How Rust went from a side project to the world’s most-loved programming language

Welcome back to What’s Next in Tech. In this edition, discover the series of events that led to Rust becoming one of the hottest programming languages on the planet. Then, find out how OpenAI is trying to make ChatGPT safer and less biased, and learn why the controversial crime tracking app Citizen wants to recruit 20,000 new users from the Bay Area’s AAPI community.

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For decades, coders wrote critical systems in C and C++. Now they turn to Rust.

Many software projects emerge because—somewhere out there—a programmer had a personal problem to solve.

That’s more or less what happened to Graydon Hoare. In 2006, Hoare was a 29-year-old computer programmer working for Mozilla. After a software crash broke the elevator in his building, he set about designing a new computer language; one that he hoped would make it possible to write small, fast code without memory bugs.?

That language developed into Rust, one of the hottest programming languages on the planet. But while it isn’t unusual for someone to make a new computer language, it’s incredibly rare for one to take hold and become part of the programming pantheon. How did Rust do it? Read the story.

How OpenAI is trying to make ChatGPT safer and less biased

Have you been threatened by an AI chatbot yet? Over the past week it seems like almost every news outlet has tried Microsoft’s Bing AI search and found that the chatbot makes up stupid and creepy stuff. OpenAI, the startup behind the chatbot’s language technology, has also gotten a lot of heat from conservatives in the US who have accused its chatbot ChatGPT of having a “woke” bias.?

All this outrage is finally having an impact, and OpenAI has realized it needs to do more to reassure the public. MIT Technology Review’s senior AI reporter Melissa Heikkil? spoke to two AI policy researchers at OpenAI to hear more about how the company is making ChatGPT safer. Read the story.

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How Citizen is trying to remake itself by recruiting elderly Asians

The crime tracking app Citizen has long been criticized for amplifying paranoia around crime and helping white residents practice racial gatekeeping.

Now, it’s trying to remake itself into a service to help protect the most vulnerable among us—starting with elderly Asians in and around San Francisco.

Citizen is recruiting 20,000 users from the Bay Area’s AAPI community for a new project that intends to see if the app can serve vulnerable communities that don’t trust police… but experts are worried it could actually make things worse. Read the story.

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network.

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Image credits: Jinhwa Jang; Stephanie Arnett/MITTR | Noun Project; Stephanie Arnett/MITTR | Envato