Welcome to our yearly compilation of the most unfortunate, least effective, and frankly silliest technologies of the year.
This year, politics played a significant role. Donald Trump made a return to office and utilized his executive authority to alter the dynamics of whole industries, spanning from renewable energy to cryptocurrency. The chaos began even prior to his swearing-in, when the president-elect promoted his personal memecoin, $TRUMP, in a blatantly commercial move that, naturally, earns a spot on this year’s tech fiascos list.
We like to believe there’s a moral in every tech blunder. However, when technology becomes reliant on power, sometimes the lesson is simpler: it might have been wiser to avoid it altogether.
This was the conclusion drawn by Elon Musk from his experience as the catalyst for DOGE, the disruptive budget-cutting campaign that targeted federal agencies directly. Public outrage ensued. Teslas were ignited, and those driving his hyped Cybertruck found that instead of approval, they received the middle finger.
Upon reflection, Musk stated he wouldn’t make the same choice again. “Instead of engaging in DOGE, I would have simply … focused on my companies,” he told an interviewer recently. “And they wouldn’t have faced car combustion.”
Regrets—2025 was not without them. Here are some of the more memorable instances.
NEO, the household robot
Visualize a metallic butler that fills your dishwasher and opens your door. It’s a vision ripped straight from science fiction. And it will remain just that—at least for a while.
That was the amusing, and somewhat deflating, conclusion from the initial feedback on NEO, a 66-pound humanoid robot whose creator asserts it will “perform any of your chores dependably” when it becomes available next year.
But as a journalist for the Wall Street Journal discovered, NEO took two minutes to fold a sweater and could not manage to crack a walnut. Not to mention, the robot was controlled the entire time by a human utilizing a VR visor.
Still intrigued? Neo is on preorder for $20,000 from the startup 1X.
More: I Tried the Robot That’s Coming to Live With You. It’s Still Part Human (WSJ), The World’s Stupidest Robot Maid (The Daily Show) Why the humanoid workforce is running late (MIT Technology Review), NEO The Home Robot | Order Today (1X Corp.)
Obsequious AI
It’s been remarked that San Francisco is a city where no one will critique your poor ideas. Its most significant product in a decade—ChatGPT—frequently operates in this exact manner.
This year, OpenAI released a particularly obsequious update that complimented users for their ordinary inquiries as if they were profoundly insightful. This electronic sycophant routine isn’t by chance; it’s part of a market strategy. Many people appreciate the flattery.
Yet it is also disingenuous and harmful. Chatbots have shown a readiness to indulge users’ delusions and detrimental instincts, including suicidal thoughts.
In April, OpenAI acknowledged the problem when the company retracted a model update whose overly agreeable personality, it claimed, had the unintended consequence of “validating uncertainties, escalating anger, prompting rash actions, or reinforcing negative feelings.”
Don’t presume the issue has been rectified. This month, when I shared one of my less impressive ideas with ChatGPT, its reply started: “I love this notion.”
More: What OpenAI Did When ChatGPT Users Lost Touch With Reality (New York Times), Obsequious AI Decreases Prosocial Intentions and Promotes Dependence (arXiv), Elaborating on what we overlooked with obsequiousness (OpenAI)
The company that cried “dire wolf”
When you deceive, make it a grand tale. Let it leap and have pointed ears. And make it white. Very white.
That’s precisely what the Texas biotech firm Colossal Biosciences did when it presented three snow-white creatures, claiming they were genuine dire wolves, which vanished over 10,000 years ago.
While these genetically altered gray wolves were indeed remarkable engineering accomplishments, rendered white through a genetic mutation and even possessing bits of DNA replicated from ancient dire wolf remains, they “are not dire wolves,” as stated by canine experts at the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Colossal’s promotional campaign could harm actual endangered species. Positioning de-extinction as “an immediate conservation solution,” warned the IUCN, “risks distracting from the more pressing imperative of maintaining functional and healthy ecosystems.”
In a statement, Colossal asserted that sentiment analysis from online engagement shows 98% consensus with its furry declarations. “They’re dire wolves, end of story,” it maintains.
More: Game of Clones: Colossal’s new wolves are cute, but are they dire? (MIT Technology Review), Conservation perspectives on gene editing in wild canids (IUCN), A statement from Colossal’s Chief Science Officer, Dr. Beth Shapiro (Reddit)
mRNA political cleanse
Save the planet, and this is the gratitude you receive?
During the covid-19 outbreak, the US heavily invested in mRNA vaccines—and the new method delivered at an unprecedented pace.
However, now that America’s leading health agencies are helmed by the anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “mRNA” has turned into a political epithet.
In August, Kennedy abruptly terminated contracts worth hundreds of millions for advanced vaccine development. As a result, Moderna—once heralded as America’s leader—has witnessed its stock plunge by over 90% since the height of the Covid crisis.
The purge aimed at a critical biomolecule of life (since our bodies are rich in mRNA) isn’t just bizarre; it might also hinder other mRNA-related treatments, such as cancer therapies and gene editing for rare ailments.
In August, a trade organization responded, asserting: “Kennedy’s unscientific and misguided condemnation of mRNA technology and his cancellation of grants epitomizes the act of cutting off your nose to spite your face.”
More: HHS Winds Down mRNA Vaccine Development (US Department of Health and Human Services), Cancelling mRNA studies is the highest irresponsibility (Nature), How Moderna, the company that helped save the world, unraveled (Stat News)
Greenlandic Wikipedia
Wikipedia boasts editions in 340 languages. However, as of this year, there’s one less: the Greenlandic edition of Wikipedia has ceased to exist.
Only approximately 60,000 individuals speak the Inuit language. It seems very few of them were ever particularly interested in the online encyclopedia. Consequently, numerous entries were machine-translated and filled with inaccuracies and absurdities.
A site that garners no visitors shouldn’t be a concern. Nonetheless, its presence posed a risk of a linguistic “doom spiral” for the endangered language. Such an event could transpire if new AI models were developed using these flawed Wikipedia entries.
In September, administrators voted to discontinue Greenlandic Wikipedia, citing potential “harm to the Greenlandic language.”
Read more: Can AI Help Revitalize Indigenous Languages? (Smithsonian), How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral (MIT Technology Review), Closure of Greenlandic Wikipedia (Wikimedia)
Tesla Cybertruck
There’s a reason we have arrived late to the criticism surrounding Elon Musk’s Cybertruck. It’s because a year ago, the controversial polygon was the leading electric pickup in the US.
So it might have turned out to be a success.
Nope. Tesla is expected to sell only about 20,000 trucks this year, roughly half of the sales from the previous year. A significant part of the issue is that the entire EV pickup market is faltering. Just this month, Ford opted to discontinue its own electric truck, the F-150 Lightning.
With inventory piles rising, Musk has begun selling Cybertrucks as fleet vehicles to his other ventures, such as SpaceX.
More: Elon’s Edsel: Tesla Cybertruck Is The Auto Industry’s Biggest Flop In Decades (Forbes), Why Tesla Cybertrucks Aren’t Selling (CNBC), Ford scraps fully-electric F-150 Lightning as mounting losses and falling demand hits EV plans (AP)
Presidential shitcoin
Donald Trump introduced a digital currency known as $TRUMP just days ahead of his 2025 inauguration, complete with a logo showcasing his fist-pumping “Fight, fight, fight” stance.
This was a memecoin, or shitcoin, rather than legitimate money. Memecoins resemble merchandise—collectibles aimed at being bought and sold, often resulting in a loss. Indeed, they have been compared to a consensual con in which the creator of the coin profits while purchasers incur losses.
The White House argues that there’s nothing inappropriate about it. “The American public believes it’s ridiculous for anyone to suggest that this president is profiting off of the presidency,” said spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt in May.
More: Donald and Melania Trump’s Terrible, Tacky, Seemingly Legal Memecoin Adventure (Bloomberg), A crypto mogul who invested millions into Trump coins is getting a reprieve (CNN), How the Trump companies made $1 bn from crypto (Financial Times), Staff Statement on Meme Coins (SEC)
“Carbon-neutral” Apple Watch
In 2023, Apple declared its “first-ever carbon-neutral product,” a watch with “zero” net emissions. It planned to achieve this through the use of recycled materials and renewable energy, alongside efforts to conserve forests or plant extensive eucalyptus groves.
Critics argue it’s merely greenwashing. This year, lawsuits were filed in California against Apple for misleading advertising, and a German court determined that the company cannot market products as carbon neutral because the “projected storage of CO2 in commercial eucalyptus plantations” is uncertain.
Apple’s marketing team had to back down. New packaging for its latest watches does not carry the label “carbon neutral.” However, Apple contends that the legal disputes are counterproductive, asserting that they can only “deter the kind of credible corporate climate action that is essential.”
More: Inside the controversial tree farms powering Apple’s carbon neutral goal (MIT Technology Review), Apple Watch not a ‘CO2-neutral product,’ German court finds (Reuters), Apple 2030: Our ambition to become carbon neutral (Apple)
