The world is splitting into two AI camps, and countries are being told to pick one

29 countries signed an agreement in Shanghai on July 16. It founded the World AI Cooperation Organization, based in Shanghai. The US leads a rival group, Pax Silica, built around AI supply chains. The State Department told AP that countries backing a competing vision can't be trusted partners. In August, Reuters reported a draft US letter making the same point. Kazakhstan has joined both groups, AP and Reuters report. Reuters says it is the only country known to have done so.

• SoftBank's Son plans $50 billion for AI in Malaysia, the prime minister says. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced the $50 billion plan on October 24. He said the investor chose Kuching, Sarawak and Peninsular Malaysia. It covers AI, new technology and data centres. Bloomberg reports that Anwar named the investor as Masayoshi Son. SoftBank has not confirmed it.
• Security experts warn AI-found bugs will keep breaking things. Seven security professionals told Reuters that AI-found flaws will almost certainly cause more disruption. It follows two critical PHP flaws, patched October 21. They pushed some government sites offline. VulnCheck says AI helped roughly double the flaws found in a year. That research is not yet published.
• Apollo's economist sees no AI payoff outside Big Tech yet. Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok wrote about it on October 24. He says revenue per worker and profit margins are rising for the Magnificent 7. Both are flat for the other 493 companies in the S&P 500. He sees no sign yet of AI lifting productivity growth.
• Nvidia's new open agent model fits in about 4 GB. Nvidia released Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B on October 23. It is a small open model for conversational agents. It is built on Gemma 4 E4B. Nvidia says it scores about 40% higher on average than Nemotron 3 Nano 4B. It targets RTX PCs and Jetson boards.