This yr in tech, an excessive amount of occurred and little or no of it made sense. It was like we have been being managed by a random quantity generator that may dictate the whims of the tech trade, resulting in a number of “greatest information tales of the yr” occurring over the course of a month, all utterly disconnected from each other.
I can’t cease enthusiastic about an excellent tweet I noticed final month, which encapsulated the absurdity of the yr — it was one thing alongside the traces of, “Meta laid off 11,000 folks and it’s solely the third greatest tech story of the week.” Usually, a social media large shedding 13% of its workforce would simply be the week’s high story, however this was the second when FTX went bankrupt and everybody was impersonating firms on Twitter as a result of one way or the other Elon Musk didn’t suppose by means of how issues would go horribly fallacious if anybody may purchase a blue test. Oh, good occasions.
Once I say it appears like we’re dwelling in a simulation, what I imply is that typically, I hear in regards to the newest tech information and really feel like somebody threw some phrases in a hat, picked just a few, and tried to attach the dots. In fact, that’s not what’s actually occurring. However in January, would you’ve gotten believed me if I instructed you that Twitter proprietor Elon Musk polled customers to determine that he would unban Donald Trump?
These absurd occasions in tech have penalties. Crypto collapses like FTX’s chapter and the UST scandal have harmed precise individuals who invested important sums of cash into one thing that they believed to be a great funding. It’s humorous to consider the way you’d react ten years in the past if somebody instructed you that Meta (oh yeah, that’s what Fb is known as now) is dropping billions of {dollars} each quarter to construct digital actuality know-how that nobody appears to need. However these administration choices will not be a joke for the workers who misplaced their jobs due to these decisions.
The place does this depart us? We’re in a second in tech historical past the place nothing is simply too absurd to be doable. That’s each inspiring and horrifying. It’s doable for a group of Amazon success heart staff in Staten Island to win a union election, efficiently advocating for themselves within the face of super adversity. It’s additionally doable for Elon Musk to purchase Twitter for $44 billion.
AI know-how like Steady Diffusion and ChatGPT encapsulate this fragile stability between innovation and horror. You may make lovely artworks in seconds, and you can even endanger the livelihoods of working artists. You possibly can ask an AI chatbot to show you about historical past, however there’s no technique to know if its response is factually correct (except you do additional analysis, wherein case, you might’ve simply executed your personal analysis to start with).
However maybe a part of the rationale why AI mills have garnered such mainstream attraction is that they virtually really feel pure to us. This yr’s tech information feels so weird that they may as nicely have been generated by ChatGPT.
Or possibly actuality is definitely stranger than something an AI may give you. I requested ChatGPT to jot down some headlines about tech information for me, and it got here up with these snoozers (along with some factually inaccurate headlines, which I omitted for the sake of journalism):
- “Apple’s iOS 15 replace brings main enhancements to iPhones and iPads”
- “Amazon’s new line of autonomous supply robots causes controversy”
- “Intel publicizes new line of processors with superior security measures”
Fairly boring! Listed below are some precise actual issues that occurred in tech this yr:
- Tony the Tiger made his debut as a VTuber.
- Somebody claimed to be a laid off Twitter worker named Rahul Ligma, and a herd of reporters didn’t get the joke, inadvertently which means that I needed to clarify the “ligma” joke on like 4 totally different tech podcasts.
- Three folks bought arrested for working a Membership Penguin clone.
- One of many Division of Justice’s predominant suspects in a $3.6 billion crypto cash laundering scheme is an entrepreneur-slash-rapper named Razzlekhan.
- The brand new Pokémon sport has a line of dialogue with the phrase “cheugy.”
- Donald Trump dropped an NFT assortment.
- A nasty Twitter characteristic replace impacted the inventory of a pharmaceutical firm.
- Elon Musk’s best rival is a College of Central Florida sophomore.
- FTC chair Lina Khan stated that Taylor Swift did extra to educate Gen Z about antitrust legislation than she ever may.
- Meta is promoting a $1,499 VR headset for use for distant work.
- The UK Treasury made a Discord account to share public bulletins however was instantly spammed with folks utilizing emoji reactions to make soiled jokes (and talking of the UK, there have been three totally different Prime Ministers since September.)
These are unusual occasions. If the principles are made up and the factors don’t matter, let’s not less than hope that if the absurdity continues into 2023, the tech information is extra amusing than dangerous. I would like extra Chris Pratt voicing dwell motion Mario, and fewer tech CEOs being sentenced for fraud. Is that an excessive amount of to ask?
