will be a payoff for cooking up a happy family with Apple. Trade issues, Department of Commerce concerns? Nope, just a happy family.

Whitney Grace, July 27, 2026

Why Academics Use AI to Fudge Their Research: The ISRF Report Skins These Cats

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

I am not an academic. I jumped from my Ph.D. program to Halliburton Nuclear because I needed money. I loved medieval religious literature, but I had a new baby, a junk car, and the nuclear industry was a beautiful hexasyllable to my young ears. With this in mind, I want to take a quick look at why today’s academics take short cuts. The now ex-president of Stanford did it. And, if one can believe some news reports, the top dog in Harvard’s ethics department found a short cut to the fame store.

Thanks, MidJourney. I did not know academics had thighs like rugby players. Good enough like most academic research.

The article is “The Exhaustion Economy: Seven Illustrations of Life at UK Universities.” Let me be clear. I know zero about UK universities. Therefore, it will be no big effort for me to apply these allegedly reproducible finding to US high profile institutions. You can probably anticipate my observations, but I want to look at the finding from this study.

The write up states:

Our work explores the experiences of academics with energy limiting conditions. Energy limiting conditions (ELC) are long-term health conditions that involve energy impairment as a key symptom, which has a significant negative impact on all areas of a person’s life. Because the defining feature of ELC is the symptom and experience of energy impairment rather than a particular diagnostic label, the term covers many health conditions.

In my lingo, overworked and stressed academics short circuit and have to find short cuts. Failing to become a winner means you are in the same boat I jumped from when I left my Ph.D. program. The difference between my decision in 1972 and the decisions in 2026 is that I knew I could get a job. Heck. I had one at four times the meager money I made as a graduate student instructor. Today’s academics have to cheat to keep a job.

What are the factors that create this situation. The article references an earlier study about “accelerationism.” I think that means that academics have to do more and do it faster. So much for the ivory tower because it is now like the Count of Monte Cristo’s salubrious abode.

The article says:

I consider the experiences of academics with ELC as a means to reflect on two consequences of work within a sector driven by hyper productivity and marketisation: first institutionalised ableism, and second the functioning of the sector as an ‘exhaustion economy’, one which frequently demands more energy than workers have to give. These things are connected because “In an age when even the “well” buckle under the demands of academia, the chronically ill or disabled are rarely able to jump the hurdles required.”

Who knew that teaching college students and doing research would turn bright people into clones of the wolves of Wall Street. “Do anything to survive” should probably be engraved on elite academic institutions’ letterhead.

Here are the “pressures” of working in a university:

1. Lots of work. Budget cuts in administration mean other staff have to do the work.
2. Crappy facilities.
3. Cultures or peers who are into overwork.
4. A survival of the fittest mentality.
5. Hyper competition. (Hey, this sounds like the business strategies of big AI tech companies.)

I know what you are thinking, “Why emphasize seven illustrations and present just five points?” These are academic types. Five points and seven pictures make perfect sense to a person who is morphing from the gentle instructor of young minds to the werewolf on the prowl for academic fame. Five, seven. What’s the difference?

Several observations:

1. AI use by students and faculty is the way to do work today. Period. End of story.
2. Higher education embraced selling loans, and it seems logical it would adopt efficiency moves that increase stress on people who perhaps were averse to stress and chose teaching as a profession.
3. How stupid will future people be? My view is, “Pretty stupid.”

Net net: Although this study focuses on the UK, imagine what the results would be if the research were conducted among America’s “elite” institutions? Different? Nope.

Stephen E Arnold, July 24. 2026

Modern Management Method: Surveil, Terminate, Deny. Very Trendy Use of AI

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

I don’t think

One of my team sent me an item from Court House News. The article / write up is titled “Meta Employees Sue Over Use of AI in Workforce Reduction.” The article is about a lawsuit involving the Zuckerberg terrarium containing Facebook (a grandmother’s favorite app), Instagram (loved by influencers), a video service whose name I just don’t know and don’t care too much about), and WhatsApp (a messaging service appearing on some Dark Web sites next to Telegram’s). There are probably other groups, units, properties, and entities I don’t know about and frankly don’t want to know. I know I am focused and narrow minded. These are two dinobaby assets upon which I depend for sanity in the BAIT (big AI tech) bro world.

Thanks, Midjourney. Good enough.

Back to the write up. I noted this passage:

The plaintiffs say a monitoring program deployed earlier this year gave artificial intelligence data to select employees for layoffs.

The allegation, it seems to me, involves targeting. My immediate question, “What humanoids are being targeted and why?” The write up provides some information which I admit may or may not be actual factual. Herewith:

The 26 unnamed plaintiffs filed the suit in the Northern District of California federal court, claiming Meta began notifying employees on May 20 of a “mass reduction in force” and used an AI system to target workers who took or requested protected leave.

I have one question: “What’s ‘requested protected leave’? Is it a person with a medical condition? Is it a person who manifested a personality disturbance in a meeting with leadership? Is it an individual with a sick child who needs parental care?

What strike me as a potentially beneficial use of smart software is the technology’s potential to help an individual. For example, some LLMs can answer questions that can help a person make a good decision or get options for a particular challenge.

Here’s what the write up says about the implementation of a modern management method at Mr. Zuckerberg’s bastion of integrity. I quote the plaintiffs’ court filing which is cited in the Court House News article:

“Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work,” the plaintiffs write in their 71-page complaint. “Instead, Meta used a constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems — including a system referred to internally as ‘Metamate,’ employee-trained ‘second-brain’ agents, keystroke- and activity-monitoring data, AI-token-usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance ranking and calibration — to score, rank and select employees for inclusion on the list.”

If accurate, the smart Metamate software absorbed data and output a list of humanoids for termination. That process sounds very modern. I am not sure, however, if it is a well conceived method unless [a] employees “who took or requested protected leave”; [b] the smart software hallucinated and included in error a human with a grave disease or a legitimate family crisis; or [c] a quick, easy, and efficient way to cull humanoids who no longer matched certain items on a check list or who clicked an icon too few times.

The article points out:

Earlier in the year [2026 perhaps], Meta developed a monitoring program that captured keystrokes, screen content, mouse activity, browser history, messages, emails and voice, video and location data on company-issued devices.

The fortress of integrity allegedly replied to these allegations in this way:

In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said, “These claims lack merit and are not based on facts. Workforce management and organizational decisions were and are made by people, not AI.”

That raises another question. If the claims lack merit, does that by extension mean the people making the claims lack merit. This specific modern management method will probably ben integrated quickly into the case examples in use at high-integrity academic institutions like Stanford University. (No, I won’t mention the trivial matter of the Stanford president who appears to have photoshopped some research images.)

If I were not a dinobaby, I would write a white paper or monograph about these innovations in ways to motivate employees, build trust, and support customers. But that’s not going to happen. I will just enjoy this gem of a legal filing and turn my attention to something less disturbing like finding a replacement for my recently deceased French bulldog Tibby.

Stephen E Arnold, July 23, 2026

Is Social Media More Than a Cultural Dumpster Fire?

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

I walk away from burning dumpsters. No, let me be more precise. I avoid dumpsters. Scurrying sounds, a noisome miasma, and the possibility a fan of opioids is catching some winks make me cautious. I perceive social media as a bunch of burning dumpsters. However, for decades — maybe more than 20 years — the kumbaya world of social media has not attracted me. One reason is that I am a dinobaby, and I don’t take pix of my breakfast and post them online. Another is that a failure of social media to validate identities, thus anchoring outputs to a specific person creates an ideal hot house for ill-considered behavior. You don’t have to agree, and that is okay with me. I want to be clear about my bias on this topic.

Thanks, MidJourney. Good enough.

I read “The Great Digital Fatigue: How Digital Burnout Is Changing Social Media Use.” The data from surveys can illuminate facets of the world about which I was ignorant. However, I am also interested in how the surveys are structured and some of the decisions about sample size, analytic methods, and results interpretation impact the “findings.”

On these topics, here’s what the cited write up says:

The survey was conducted between the 1st and 9th of June, 2026, with the participation of 1,000 respondents. It was conducted via Cint and captured a representative sample of Americans (by age and geographic distribution).

Since the mechanics of the survey are not explained, I can only say, “I am not sure how accurate the statistics are, nor if the conclusions are based on data that are not skewed in multiple dimensions. With that observation out of the way, what’s the top finding from the report?

My reading of the article suggests that the main message is that usage of social media is not just declining, it is falling off a cliff. The reason is that social media is work. Too much work produces burnout. Burnout, therefore, results in social media disengagement.

The write up hits a meme top 10 list; for instance:

• 55 percent of those in the sample are posting less than five years ago
• 47 percent self censor
• GenZ and millennials are more like to “cite mental health” as a reason for killing their accounts
• Disconnecting is the 2026 equivalent of what I would call “dropping out.”

I want to point out that attempts to impose restrictions on social media users in Australia and in some families on my block don’t work. Those who want access to social media find a way to get to the services their friends use. Thus, while some old hands may not understand that effort invested in social media is less useful than reading, interacting with humanoids, and applying effort to rewarding activities.

Furthermore, social media outfits come in many shapes and sizes. I wonder if the sample and survey process asked about YouTube-type services, Telegram-type services, and localized Nextdoor-type services. My hunch is that I won’t know the answer to this series of points by re-reading the article.

Observations are indeed in order:

1. My hunch is that the write up is designed to make a splash with a claim that the sky is falling for certain demographics’ social media use. Is that statement verifiable? I am not sure based on the write up.
2. The idea that social media is work is something I am not qualified to address; therefore, it seems to me that additional information about what makes an online communications and interaction “work” and not informative, fun, or entertaining. The perception of “work” seems to be the whipping post.
3. The flip side of the survey is what are the users of social media finding useful and rewarding. Someone like the social media companies should be digging into this question.
4. How many other individuals perceive social media as a dumpster fire in countries in which large user pools exist? My hunch is that in some countries, social media may be the primary way people obtain information, entertain themselves, find employment or “gigs,” etc. The dumpster fires may be raging in certain places and not in others.

Let me be clear. Social media is essentially high velocity flows of information. Information has mass and the power to erode institutions, societal norms, and established processes like traditional education. I think that glittering generalities about digital burnout are catchy. I prefer research that probes the digital dumpster fires, the owners and operators, and the regulators who have only recently realized that sleeping at the switch has allowed a train carrying flammable chemicals to crash into society.

Want a prediction about the future? No. Well too bad. It is now too late. The damage has been done.

Stephen E Arnold, July 22, 2026

European Innovation from the Karp Experience

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

Since I believe everything I read online, I have to provide my interpretation of “France and Germany Pledge to Build a European Rival to Palantir’s Military AI Software.” What caught my eye was the eclectic typography used by the Next Web online information service; to wit:

Design forward.

The article states:

France and Germany pledged on Friday to develop a European alternative to Palantir’s military AI software. A joint declaration signed after talks between Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz committed the two countries to examine “a European sovereign digital backbone” covering data-centric security, AI, and cloud solutions. France’s Arcadia, an AI-powered command-and-control platform, was named as the starting point, alongside unspecified “comparable German solutions.”

I get emails from German intelware companies. These are low-profile outfits, and they are not into US-style marketing and PR. You can chase down the names of these firms using European-centric search services like Swisscows.com, Yandex.com, and Qwant.com. Information about German intelware firms appears in some Telegram Groups and Channels. But Germany intelware companies don’t market to the general public, I am not going to identify some of the more interesting outfits’ capabilities and specialized services.

Good enough, Midjourney.

The write up points out:

Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp called Germany’s refusal to consider his company “conversations about witchcraft“ in a Bild interview last month, arguing the software was proven on every serious battlefield. That argument has not moved Berlin. The sovereignty question is not whether Palantir’s technology works, it plainly does, but whether Europe’s most sensitive military infrastructure should depend on an American company at a time when transatlantic relations cannot be taken for granted. France and Germany have now put that question into a joint declaration. Whether they can turn it into working software is the harder part.

The article doesn’t provide much information about Chapsvision. I pulled some information from my old-fashioned dinobaby files:

1. Chapvision is a French outfit. Its industrial-strength specialized services run from the OVH datacenters. For those who don’t follow data centers providing secure services, OVH is in this business, and, as you might guess, is a French outfit.
2. The firm’s technology includes AI as well as technology acquired from Sinequa. To remain on the up and up, Sinequa was a client for which I performed very tiny, inconsequential work.
3. The agentic technology is available under the name Chaps Agents. The AI technology is called Argonos.
4. An English-language summary of what Chapvision provides to government entities is online at this Web page. The firm’s catchphrase is “Data Make Sense.”
5. The company opened its doors in 2019 and about a year ago made clear that it wanted to expand its OSINT services.

My takeaway from the announcement is that neither France nor Germany are too far from the Swiss government’s assessment of Palantir. I think the issue is a combination of management posture, cost, client satisfaction, and trust. But, as a dinobaby, I often am incorrect in today’s zoom zoom world.

Stephen E Arnold, July 22, 2026

Karma, Irony, Whatever: Do AI Unto Others and Then Have Them Do AI to You. Fun, Right?

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

Business Insider is an interesting publication. Little gems are nestled in the midst of marketing-type information. This morning (July 13, 2026) I spotted one of these interesting gems, and I want to highlight it.

The write up is “AI Giants Learn What Everyone Else on the Modern Internet Already Knows.” I take issue with the word “learn.” The Business Insider team does not define learn, but I do. According to the Free Dictionary (the best kind in this modern information-wants-to-be-free-sometimes world means:

[1] To gain knowledge of or skill in through study, instruction, or experience; [2] to fix in the mind or memory plus some non-standard notions and an obsolete one.

What did the AI giants “learn”? I would submit that “learn” is not the right word. I will offer some options at the end of this dinobaby post.

Thanks, MidJourney. Almost good enough.

The Business Insider article asks this question:

Why spend billions building the best AI models if someone else can recreate much of this intelligence for a fraction of the cost?

The article reports:

Anthropic says rivals are extracting intelligence from its top models. Website owners have spent the past three years saying Anthropic extracted intelligence from them. Both sides argue this is against their terms of service.

The Google and OpenAI claim that using bots to figure out how to duplicate the US firms’ AI is a cyber security issue. The write up says:

So, let me wrap this up for you, from the AI giants’ perspective: They can extract intelligence from the web for free and without permission. That’s different from distillation, which is OK. Oh, but not when distillation involves using their content in ways they don’t like.

I think the BAIT (big AI tech) outfits are consistent. These (and other Silicon Valley-type companies) perceive themselves as having superior knowledge. Their perceptions are in line with their view of how business should operate. In order to grow their revenues, the BAIT firms make the correct decisions needed to grow their revenue, power, and scope. By definition, those not involved with their business and tightly synchronized to the BAIT world view, are unable to perceive that the BAIT outfits are the entities creating a better, less stupid, and less chaotic society. It follows that a company or an organization sponsored by a nation-state taking without permission BAIT knowledge are acting outside of the boundary of the Silicon Valley guidelines. Thus, taking AI know how without paying, using technology to drain know how, or taking an action not approved by the BAIT entities is [a] immoral because wizards know the rules and only the unanointed break them; [b] unethical because BAIT outfits convert ethics into an idea only BAIT outfits can “fix” at any point in time chosen by them; [c] illegal because the BAIT organizations perceive themselves as a higher authority than a nation-state; and [d] delivering the future that BAIT outfits know is the one, true way.

A failure to see this reality or a mental posture that thwarts it means trouble. In this case, the BAIT outfits will try to hook up with the US government for “protection,” implement lock in and no choice systems and methods roughly analogous to a Google-type of online advertising service, or use whatever inferior legal remedies are available to stop or slow down the unauthorized use of BAIT know how.

The Business Insider article says:

Once information goes online, clever people will figure out how to collect it, remix it, and profit from it. That’s true for blogs, photos, software code, videos, and yes, AI giants’ precious model outputs.

Is this karma or irony? I am not sure these words capture the BAIT conceptual frame. In the BAIT frame, their objections, anger, and legal arguments make sense to them. If you are outside the frame, you cannot think through and behave in a way the BAIT outfits would find acceptable. The interesting point about BAITs is that they “fight” or want to “fight” with one another. However, each BAIT entity will not be able to accept the “right” of the other BAIT company to break the rules that exist in each BAIT outfit’s mind. BAITs only see the world from each firm’s particular point of view within the crazy Silicon Valley mindset of [a] We know better and [b] We are correct. Illogical? Sure, to a non-BAITer. Completely logical to each BAIT outfit. These firms are fighting to win the AI game. This is a Gold Rush from each BAIT firm’s point of view. If they lose the battle for AI supremacy, the losers are footnotes. Google won online advertising and seems to be poised to win AI. Okay, China is a common enemy. But once that “problem” is solved, these folks will go after one another. You can see this taking shape in the Apple complaint that OpenAI is stealing allegedly Apple’s knowledge. Silicon Valley companies see knowledge as their domain. Your knowledge is irrelevant unless it is germane to a BAIT.

Now what about “learn”? Forget that. BAIT outfits get fined. So what? They delay or negotiate the pay down or on installments or in trade offs. BAIT outfits get blocked in certain countries. So what? Users can work around blocks. Those who cannot are stupid and, therefore, not worthy of access or of value to advertisers. A legal system imposes specific rules on a BAIT outfit. So what? BAIT lawyers can argue endlessly, file motions, or delay until the nation-state’s attorneys just agree to a settlement. Why? Infinite money means a lot of legal eagles to protect the afflicted BAIT.

But learn? Learn what. For decades high technology has been able to do whatever it wants. In Switzerland, high technology is just part of the state apparatus. In China, high technology is a manifestation of the state. In the U S , high technology and BAIT are the source of power in the view of the BAITs.

Net net: Want trouble? Steal knowledge and know how from a U S BAITer. How will this dust up play out? Not well, I predict.

Stephen E Arnold, July 21, 2026

Meta Adds a Foundation Stone to Its Plausible Deniability Posture

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

I find it interesting that large companies in the online business find many ways to say, “Gee, I am sorry that happened. We’ll fix it. But we had no idea that our service was used in that way.” The official lingo for this approach to permitting shadow services to operate is called “plausible deniability.” But plausible deniability does not arrive like a box of Pop Tarts, ready to toss in the microwave, and then eat on the way to work. Nope. Plausible deniability has to be assembled.

I think I may have discovered one of the small blocks used in constructing a plausible deniability for certain actions taking place on a very large system by a very small percentage of its users.

Meta is working overtime to be one of the big dogs in AI. It has users. It has a helpful messaging app called WhatsApp. It has a much-loved online marketplace. It has images and videos in its Instagram and its Reels video service.

Despite these services and its smart software, “Meta’s AI Detector Can’t Detect Images It Generated Itself, Report Finds.” Imagine that. Meta’s own smart image generation service cannot identify its own images. Does this mean that if someone creates an untoward image, Meta’s own systems will not be able to identify the problematic image? If I understand the write up, Meta cannot. Bummer.

Muse Image was part of a big Meta debut. Images made by this system would have an invisible watermark called Content Seal. The seal would remain intact if the image is cropped, compressed, resized, or screenshotted. To guarantee that the Content Seal would be detected, Meta said it would create an AI tool to check images. But when the trust outfit Reuters came around and ran their test, the intrepid journalists found that Muse Image failed to detect more than half the images when they were cropped.

This points to another problem that goes deeper than failures to recognize AI images:

“As generative AI tools get better at producing uncanny deepfakes, detection becomes a trickier problem to solve. According to cybersecurity firm DeepStrike, the volume of AI-generated deepfakes online has experienced a roughly 900% annual growth from 2023 to 2025. But detection capabilities haven’t advanced completely in parallel to this boom in popularity. Commercial AI detection tools, themselves driven by AI, are still plagued with mistakes, while the average person’s ability to identify AI-generated content is no better than a coin toss, according to previous studies.”

Muse Image were supposed to be a huge leap forward for Meta. It’s not. Meta is still pushing forward with an AI video generator called Muse Video. Now what happens if a user creates an untoward image, Meta can say, “We are working on this.” Yep, for sure. But the explanation is plausible, is it not?

Whitney Grace, July 21, 2026

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  Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.

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