In 2022 though, it wasn’t the gadgets themselves that topped the headlines.
It’s not the first time gadgets didn’t top the list; reflect on the 2016 Census debacle and in 2018 the Facebook data woes following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The top three tech stories of this year all come from just the last few months of 2022.
3: Elon Musk buys Twitter
Perhaps a legal fight was going to cost too much or perhaps he saw the value despite his concerns – whatever it was, Musk finally completed his purchase of Twitter in late October, walking into Twitter headquarters carrying a sink – tweeting “let that sink in”.
It escalated most when he tweeted another poll, asking if he should step down as Twitter CEO.
The vote went against him, and he’s now got the task of finding a new CEO for his pet project.
All the while, his other business Tesla has suffered from a steep decline in its stock price.
All eyes will be on Musk as we move into 2023.
2: AI – the fancy profile photos and powerful ChatGPT artificial intelligence
You might have seen some fancy pictures being shared by your friends on social media, works of art to some, cartoon-like images to others.
The rise of AI took a big leap forward when research project ChatGPT gained traction.
It’s a platform that allows users to ask questions and get written answers, allowing anyone to ask ChatGPT to write an essay on any topic, quite possibly the most advanced computer intelligence we’ve seen.
Users have taken to social media to demonstrate ChatGPT writing class lesson plans for teachers, attempting medical diagnoses based on symptoms, rewriting poorly worded emails or even writing a real estate advertisement.
The possibilities are endless.
We are at just the start of the AI revolution; what ChatGPT offered was a deep and powerful insight into the future.
The year in pictures: The biggest news across Australia
1: Hack month as Optus and Medibank hit
Two of the biggest individual breaches in Australia falling back-to-back created a month-long spotlight on data security and privacy in Australia.
Optus’ handling of the crisis was met with concerns from customers who either heard very little or got mixed messages, while Medibank over-communicated with its users.
The outcome is that millions of Aussies are now at a much higher risk of scams going forward.
The federal government will implement stricter data security laws, with much larger fines on the cards as a likely deterrent.
We’ve never seen data breaches the scale of Optus of Medibank before, we can only hope we never see one again.
