This yr 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 yr” occurring over the course of a month, all utterly disconnected from each other.

I can’t cease fascinated about 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 folks 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 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 assume via how issues would go horribly unsuitable if anybody might purchase a blue test. Oh, good instances.

After I say it seems 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 a couple of, and tried to attach the dots. After all, that’s not what’s actually occurring. However in January, would you’ve got believed me if I advised 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 a superb 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 is named now) is dropping billions of {dollars} each quarter to construct digital actuality expertise that nobody appears to need. However these administration choices are usually not a joke for the staff 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 potential. That’s each inspiring and horrifying. It’s potential for a crew of Amazon achievement heart staff in Staten Island to win a union election, efficiently advocating for themselves within the face of super adversity. It’s additionally potential for Elon Musk to purchase Twitter for $44 billion.

AI expertise like Secure Diffusion and ChatGPT encapsulate this fragile stability between innovation and horror. You can also make lovely artworks in seconds, and it’s also possible to endanger the livelihoods of working artists. You may ask an AI chatbot to show you about historical past, however there’s no solution to know if its response is factually correct (until you do additional analysis, during which case, you could possibly’ve simply completed your individual analysis to start with).

However maybe a part of the rationale why AI turbines have garnered such mainstream attraction is that they nearly really feel pure to us. This yr’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 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 pronounces new line of processors with superior safety features”

Fairly boring! Listed here 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 received arrested for working a Membership Penguin clone.
• One of many Division of Justice’s foremost 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 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 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 instances. If the foundations are made up and the factors don’t matter, let’s a minimum of hope that if the absurdity continues into 2023, the tech information is extra amusing than dangerous. I need extra Chris Pratt voicing stay motion Mario, and fewer tech CEOs being sentenced for fraud. Is that an excessive amount of to ask?