Google, YouTube and the future of the American worker

Google, YouTube and the future of the American worker

RELATED: GOOGLE CEO SUNDAR PICHAI SAYS DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY MUST EMPOWER WORKERS, NOT ALIENATE THEM

Artificial intelligence is a topic that has famously divided two other tech titans: Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. The Facebook CEO has made the case that AI can improve lives, while Tesla founder Musk has warned we need to be cautious.

"I'm not personally scared," sad Wojcicki. "We live in a time of important technological change and we need to communicate what we're doing."

While embracing technological change is important, Pichai said the worries over whether AI can swoop in and steal human jobs is valid.

Not only will government need to play a role, he said, but it is also "going to be important to continuously train people." Whereas two or three decades ago, people would go to school and that would serve them through their careers, he said "that's not going to be the case any longer."

The need for digital savvy is continuing to grow. Jobs requiring �medium-digital� skills in the United States have grown from 40 percent in 2002 to 48 percent in 2016, according to a report from the Brookings Institute.

With a technology skills gap, there's also the question of the future of foreign-born tech workers in the United States. While they're the backbone of Silicon Valley, the Trump administration has already tightened H-1B visa rules.

Pichai was born in India. Wojcicki is the daughter of immigrants. Both know the important role foreign technology talent plays in Silicon Valley, whether that be at their companies or founding start-ups.

Nearly three-quarters of tech workers in Silicon Valley are foreign born, according to a report.

"We want to be a company that has a point of view," said Wojcicki. "H-1B is important to our company in terms of competitiveness. We have many individuals who feel immigration is important. At the same time, we want to be working with the government we have. We are a company with many different users.

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Some Budget Phones in the US Still Sending Personal Data Back to China, Says Kryptowire

Some Budget Phones in the US Still Sending Personal Data Back to China, Says Kryptowire 

HIGHLIGHTS

• Kryptowire last year found cheap phones in the US sending data to China
• Security firm says Adups� spyware still active
• It also found vulnerabilities in a MediaTek chipset

Despite last year's revelation where some smartphones being sold in the US were found laced with a software that could send private data to servers in China, it seems as though nothing was learnt from the mistake. According to a recent study, it seems the group behind last year's privacy-invading software is still active and continues to send personal data to China, only more discreetly than before.

Shanghai Adups Technology, a firm based in China, was caught last year in November for having added a backdoor to the firmware of cheap smartphones like the Blu R1 HD sold in the US. The firmware was found to be sending personally identifiable information (PII) to servers in China via a back door. At the time, the Shanghai-based firm said it had mistakenly used code for China-based software in these firmware.

Researchers at Kryptowire discovered this back then and at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, the security firm once again revealed that Adups' software is still sending data from the Blu Grand M smartphone to the company's server in china, CNET reports. This was discovered by Ryan Johnson, a research engineer and co-founder at Kryptowire in May, almost six months after Shanghai Adups Technology confessed it was a mistake.

"They replaced them with nicer versions," Johnson said. "I have captured the network traffic of them using the command and control channel when they did it." Following this reveal, a Adups spokeswoman said the company had resolved the issues last year and that the firmware "are not existing anymore."

Apart from the Blu smartphone, Johnson also found the firmware on the Cubot X16S. These cheap Chinese phones sent data that included a list of apps installed, the apps used, IMEI numbers, call logs, browser history, and more to China. In fact, Adups claimed last year that its software is present in over than 700 million devices in 200 countries, mostly targeting low cost phones.

Cases of spyware, malware, and ransomware have been growing in recent times. The Black Hat security conference comes following recent cyber-attacks like WannaCry and Petya ransomware. There have also been reports recently of Android-based malware like SpyDealer and LeakerLocker. All of these cases have raised an alarming concern over the safety of personal information over the digital space.

These cases also point out some serious vulnerabilities with the Android platform. Kryptowire said last year that it examined 20 pieces of firmware from low-end Android devices, all of which seemed to have vulnerabilities that could allow spyware apps. Notably, all of these devices also had a particular MediaTek chipset. The chipset comes with a pre-installed app called MTKLogger, which allowed for data surveillance of browser history and GPS, to name a few. While MediaTek claims to have resolved the issue, the security firm found the vulnerability still present till last week on the Blu Advance 5.0.

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