MIT Names Major Tech Failures of 2024: Employees of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shared their views on the main technological failures of 2024. The list included eight absurd, unsuccessful, or unusual events. One example was the “politically correct” generation of people in the Google Gemini chatbot.
The list was published in the MIT Technology Review. One of the recent failures involved how the Google Gemini neural network generated images of people. It was difficult to obtain an image from the AI without an “inclusive” influence, and there were almost no Caucasians in the results. As a result, Google completely disabled the ability to generate images of people in the free version of Gemini.
Astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore arrived at the ISS in early summer aboard the Boeing Starliner. They were scheduled to stay on the station for 7-10 days, but due to a malfunction with the Starliner, the spacecraft was sent back to Earth without a crew. As a result, the astronauts’ return home was delayed, and they will not return before March 2025.
In July, thousands of Windows 11 computers and devices around the world stopped working due to a cybersecurity update from CrowdStrike. As a result, airlines and other organizations were temporarily disrupted. For example, Delta Air Lines had to cancel 7,000 flights.
The Bowery startup proposed a new method for growing lettuce in vertical farms that was expected to be 100 times more productive than conventional ones. Investors valued the idea at $700 million, but Bowery’s products turned out to be more expensive than their competitors, and in the spring of 2023, part of the crop was spoiled by a pathogen. As a result, the startup went bankrupt.
In July, Israel blew up the pagers of Hezbollah members in Lebanon and Syria.
23andMe is a genetic testing company that deciphers DNA from a saliva sample and tells customers about their ancestry and other details. A data breach involving 6.9 million users caused 23andMe’s value to fall from $6 billion to $400 million, and led to the resignation of seven executives.
AI Slop: This term describes low-quality AI-generated images. With the development of neural networks in 2024, such images became especially common, prompting the need for a term to describe them.
Nori and Running Tide: Both companies shut down in 2024, and both were focused on carbon-related initiatives. Running Tide aimed to grow algae on platforms in the Atlantic Ocean that would absorb CO2 from the water column, while Nori intended to create an exchange where carbon-removal companies could be paid for their work. However, neither initiative lived up to expectations.
