Russia’s tech industry in shambles and an AI security disaster

In the months following Vladimir Putin’s announcement of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia experienced a mass exodus of IT workers. According to government figures, about 100,000 IT workers left Russia in 2022, or around 10% of the tech workforce, a number likely underestimated.

It has now been over a year since the invasion began. Tech workers who left everything behind to flee Russia warn that the country is on the verge of becoming a village: cut off from the global tech industry, research, funding, scientific exchanges and critical components. This is an accelerating trend that began long before the war. Read the full story.

—Masha Borak

Three ways AI chatbots are a security disaster

AI language models are the brightest and most exciting thing in technology right now. But they’re about to create a major new problem: they’re ridiculously easy to abuse. No programming skills are needed and there is no known solution.

Tech companies are racing to embed these templates into tons of products to help people do everything from booking trips to organizing their calendars to taking notes in meetings.

But the way these products work creates a ton of new risks, from leaking private information with the help of criminals to phishing, spamming, and scamming. Our senior AI reporter, Melissa Heikkilä, dug into how open they are to abuse. Read the full story.