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 might dictate the whims of the tech trade, resulting in a number of “largest information tales of the yr” taking place over the course of a month, all fully disconnected from each other.
I can’t cease occupied with an excellent tweet I noticed final month, which encapsulated the absurdity of the yr — it was one thing alongside the strains of, “Meta laid off 11,000 individuals and it’s solely the third largest tech story of the week.” Usually, a social media large shedding 13% of its workforce would simply be the week’s prime story, however this was the second when FTX went bankrupt and everybody was impersonating corporations on Twitter as a result of someway Elon Musk didn’t suppose by means of how issues would go horribly unsuitable if anybody might purchase a blue test. Oh, good occasions.
After I say it appears like we’re residing 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. After all, that’s not what’s actually taking place. However in January, would you’ve got believed me if I advised 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 vital sums of cash into one thing that they believed to be funding. It’s humorous to consider the way you’d react ten years in the past if somebody advised you that Meta (oh yeah, that’s what Fb known as now) is dropping billions of dollars every quarter to construct digital actuality expertise that nobody appears to need. However these administration selections will not be a joke for the workers who misplaced their jobs due to these decisions.
The place does this go away 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 workforce of Amazon success heart staff in Staten Island to win a union election, efficiently advocating for themselves within the face of great adversity. It’s additionally doable for Elon Musk to buy Twitter for $44 billion.
AI expertise like Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT encapsulate this fragile stability between innovation and horror. You can also make stunning artworks in seconds, and you may also endanger the livelihoods of working artists. You possibly can ask an AI chatbot to show you about historical past, however there’s no approach to know if its response is factually correct (until you do additional analysis, wherein case, you possibly can’ve simply carried out 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 could as nicely have been generated by ChatGPT.
Or possibly actuality is definitely stranger than something an AI might 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 declares 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 that means that I needed to clarify the “ligma” joke on like 4 completely different tech podcasts.
- Three individuals bought arrested for working a Club Penguin clone.
- One of many Division of Justice’s most important suspects in a $3.6 billion crypto money 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 collection.
- A foul Twitter function replace impacted the stock of a pharmaceutical firm.
- Elon Musk’s greatest rival is a College of Central Florida sophomore.
- FTC chair Lina Khan mentioned that Taylor Swift did extra to educate Gen Z about antitrust law than she ever might.
- 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 individuals utilizing emoji reactions to make soiled jokes (and talking of the UK, there have been three completely different Prime Ministers since September.)
These are unusual occasions. If the foundations are made up and the factors don’t matter, let’s no 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 live action Mario, and fewer tech CEOs being sentenced for fraud. Is that an excessive amount of to ask?
