'Restricting what an agent can know and respond to reduces its competitiveness'

The headquarters of Yandex, the Russian tech company behind the country's popular Alice AI.

The headquarters of Yandex, the Russian tech conglomerate behind the country's most popular virtual assistant

(Image credit: Andrey Rudakov / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

published 8 January 2025

'Russia's AI is smart enough to shut up'

Thomas Kent at The Wall Street Journal

When "questions turn political," Russia's top AI virtual assistant's "responses are often guarded," says Thomas Kent, creating a "fundamental problem for authoritarian countries seeking to compete with democratic nations in generative AI." Authoritarian states "can still use AI to churn out huge volumes of false content for the web," but even AI with the "greatest freedom to seek and analyze knowledge will be at peril if false information dominates the information pool they are allowed to access."

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Justin Klawans has worked as a staff writer at The Week since 2022. He began his career covering local news before joining Newsweek as a breaking news reporter, where he wrote about politics, national and global affairs, business, crime, sports, film, television and other news. Justin has also freelanced for outlets including Collider and United Press International.