Trusting AI is dangerous. It’s time for an open-source revival

[This newsletter was published last Friday (4/3/26) on our website, but failed to send to subscribers as intended. Our next edition will go out this Friday, 4/10, as per our normal schedule.]

I’ve always respected the ideals of open source software. The community committed to these services and programs have incredible, noble devotion to tracking the ins and outs of code. But until recently, I generally viewed an open source philosophy as a bonus, nice to see but not heavily influential when deciding what to use.

But AI has upended a lot of my perspective, including how much to trust closed source code. Before, I made my choices based on feature sets and interfaces. Now I’m much more aware that if you don’t know what’s in the code, you don’t know what’s really happening.

My time covering cybersecurity keeps driving home this point. You’re likely aware of attacks like malicious browser extensions that perform their advertised function, but also alter URLs or spy on your browsing in the background. Unless you sling code or work in cybersecurity, you’ll be none the wiser until someone else discovers the duplicity. AI can ensnare you in a similar situation, but with a wider range of potential issues—and far more potential damage.

AI models can be manipulated and tricked, or even trained to be outright “evil.” While attending sessions at this year’s RSAC 2026 and B-Sides cybersecurity conferences, I was walked through the ways an AI can end up shilling for companies, making unauthorized purchases, and even handing over control of a Google account to an attacker. And when I asked one of the presenters about how consumers could catch and prevent these things from happening, he told me we can’t. Not unless you happen to be a security researcher (or a knowledgeable enough person who pokes at code like one), as with those malicious browser extensions.

Open source can’t directly tackle all these problems of course. But this problem with AI sucks, and if I have to make recommendations to others about what services to use—if I myself need to trust that the data I share or upload will get handled properly—I’d rather rely on options where the code can be seen and vetted publicly.

I know I’m not alone in this thought; the open source community exists for a reason. But what’s new is today’s tech landscape. It has made open source code seem important to people like me who didn’t pay much attention before…and also a priority to folks in unexpected places. While speaking with Microsoft at RSAC 2026, the head of pentesting (the art of attacking IT systems to see what vulnerabilities exist) also voiced the importance of open source code—that it’s fundamental at this point in history.

AI is a tool, sure. But it is both accentuating and accelerating change in how we interact with technology. We users have less and less control over the apps and services in our lives. The era of buying once and reliably expecting the software to hold is all but dead. Now you can go to sleep one night and wake up to compromised software the next, and you likely won’t know until someone else tells you. And yes, this Microsoft security expert bullish on open source is the same person who advises evaluating AI not on what it is, but if we trust who built it. That’s sound advice, but let’s be real: Trust only goes so far. People make mistakes all the time.

So now I’m starting to think of software and services in a similar way as those who shop organic and scrutinize ingredient lists. I consider not just an app or service’s origins, but what could possibly be dangerous in it. And I can’t know that if it’s not available to examine—which is the point that the open source community has championed for decades. And rightly so, it seems.

In this episode of The Full Nerd

In this episode of The Full Nerd, Adam Patrick Murray, Alaina Yee, and Will Smith chat about AMD’s reveal of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 and Adam’s experience testing Nvidia’s DLSS 4.5. While discussing Team Red’s new upcoming flagship chip, I make a point about its intended audience that is promptly quoted in the video’s comments. With wide artistic license. Very wide.

But as surprising as a dual 3D V-Cache chip is, especially after AMD’s initial disinclination toward one, our team put out a bonus launch this week as well. You should check out one of our audio feeds for the show, is all I’m saying.

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Don’t miss out on our other shows too—you can catch episodes of Dual Boot Diaries, The Full Nerd: Extra Edition, and Expedition: Handheld through our channel!

And if you need more hardware talk during the rest of the week, come join our Discord community—it’s full of cool, laid-back nerds.

This week’s lighter nerd news

After a week of learning how tech is vulnerable to all kinds of nasty attacks, I needed a break from gloom and doom. And you know what? The news cycle delivered, much to my surprise. There’s potential recompense for LastPas’s truly disastrous 2022 data breach, someone got a badly damaged 5090 up and running again (mostly), and hey, Linux’s market share doubled.

Also, software pirates showed that even they have standards around security, which was refreshing.

• Even pirates said maybe no: A new crack for games with Denuvo anti-piracy DRM is so risky that even those helming the ships on the high seas have warned about the dangers.

• No thanks: Perplexity is being accused of sharing chat info from incognito sessions with Meta and Google. Not saying I believe the claims wholesale, but given everything with AI and security right now, the idea of such sharing puts AI integrations with browsers in a different light for me.

• It actually works: Claude apparently monitors for swearing in user input. But instead of being creeped out by this, I can’t help but think of what I heard once from a member of the Google Assistant team. They implied that they heard a lot of swearing in the voice recordings. A lot. All part of the improvement process, I guess.

• Never thought about that: Ars Technica this week got me thinking not just about massive dragonflies, but if I could cope with bugs the size of pigeons. (No.)

• Ouch: The once ultra-affordable Raspberry Pi has seen dramatic jumps in price since earlier this year—the Raspberry Pi 500+ is now $150 more.

• Thanks, I hate it: Apparently the AI industry’s demand for servers has further encroached on gaming—one title, Stormgate, will be shutting down multiplayer for its game (at least for now), due to its server provider being sold to an AI company.

• There are dozens of us: I know it’s millions. And I should have probably said “you” since I’ve yet to officially join the Linux train. But this meme feels accurate in vibe, even with this news of its market share doubling. (I say this with love, I promise.)

• What a save: This 5090 may not be in as tip-top shape as when it shipped from the factory, but clever modders saved it from the trash heap with jumper wires and a custom BIOS. (This story is also a good reminder that sometimes an inexpensive support bracket can save you a lot of heartache.)

• xxKillerxx no more: You can finally change your Gmail address. Celebrate, for now we olds no longer have to abandon accounts created in our teens and twenties.

• The LastPass breach settlement is real: The terms are surprisingly complex for who can file for a claim and for what types of claims, but I wrote a rundown of the details. Up to a third of the almost $25 million will go to legal fees and such, so don’t expect too much if a court approves these terms in July.

• Makes sense to me: Sweden’s return to analog textbooks may be controversial to some, but I find the evolving data about how humans learn best is a particularly relevant point in today’s digital-first world.

Y’all, it’s Easter this weekend. You know what that means: Candy sales. And yes—I’m willing to defend my inexplicable fondness for Peeps. Come at me on the Discord server about colored marshmallows in the form of bunnies. It won’t change that I bought a pack. Or three.

Catch you all next week!

Alaina

This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and executive editor of hardware at PCWorld.