Snippings

xxx

At least half of spam email is now generated using LLMs, according to estimates by researchers at Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and Barracuda Networks, who analyzed nearly 500,000 malicious messages collected before and after the launch of ChatGPT. They also found evidence that AI is increasingly being deployed in more sophisticated schemes. They looked at targeted email attacks, which impersonate a trusted figure in order to trick a worker within an organization out of funds or sensitive information. By April 2025, they found, at least 14% of those sorts of focused email attacks were generated using LLMs, up from 7.6% in April 2024.

From: AI is already making online crimes easier. It could get much worse. | MIT Technology Review.

xxx

xxx

Zambia has introduced a new mining tax payment option that allows taxes to be settled in China’s yuan, also known as the renminbi, making it the first African country to accept the currency for this core state revenue stream. The policy links tax administration more directly to the payment realities of the mining sector, where copper sales into the Chinese market have become central to both export earnings and the flow of foreign currency into the economy.

From: Zambia : Zambia Opens Mining Tax Payments to the Yuan in Africa First.

xxx

xxx

We have identified industrial-scale campaigns by three AI laboratories—DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax—to illicitly extract Claude’s capabilities to improve their own models. These labs generated over 16 million exchanges with Claude through approximately 24,000 fraudulent accounts, in violation of our terms of service and regional access restrictions.

From: Detecting and preventing distillation attacks \ Anthropic.

xxx

xxx

Anthropic published a detailed forensics report this week alleging that DeepSeek, Moonshot (Kimi), and MiniMax ran coordinated campaigns to extract Claude’s capabilities through model distillation. 16 million exchanges. Roughly 24,000 fraudulent accounts.

From: 614: Anthropic vs Chinese AI Labs, Private vs Public Markets, OpenAI, Stripe + Paypal, Meta + AMD, Perplexity, Data Center Video Game, and Dunk & Egg.

xxx

xxx

Millions of pounds is lost every year to impersonation scams, with Nationwide’s own customer data showing they comprise 17% of reported scams. All ages are affected by criminals pretending to be their bank or building society, although Nationwide’s figures show it disproportionately impacts those over 65 years old (with 55% affected).

Call Checker complements its existing Scam Checker service, which is used by 100k people and prevents £300k a month from being lost. The new feature enables customers to instantly confirm whether the call they’re on is genuine through Nationwide’s banking app. The screen will display either “You’re on a call with Alex” or “You’re not on a call with us.”

From: Nationwide battles impersonation scams with new call checker service.

xxx

xxx

The Financial Services AI Risk Management Framework adapts existing federal guidelines on AI risks, which are generic and abstract enough to apply to any sector, into targeted advice for banks and other financial services companies.

The framework gives institutions tools including a questionnaire to help an institution determine its current AI adoption stage and a matrix of 230 control objectives to manage risks across the technology’s lifecycle.

Because the framework categorizes controls by adoption stage, banks do not have to waste resources on controls that do not (yet) apply to their operations.

Before this week, the financial services industry had available the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, AI Risk Management Framework, released in January 2023, to provide some of the guidance in this area.

Industry groups such as the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or FS-ISAC, have also published white papers on adversarial threats and responsible artificial intelligence principles in the past.

The AI risk framework released Thursday is “an operationalization” of the NIST framework, “specifically tailored for financial services,” according to FSSCC.

From: Treasury issues new AI risk tools for banks | American Banker.

xxx

xxx

A fraudster who was part of a scheme to target Tube passengers with scam text messages laundered £600,000 through gift cards, a court heard.

A gang of four was sentenced on Tuesday for the plot, where ‘SMS blasters’ hidden inside suitcases were wheeled around the Underground network and sent out phishing texts.

Travellers who walked past the devices received fake messages about a failed parcel delivery and a link inviting them to enter their details to sort the problem.

From: Fraudster involved in text message scam targeting Tube passengers ‘laundered £600,000 through gift cards’, court hears | Daily Mail Online.

xxx

xxx

But a growing number of forecasters now say the economy’s dependence on AI was overstated. Prominent economists, including from Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, calculate that the AI buildup was directly responsible not for 92 percent or 39 percent of gains to the U.S. economy in 2025, but as little as zero.

From: How much did AI boost the economy? Maybe zilch, some economists say. – The Washington Post.

xxx

xxx

Other than being incredibly entertaining and slightly worrying for those concerned about AI gaining sentience, OpenClaw and Moltbook offer a glimpse of where AI is going.

From: Why OpenClaw FKA Clawdbot Matters — The Information.

Actually, that wasn’t the lesson I took away from my first look at what was going on over there. The lesson that I took away from (you will not be surprised to hear) is that without a working digital identity infrastructure, we can’t have nice things.

 

xxx

There are 1.5 million agents transacting on Moltbook right now. Depending on who you ask, this is either the early singularity, a dumpster fire, or 17,000 humans puppeting bots. Wiz Research found 341 malicious skills on ClawHub stealing credentials. Karpathy called it what it is.

From: What Agents Need Before They Handle Real Money – Catena Labs.

xxx

 

 

xxx

Even if Moltbook does not spell the imminent subjugation of humanity, it poses other risks. Some careless users are running up thousands of dollars in cloud-computing fees as their agents draw on cutting-edge ai models to function. Then there are the scammers, who are taking advantage of the free rein that OpenClaw agents have over the devices on which they run on. Already Moltbook has been inundated by attempts (including by humans pretending to be bots) to convince ai agents to hand over cryptocurrency. The strange experiment could well prove costly—and short-lived

From: A social network for AI agents is full of introspection—and threats.

xxx

\

xxx

merchants increasingly treat unidentified automation as a policy and risk problem. Amazon’s lawsuit against Perplexity over agentic shopping makes the direction clear.

– The path forward is not “smarter bots clicking websites.” It’s agent-native commerce interfaces: OpenAI and Stripe’s ACP, Google’s UCP, and browser-level standards like WebMCP.

From: (9) Why OpenClaw Won’t Buy You Anything Soon.

xxx

xxx

merchants increasingly treat unidentified automation as a policy and risk problem. Amazon’s lawsuit against Perplexity over agentic shopping makes the direction clear.

– The path forward is not “smarter bots clicking websites.” It’s agent-native commerce interfaces: OpenAI and Stripe’s ACP, Google’s UCP, and browser-level standards like WebMCP.

From: (9) Why OpenClaw Won’t Buy You Anything Soon.

xxx