CA Russian network called Pravda is flooding the web with pro-Kremlin articles, and the goal isn't just to fool people. It's to poison the AI models themselves.
MPoison the AI? That's a strong word. What does that actually mean?
CNewsGuard, the outfit that rates news sites, found this network pushing out tens of thousands of AI-generated articles a month. The idea is to fill the internet with so much pro-Kremlin noise that chatbots pick it up and repeat it.
MSo it's not hacking the models. It's gaming the training data and search results.
CExactly. And in their tests, leading chatbots repeated false claims from this network about a third of the time.
MA third. That's... not great. But I've seen pushback on that number.
CRight, and this is where it gets interesting. Harvard researchers looked at the same thing and found only about five percent of responses actually supported the disinformation.
MSo NewsGuard says a third, Harvard says five percent. That's a huge gap.
CThe critics say NewsGuard's prompts were leading. They basically asked the chatbots to engage with the false claims, so of course they repeated them.
MBut that's not the point! Even if it's five percent, that's still a real problem. A chatbot confidently repeating Kremlin talking points to a user who doesn't know better—that's a win for the bad guys.
CI'm not saying it's not a problem. I'm saying the scale is being oversold. The Harvard paper calls it 'data voids'—topics where there's no good information, so the model grabs whatever's there.
MAnd the Kremlin is deliberately filling those voids. That's the whole strategy! They're not trying to convince you directly. They're trying to make the AI sound like them.
CBut here's my issue: this isn't some sophisticated AI attack. It's just SEO poisoning, the same thing spammers have done for twenty years. The new part is that chatbots are now a target.
MWhich makes it worse, not better! Because people trust chatbots more than they trust some random website. If the AI says it, it feels authoritative.
COkay, but the fix is the same as it's always been: better sourcing, better training data, and models that cite their sources. This isn't a new threat. It's an old threat with a new delivery mechanism.
MYou're underreacting. The Washington Post reported that experts warn any bad actor could game AI the same way. This is a blueprint, not a one-off.
CI'm not underreacting. I'm saying the solution is boring and hard, not exciting and new. We need better data hygiene, not panic.
MFine. But the fact that a state actor is doing this at industrial scale—tens of thousands of articles a month—that's a signal. They think it works.
CAnd the fact that Harvard found only five percent effectiveness suggests it mostly doesn't. But I'll give you this: five percent of a billion chatbot queries is still a lot of people.
MThat's exactly my point. And it's only going to get harder to spot as the models get better at sounding human.
CAlright, so we agree it's a problem. We just disagree on how scared to be.
MI'll take 'properly concerned.' You can take 'mildly annoyed.'
CDeal. Speaking of AI and money, there's a UK chip startup that's apparently pulling in serious cash.
MFractile, right? The London-based AI chip company.
CThat's the one. A founder account on X says they've allotted five hundred seventy-seven million pounds in Series C shares since September. The lead checks are American—Lightspeed and Redpoint, with Thrive also in.
MA serious funding round for a company founded in 2022.
CAnd it's a chip startup, which is even more interesting. Everyone's chasing Nvidia, and Fractile is trying to build something different.
MThat's a bit of a sore spot for the UK. They've got this hot AI chip startup, and the big money is coming from Silicon Valley.
CThat's the story of European tech in general, isn't it? Great ideas, but the growth capital comes from the US.
MThough to be fair, the filing is public—Companies House shows the share allotment. The funding details are still unconfirmed, but the paperwork is real.
CRight, the round itself hasn't been officially announced. But when you see that kind of share allotment, something big is happening.
MAnd it's a bet on AI chips that aren't just more Nvidia clones. Fractile's whole pitch is a different architecture for inference.
CWhich is where the market is going. Training gets all the headlines, but inference is where the money is—running the models, not just building them.
MIf they can actually deliver. A big round is a vote of confidence, not a product.
CFair. But half a billion pounds says some very smart people think they can.
MDifferent world entirely: the James Webb Space Telescope just found ice that's older than the star it orbits.
CWait, that's a wild sentence. Ice older than the star it orbits?
MArs Technica has the story. The ice is in a protoplanetary disk—the material around a young star that eventually forms planets. And some of that ice predates the star itself.
CSo the building blocks of planets were already there, floating in space, before the star even ignited.
MExactly. Radiation and collisions reshape it over time, but the ice itself is ancient. It's like finding the original ingredients in a cosmic kitchen.
CThat's the kind of thing that makes you feel very small. In a good way.
MIt also tells us that the chemistry for life—water, organic molecules—might be more common than we thought. It's not created fresh in every system. It's inherited.
CSo the universe has been recycling its ingredients for billions of years. We're all made of leftovers.
MDelicious, cosmic leftovers. And on a completely different note, winemakers are discovering that conservation is good for business.
CThat's a shift. The wine industry hasn't always been friendly to the 'leave it alone' crowd.
MArs Technica again. Healthy soils, native plants, fewer chemicals—vineyards are finding it helps them adapt to climate change and actually improves the wine.
CIt's almost like not poisoning your own land is a good long-term strategy. Who knew?
MRevolutionary concept. But seriously, the economics are changing. Consumers are asking for it, and the vineyards that do it are seeing real benefits.
CAnd it's not just marketing. Healthier soil holds more water, which matters when you're dealing with drought.
MSo it's a rare case where the right thing and the profitable thing are the same thing.
CThose don't come along often. Enjoy it.