The Download: Russia’s crumbling tech industry, and an AI security disaster
In the months after Vladimir Putin announced the invasion of Ukraine, Russia saw a mass exodus of IT workers. According to government figures, about 100,000 IT specialists left Russia in 2022, or some 10% of the tech workforce—a number that is likely an underestimate.
It has now been over a year since the invasion began. The tech workers who left everything behind to flee Russia warn that the country is well on its way to becoming a village: cut off from the global tech industry, research, funding, scientific exchanges, and critical components. It’s an accelerating trend that started well before the war. Read the full story.
—Masha Borak
Three ways AI chatbots are a security disaster
AI language models are the shiniest, most exciting thing in tech right now. But they’re poised to create a major new problem: they are ridiculously easy to misuse. No programming skills are needed, and there’s no known fix.
Tech companies are racing to embed these models into tons of products to help people do everything from book trips to organize their calendars to take notes in meetings.
But the way these products work creates a ton of new risks, from leaking people’s private information to helping criminals phish, spam, and scam people. Our senior AI reporter Melissa Heikkilä has dug into the ways they’re open to abuse. Read the full story.
