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This 12 months in tech, an excessive amount of occurred and little or no of it made sense. It was like we had been being managed by a random quantity generator that may dictate the whims of the tech trade, resulting in a number of “largest information tales of the 12 months” taking place over the course of a month, all utterly disconnected from each other.
I can’t cease excited about an excellent tweet I noticed final month, which encapsulated the absurdity of the 12 months — 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 big 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 firms on Twitter as a result of someway Elon Musk didn’t assume by means of how issues would go horribly incorrect if anybody may purchase a blue verify. Oh, good instances.
After I say it appears like we’re residing in a simulation, what I imply is that generally, I hear in regards to the newest tech information and really feel like somebody threw some phrases in a hat, picked a couple of, 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 informed you that Twitter proprietor Elon Musk polled customers to resolve 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 an excellent funding. It’s humorous to consider the way you’d react ten years in the past if somebody informed you that Meta (oh yeah, that’s what Fb is named now) is dropping billions of {dollars} each quarter to construct digital actuality know-how that nobody appears to need. However these administration choices should not a joke for the staff who misplaced their jobs due to these selections.
The place does this depart us? We’re in a second in tech historical past the place nothing is just too absurd to be potential. That’s each inspiring and horrifying. It’s potential for a staff 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 potential for Elon Musk to purchase Twitter for $44 billion.
AI know-how like Secure Diffusion and ChatGPT encapsulate this fragile steadiness between innovation and horror. You may make stunning artworks in seconds, and you may also endanger the livelihoods of working artists. You’ll be able to ask an AI chatbot to show you about historical past, however there’s no option to know if its response is factually correct (until you do additional analysis, during which case, you can’ve simply completed your personal analysis to start with).
However maybe a part of the rationale why AI turbines have garnered such mainstream attraction is that they virtually really feel pure to us. This 12 months’s tech information feels so weird that they may as properly 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 proclaims new line of processors with superior security measures”
Fairly boring! Listed below are some precise actual issues that occurred in tech this 12 months:
- 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 completely different tech podcasts.
- Three individuals bought arrested for working a Membership Penguin clone.
- One of many Division of Justice’s principal 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 foul 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 coach Gen Z about antitrust regulation 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 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 instances. If the foundations 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 need extra Chris Pratt voicing reside motion Mario, and fewer tech CEOs being sentenced for fraud. Is that an excessive amount of to ask?
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