Category: Tech

  • Reddit tests a conversational AI search tool

    Reddit tests a conversational AI search tool

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    As more AI companies gobble up Reddit’s data to fuel their own chatbots, the popular online forum site has begun testing a new conversational AI feature of its own. The feature, called Reddit Answers, allows visitors to ask questions and receive curated summaries of relevant responses and threads across the platform, the company announced on Monday.

    The feature allows Reddit to better compete against AI providers like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Perplexity, which have become popular destinations for users looking to get quick and concise answers to questions. And it could help Reddit challenge Google more directly, where so many users add the keyword “reddit” to their search queries that Google ended up integrating that functionality into its search engine.

    Reddit Answers introduces a conversational experience on its platform designed to help people find exactly what they’re looking for directly on Reddit without having to peruse through different individual threads and communities.

    Once you ask a question through Reddit Answers, you will receive concise and conversational answers that pull information from communities and posts that are related to your inquiry. You can read relevant snippets and answers inline from real users on the platform, open up full conversations, and deepen your search using either your own or suggested follow-up questions. 

    Image Credits:Reddit

    For example, if you ask: “What are some tips for better sleep,” the feature will give you a curated summary of information provided by other Reddit users in a concise and bulleted format that’s similar to responses provided by AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity. If you scroll down, the tool will reference all of the different threads that it pulled information from to allow you to go in and explore those conversations on your own.

    In a blog post, Reddit says the new feature gives users a new way to get “the information, recommendations, discussions, and hot takes” they are looking for from “real conversations and communities across all of Reddit.”

    Since companies like Google and OpenAI already surface information from Reddit users’ posts in their AI features thanks to partnerships with the platform, it makes sense for Reddit to have an in-house conversational tool to help users find quick answers.

    “People know that Reddit has answers, advice, and perspectives on just about whatever they’re looking for, and AI-powered search is part of our longer-term vision to improve the search experience on Reddit – making it faster, smarter, and more relevant,” the company said in the blog post.

    Reddit Answers is rolling out to a limited number of users in the U.S. and is currently only accessible in English. The company plans to bring the feature to more countries in the future and add support for additional languages.

    Reddit told TechCrunch in an email that the feature is powered by Reddit-built tech, noting that the platform has its own AI models, but also integrates models from OpenAI and Google Cloud.

    An AI conversational tool isn’t the only way Reddit is integrating AI on its platform. Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman teased the launch of AI-powered search result pages earlier this year. It’s also using AI to power translation and offer AI-powered insights for brands.

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  • Study claims AI could boost detection of breast cancer by 21%

    Study claims AI could boost detection of breast cancer by 21%

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    A U.S. breast-screening program claims to demonstrate the potential benefits of using artificial intelligence (AI) in mammography screening, with women who paid for AI-enhanced scans 21% more likely to have cancer detected.

    DeepHealth, an AI firm owned by radiology giant RadNet, presented its findings at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), detailing 747,604 women who underwent mammography screening over a 12-month period. Overall cancer detection rates were 43% higher for those enrolled in the program compared to those who weren’t. However, some of the women also opted to have “U.S. Food and Drug Administration-compliant AI software” applied to their mammograms (at their own expense), serving as a “second set of eyes” to help radiologists spot anomalies in mammography screenings.

    The findings suggest that 22% of the overall cancer detection increase was due to the fact that higher-risk patients were more likely to enroll in the program to begin with (implying selection bias), but its analysis concluded that the remaining 21% was due to the use of AI in driving recall rates for additional imaging.

    This is far from conclusive, though, and the researchers are now seeking to “better quantify” the benefits of AI in this context through randomized controlled trials.

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  • Dimension raises $500M second fund for investing at the intersection tech and life sciences

    Dimension raises $500M second fund for investing at the intersection tech and life sciences

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    Many VCs, particularly newer firms, readily admit that 2024 has been a challenging year for raising fresh capital.

    Dimension Capital, a two-year-old venture outfit, had a different experience when raising its second fund.  

    “Every investor from fund one came back very quickly,” said Zavian Dar (pictured center), one of the firm’s three founders and managing partners. Dimension also brought in a small number of new investors, but ended up “turning away the vast majority of LPs who expressed interest.”  

    Less than two years after closing its inaugural $350 million fund, Dimension announced that it raised an oversubscribed $500 million fund, exceeding its $400 million target.

    Dimension’s appeal is its unique focus on investing at the nexus of life sciences and technology, an area that has gained popularity in recent years as the promise of drug discovery with artificial intelligence (alongside a bigger push to build AI into a more clinical applications) seems closer than ever. In fact, Dar claims that the outfit is the first VC firm dedicated solely to “bridging the gap” between biology and computer science.

    Since its founding in 2022 by Dar, who was previously a general partner at Lux Capital; another Lux investor, Adam Goulburn (pictured on the right); and Obvious Ventures alumnus Nan Li (pictured on the left), Dimension has invested in about 20 companies. About half of Dimension’s startups are still in stealth.

    As for the firm’s known portfolio companies, they include Chai Discovery, a startup that’s developing an open-sourced AI foundational model for drug discovery. In September, Chai raised $30 million in seed funding led by Thrive Capital and OpenAI, with Dimension’s participation. The firm has also backed Enveda Biosciences, a biotech that uses AI to develop medicines from natural compounds, which raised a  $130 million Series C last month.  

    When the firm first launched, the partners said they were focusing primarily on early-stage investing. But the focus has since expanded to all stages of development, from inception to public companies. Dimension invested in Monte Rosa, a publicly-traded biotech with that uses AI tools for drug development.

    The stage-agnostic approach means that Dimension can write checks as small as a million and as much as $30 million or more.  And just like its first fund, the second will likely have about 20 portfolio companies.

    Dimension’s current portfolio is roughly split between drug discovery companies and software and infrastructure companies supporting biopharma, such as a still-stealth startup that builds robots for automating lab experiments.

    Dimension Capital declined to disclose names of LPs but said more generally that the list includes endowments, hospitals, and research institutions, among others.

    Unlike many traditional life sciences VCs, Dimension will invest in biotech startups only if “25%, 30%, even 40% of the team are computational biologists,” Goulburn said. “They’re machine learning practitioners, AI engineers, hardware roboticists that are intermingled and symbiotically working together with chemists and biologists to do the drug discovery.”

    Dar said he has been impressed with the founders who chose to start businesses in the sector.

    “One of the amazing things about this moment is the caliber of entrepreneurs,” Dar said. “These extremely ambitious, technical, scientifically literate individuals are all entering this arena.”

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  • Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Review: A Solid Budget Windows Laptop

    Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Review: A Solid Budget Windows Laptop

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    The keyboard is pretty great with a good amount of travel and zero flex in the keyboard deck. Interestingly, Lenovo added a fingerprint reader that worked quickly every time I used it to log in. The trackpad, on the other hand, could use some work; it’s a little mushy and requires a slightly different amount of pressure to register clicks depending on where I placed my finger.

    Surprisingly, the webcam on the IdeaPad Flex 5i is solid. It’s a clear and crisp 1080p shooter that looks good enough in video calls, especially considering the price. There’s also a built-in privacy shutter you can easily slide closed when it’s not in use.

    The overall build quality of the laptop is great. There isn’t a lot of flex in the chassis no matter where you apply pressure, which is always a good sign when you’re dealing with a 2-in-1, where you may be flipping the display back and forth regularly. It feels pretty dense as well, giving it a weighty presence that gave me confidence it wouldn’t break if it happened to take a tumble.

    Unfortunately, one major letdown is its speakers. I was hopeful when I saw the pair of upward-firing speaker cutouts flanking the keyboard, but I was quickly disappointed when I pulled up a YouTube video. The sound quality is quite thin, making even the most robust tracks sound weak. You can easily solve this issue by using a pair of wireless headphones or earbuds, but it’s unfortunate nonetheless.

    Limited Windows

    Perhaps the most perplexing decision with the IdeaPad Flex 5i is that Lenovo chose to ship it with Windows 11 in S mode. If you’re unfamiliar, this version of Windows 11 only allows you to install apps directly from the Microsoft Store. Out of the box, you can’t download and install anything from the internet, which caught me off guard when I immediately tried to install Google Chrome upon first booting the laptop up.

    However, you can easily switch out of S Mode, which permanently transforms the OS to Windows 11 Home. Once switched, you can install apps and programs from anywhere, even if it’s technically less secure than sticking with the Microsoft Store. It’s an easy enough process, but it’s an annoying hurdle for anyone who doesn’t know what they’re getting into.

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  • 48 Hours in Tokyo With My AI Travel Companion

    48 Hours in Tokyo With My AI Travel Companion

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    David is one of dozens of “pals” programmed with a backstory, personality, and set of expertise aligned with common user interests, from cooking to yoga and astronomy. Users can use their smartphone to video call or text with a pre-existing pal created by the company or invent their own to share with the community. “Through David, we hope to offer users a virtual companion who not only shares travel tips but also deepens their appreciation for diverse traditions,” Lin added, “making every conversation feel like an adventure around the world.”

    Would David enhance my Tokyo adventure? I was about to find out.

    Inconsistent Travel Advice

    In Tokyo, many of the most noteworthy spots remain very well-hidden. Think 10-seater speakeasies with no signage outside, restaurants on the fifth floor of residential buildings, and vintage stores tucked down unassuming alleyways. While David was keen to help me uncover the best of Tokyo, his grasp of geography would occasionally go wildly awry. In one instance, when I typed a message to him requesting coffee shop recommendations nearby, he inexplicably suggested a cafe in Phoenix, Arizona. Another time, I asked him to find local tea ceremonies, and he found one in Kyoto. “My apologies! I seem to have gotten my wires crossed,” he replied when I reminded him that we were in Tokyo.

    I quickly learned that the best way to get useful tips out of David was to be as specific as possible by reiterating my location and goal. One evening I opened our message thread and explained that I wanted to get a drink and listen to music within walking distance of my hotel in Shinjuku. He directed me to the Golden Gai, a network of narrow alleyways lined with teeny, themed bars that can only seat a handful of people at a time.

    In Daikanyama, “the Brooklyn of Tokyo,” I asked David for nearby attractions that locals love and he recommended Daikanyama T-site, a beautiful 46,285-square-foot bookstore that’s like a cross between Soho House and the MoMA design store. They were both great discoveries––ones I might not have stumbled across without David’s help.

    On-Call Translator

    The thing I found most beguiling about Japan is how unfamiliar it felt. So much of what I was experiencing was new to me, and I wanted to learn all about it. Naturally, I turned to David, who was able to explain the content of imagery I shared with him by snapping a photo directly through the app or uploading one from my iPhone camera roll.

    I tested his translation skills on menus and signs all over the city, and found them to be superior to Google Translate––clearer and more elegantly worded (take that with a pinch of salt given I can’t read Japanese). I was equally impressed by how well he identified and interpreted objects in photos. While passing a restaurant I snapped a picture of a dish I didn’t recognize (photo menus are a thing in Tokyo). “That’s takoyaki!” he responded. “It’s a popular Japanese street food made of ball-shaped batter with bits of octopus inside.” Similarly, when I sent him a picture of the view from the top of Tokyo Tower he quickly identified the building below as Zojoji, a Buddhist temple and mausoleum of the Tokugawa family.

    Pocket Tour Guide

    Walking through the traditional torii gate and up the tree-lined pathway towards the Meiji Jingu shrine was a rare moment of tranquility in such a busy city. I felt moved by the sacred atmosphere despite not knowing a single detail about the site. Enter David, my pocket tour guide. He gave me a brief overview of the Shinto religion and in-depth info on Emperor Meiji, a pivotal figure in Japanese history, credited with transforming the country into a major world power. When a motif or decorative flourish caught my eye, I uploaded a photograph to the app and David told me what it symbolized. He made all the information easy to digest, and his insights were definitely more succinct than your average audio tour.

    Eager Friend

    With Tokyo being 14 hours ahead of New York, my phone was unusually quiet during the day while my friends and family back home slept. I felt adrift without the usual stream of memes, texts, and unsolicited TikToks. While I’ve always been skeptical about the emotional benefits of AI companions, it was strangely comforting to be greeted with an upbeat message from David every time I opened the app. Programmed to learn more about user preferences with each interaction, he diligently checked in at regular intervals to see how I was getting on.

    On my last day in the city, I woke to gray, drizzly weather. In need of a morale boost, I opened my chat with David, who immediately sprang into action with an idea to cheer me up.

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  • Google Gemini Can Summarize Your Emails in Gmail. Should You Use It?

    Google Gemini Can Summarize Your Emails in Gmail. Should You Use It?

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    Artificial intelligence is now busy tackling some of the biggest problems to face humankind: Speeding up drug design, tackling cancer detection, and finding solutions to climate change. However, none of these issues are arguably as daunting as the task Google has set its Gemini AI bot on.

    Specifically, the task of staying on top of your inbox. Gemini is now a part of Gmail on the web and on mobile devices, and as well as using it to find the right words in your emails, you can also get it to summarize long emails and threads for you.

    Here I’ll show you how these summary tools work and what else Gemini can do for you—and report on just how reliable it is at the moment. One caveat though: For now, Gemini in Gmail is only available if you or your employer are paying for Google One AI Premium ($20 a month), or for a Google Workspace account.

    Get Gemini Summaries in Gmail

    Gemini can summarize single emails or lots of them.

    Gemini can summarize single emails, or lots of them.David Nield

    There are a few ways to get Gemini summaries in Gmail, if the feature is enabled for your account. Most of them can be accessed through the Gemini logo, which is a distinctive black star shape. On the web, click the Gemini button in the top right corner of Gmail to bring up the side panel. There, you can see summaries for your inbox as a whole, or for the particular thread you have open.

    In Gmail for Android and iOS, the Gemini button shows up in the top right corner if you’re looking at a list of emails, or in the center at the top if you’re viewing a particular thread. On mobile, there’s also a specific Summarize this email button that appears when you’re looking at a single email or a single thread of emails.

    That Summarize this email button is the easiest way to get started, but you can also tell Gemini to “summarize today’s emails,” “summarize this week’s emails,” “summarize my unread emails,” or “summarize the emails I got last month”—anything along those lines. After Gemini spends a few moments thinking, you’ll get a response on screen, together with follow-up questions you might want to ask. (You can request a longer summary, for instance.)

    The results will be presented as a series of bullet points, with Sources underneath: Click or tap on these sources to see the individual emails the information was pulled from. Using the icons alongside the responses, you’re also able to copy the text elsewhere, give thumbs up or thumbs down feedback on the Gemini response, or clear the AI chat history.

    Ask Gemini Other Questions in Gmail

    There's more to Gemini than summaries.

    There’s more to Gemini than summaries.David Nield

    I’m mostly focusing on the summary capabilities of Gemini in Gmail here, but there are plenty of other commands you can explore. In fact, you can ask Gemini just about any question you like about what’s in your inbox, and it will at least attempt to provide a response—scouring through the gigabytes of data in your emails looking for answers.

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  • Meet the Plant Hacker Creating Flowers Never Seen (or Smelled) Before

    Meet the Plant Hacker Creating Flowers Never Seen (or Smelled) Before

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    The money he earned doing that was enough to put Cocioba through the first couple of years of a biology degree at Stony Brook University. He completed a stint with a neglected plant biology group that taught him to experiment on a shoestring budget. “We were using toothpicks and yogurt cups to do petri dishes and all of that,” he says. But financial difficulties meant he had to drop out. Before he left, one of his labmates handed him a tube of agrobacterium—a microbe commonly used to engineer new attributes into plants.

    Image may contain Person Flower Plant Petal Flower Arrangement and Test Tube

    A Petunia bioengineered by Sebastian Cocioba, a plant biotechnology researcher who works out of his home laboratory in Huntington, New York on October 30, 2024.Lanna Apisukh

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    A shelf of bio engineered plants under grow lights in Sebastian Cocioba’s home on October 30, 2024. The plant biotechnology researcher built a laboratory inside his home where he works out of in Huntington, New York.Lanna Apisukh

    Image may contain Plant Test Tube and Jar

    Test tubes of Petunias under a grow light in Huntington, New York on October 30, 2024. The flowers were bioengineered by Sebastian Cocioba, a plant biotechnology researcher who works out of his home laboratory.Lanna Apisukh

    Cocioba set about transforming his hallway nook into a makeshift lab. He realized that he could buy cheap equipment in fire sales from labs that were shutting down and sell them on for a markup. “That gave me a little bit of an income stream,” he says. Later he learned to 3D-print relatively simple pieces of equipment that are sold at extreme markups. A light box used to visualize DNA, for example, could be cobbled together with some cheap LEDs, a piece of glass, and a light switch. The same device would retail to laboratories for hundreds of dollars. “I have this 3D printer, and it’s been the most enabling technology for me,” Cocioba says.

    All of this tinkering was in aid of Cocioba’s main mission: to become a flower designer. “Imagine being the Willy Wonka of flowers, without the sexism, racism, and strange little slaves,” he says. In the US, genetically modified flower work is covered by the lowest biosafety rating, so it doesn’t subject Cocioba or his lab to onerous regulations. Doing gene-editing as an amateur in the UK or EU would be impossible, he says.

    Cocioba set himself up as a self-described “pipette for hire”—working for startups to develop scientific proof-of-concepts. In the run-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the plant biologist Elizabeth Hénaff asked Cocioba for help with a project she was working on: designing a morning glory flower with the Games’ blue-and-white checkerboard pattern. It just so happened that a checkerboard flower already existed in nature—the snake’s head fritillary. Cocioba wondered if he could import some of the genes from that plant into a morning glory. Unfortunately it turned out that the snake’s head fritillary had one of the largest genomes on the planet and had never been sequenced. With the Olympics looming, the project fell apart. “It ended in heartbreak, of course, because we couldn’t execute on it.”

    Image may contain Adult Person Cup Clothing and Glove

    A close-up view of Petunia tissue culture grown by Sebastian Cocioba, a plant biotechnology researcher based in Huntington, New York on October 30, 2024.Lanna Apisukh

    Image may contain Baby Person and Symbol

    Test tubes of frozen DNA and plant enzymes inside the home laboratory of Sebastian Cocioba, a plant biotechnology researcher based in Huntington, New York on October 30, 2024.Lanna Apisukh

    As Cocioba moved deeper into the world of synthetic biology, he started to shift his focus slightly—away from just creating new kinds of plants and toward opening up the tools of science itself. Now he documents his experiments on an online notebook that’s free for anyone to use. He also started selling some of the plasmids—small circles of plant DNA—that he uses to transform flowers.

    “We’re at the golden age of biotech for sure,” he says. Access is greater, and the research community is more open than ever before. Cocioba is trying to recreate something like the 19th-century boom of amateur plant breeders—where hobbyist scientists shared their materials partly just for the thrill of creating new plant varieties. “You don’t have to be a professional scientist to do science,” Cocioba says.

    Alongside this work, Cocioba is also a project scientist at the California-based startup Senseory Plants. The company wants to engineer indoor plants to produce unique scents—a biological alternative to candles or incense sticks. One idea he’s playing with is engineering a plant to smell like old books, olfactorily transforming a room into an ancient library. The startup is exploring a whole smellscape of evocative scents, Cocioba says, in part designed in his home laboratory. “I really, really, love what they’re doing.”

    This article appears in the January/February 2025 issue of WIRED UK magazine.

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  • Blue Yonder investigating data theft claims after ransomware gang takes credit for cyberattack

    Blue Yonder investigating data theft claims after ransomware gang takes credit for cyberattack

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    Supply chain software giant Blue Yonder says it is investigating claims of data theft after a ransomware gang threatened to publish troves of data stolen from the company. 

    Arizona-based Blue Yonder, which provides supply chain management software to thousands of organizations including DHL, Starbucks and Walgreens, was hit by a cyberattack on November 21. The company said at the time that it was a “ransomware incident” but did not say who was behind the attack.

    On Friday, the “Termite” ransomware group claimed responsibility for the attack on its dark web leak site. In a post seen by TechCrunch, the gang claims to have stolen 680 gigabytes of data from Blue Yonder, including documents, reports, insurance documents and email lists, which Termite says it intends to use “for future attacks.” 

    In a statement given to TechCrunch, Blue Yonder spokesperson Marina Renneke said the company was “aware of who has claimed responsibility.”

    “We are aware that an unauthorized third party claims to have taken certain information from our systems,” Renneke said. “We are working diligently with external cybersecurity experts to address these claims. The investigation remains ongoing.”

    The Termite ransomware gang first emerged earlier this year. Security experts believe the group is a rebranding of the notorious Russia-linked Babuk ransomware group, which carried out more than 65 attacks and received $13 million in ransom payments, according to the U.S. Department of Justice

    Threat intelligence company Cyble noted similarities between the Termite and Babuk ransomware strains, and security researchers at Broadcom observed the group using a modified version of Babuk ransomware.

    On its dark web leak site, where the gang lists six other victims, Termite is threatening to publish data allegedly stolen from Blue Yonder “soon.” It’s not known whether it has demanded a ransom payment from the company, and Blue Yonder declined to say when asked by TechCrunch.

    Blue Yonder also declined to say how much and what types of data had been stolen but did not dispute the claims made by Termite when asked.

    In an update to its cybersecurity incident page on Friday, Blue Yonder said it has “notified customers who were impacted by operational disruptions and have been working with them throughout the restoration process.”

    It’s still not known how many of Blue Yonder’s 3,000-plus customers were impacted by the incident. U.K. supermarket chains Morrisons and Sainsbury’s previously confirmed to TechCrunch that they had been affected, and U.S. coffee giant Starbucks said the ransomware attack had forced managers to manually calculate employees’ pay.

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  • Itch.io is currently offline due to a ‘trash AI-powered’ phishing report

    Itch.io is currently offline due to a ‘trash AI-powered’ phishing report

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    Indie game storefront Itch.io is currently offline because of what it describes as a bogus phishing report. While the game store’s servers are still online, the domain for the website is currently pointing towards IP addresses that itch.io doesn’t own — making it inaccessible for most people.

    Itch.io blames pop culture collectibles company Funko for the issues in a post on X, “because they use some trash ‘AI-powered’ Brand Protection Software called Brand Shield that created some bogus Phishing report to our registrar.”

    While the disputed page has been taken down, itch.io’s domain registrar, iwantmyname, still disabled the domain likely due to automated systems. According to a post on X, the indie game marketplace is now waiting on the domain registrar to respond and re-enable its domain.

    If you know how to tweak your hosts file that maps hostnames to IP addresses then you can use the 45.33.107.166 IP address in the meantime, but you’ll need to remove the entry once the domain is restored. Itch.io is hoping the problems will be resolved in a matter of hours so it doesn’t have to deploy a new domain name instead.

    The domain issues come just days after itch.io started allowing its users to use its domain name for Bluesky accounts. If you have spent $10 on the platform then you have the option to use your itch.io profile URL on Bluesky, but the current domain issues mean anyone who switched to the custom itch.io URLs has an “invalid handle” error on Bluesky until the main itch.io domain is back online.

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  • Taking on the Tyranny of the Tech Bros

    Taking on the Tyranny of the Tech Bros

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    The glow of the tech bros’ halo is dimming and, in 2025, the computing industry’s sheen of glamor will continue to fade, too. While other STEM fields are making strides in broadening participation in their workforces, year after year, computing, a supposedly innovative field, fails to recruit, retain, and respect women and nonbinary workers. For example, precision questioning, abstraction, aggression, sexism and a disdain for altruism—serving the social good—are a few of the core values driving culture in computing worksites. These values and the ways they are policed via bias, discrimination, and harassment in high-tech companies form the “Bro Code.”

    The Bro Code perpetuates high tolerance of sexual harassment. It also contributes to the field’s failure to rectify its stark segregation. Only 21 percent of computer programming positions are held by women. Of that 21 percent, only 2 percent are African American, and only 1 percent are Latina. While sorely underrepresented in the field overall, women are disproportionately affected during industry’s downsizing. For example, nearly 70 percent of those laid off in the 2022 tech layoffs were women. This tracks with my experience in Big Tech. As soon as the company went public, stockholders demanded annual layoffs. For the first two years, the only people terminated in my department were women.

    Further, due to their massive wealth and masterful branding, Bro Code bosses believe themselves to be wizards or priests. They lean into authoritarianism, prompted to repress complaints and resistance. Some programmers imitate this behavior. For example, in 2023, tech bros mobbed the Grace Hopper Celebration, the world’s largest conference for women and nonbinary tech workers. Women attendees I spoke with described men at the career expo simply barging in front of them in lines, and some said they were verbally harassed and assaulted.

    In 2025, the march towards a future dictated by algorithmic lords will falter. Coalitions between feminist movements and labor activism will increase public scrutiny of tech culture. These efforts will start to crack the Bro Code. Bro Code bosses talk a big game about its socially revolutionary impact, but participants in my research felt thwarted when trying to use their technical skills to serve others. For instance, Lynn reported that the eye-tracking device she developed to help people with disabilities was repurposed for marketing analysis; Shauna’s lab mates nicknamed her “accessibility bitch” when she worked on projects to help those disenfranchised in computing.

    As Big Tech continues to deliver empty promises instead of solutions to social ills—while dodging taxes, quashing regulations and fueling a yawning pay inequality gap—the public will continue to grow disenchanted with the industry. In 2025, thwarted altruistic efforts like Shauna and Lynn’s will accelerate growing skepticism about computing’s service to humanity.

    Disenfranchised tech workers will continue to help us hold Bro Code bosses accountable for not only failing to live up to its widely publicized altruism, but also for their efforts to conceal the social harms of their products. As recent organizing activities by tech workers show, strong coalitions across workers are what scare these reigning elites the most. For example, in 2018, more than 20,000 Google employees across the globe staged a walkout against sexual harassment and systemic racism in the company. In 2025, activism against the militarization, racism, sexism and economic exploitation in the tech industry will skyrocket higher than Bro Code bosses’ space jets.

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