Elon Musk buys Twitter, the rise of artificial intelligence and major data breaches
In 2022, however, it wasn’t the gadgets themselves that grabbed the headlines.
It’s not the first time gadgets don’t top the list; reflecting on the census debacle in 2016 and in 2018 the Facebook data problems following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The top three tech stories this year all come from just the last few months of 2022.
Maybe a legal battle was going to cost too much, or maybe he saw the value despite his misgivings — whatever it was, Musk finally completed the purchase of Twitter in late October, and walked into Twitter headquarters with a wash — and tweeted “let it sink in” .
It escalated the most when he tweeted another poll, asking if he should step down as Twitter boss.
The vote went against him and he is now tasked with finding a new CEO for his pet project.
All the while, his other business Tesla has suffered from a sharp decline in its share price.
All eyes will be on Musk as we move into 2023.
2: AI – the fancy profile pictures and powerful ChatGPT artificial intelligence
You might have seen some fancy pictures being shared by your friends on social media, artwork to some, cartoon like pictures to others.
The rise of AI took a big leap forward when the research project ChatGPT gained traction.
It’s a platform that allows users to ask questions and get written answers, so anyone can ask ChatGPT to write an essay on any topic, possibly the most advanced computer intelligence we’ve seen.
Users have taken to social media to demonstrate ChatGPT writing lesson plans for teachers, attempt medical diagnoses based on symptoms, paraphrase poorly worded emails or even write a real estate ad.
The possibilities are endless.
We are only at 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 when Optus and Medibank hit
Two of Australia’s largest individual breaches, 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 received mixed messages, while Medibank over-communicated with users.
The result is that millions of Aussies are now at a much higher risk of fraud 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 a data breach on the scale of Optus of Medibank before, we can only hope we never see one again.
