2025: Dystopian Tech of the Year
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.6 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 2 January 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Artificial intelligence boosters spent the year wedging the tech into our lives – whether we wanted it or not. But one new product brought A.I. from every app and website into the meatspace, forcing you to face it eye-to-eye.
Guest: Nitish Pahwa, staff writer at Slate covering business and technology
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | How many times, Tish, do you think we have brought you on to talk about some piece of |
| 0:06.9 | apocalyptic or dystopian tech news? |
| 0:10.1 | Honestly, I might need to get an AI to count that up for me at this point. |
| 0:18.6 | Natishpawa covers business and tech here at Slate. and you probably know that because he's been on TBD a lot. |
| 0:26.6 | What kind of year would you say big tech had? |
| 0:30.6 | Big tech had a very bubble-licious time. |
| 0:35.4 | You know, big social media, big cryptocurrency, big AI, kind of just had their wishes granted |
| 0:43.4 | by the administration. They have just the easiest time ever from this government. And |
| 0:51.2 | despite that, we are also starting to get some apocalyptic vibes of sorts |
| 0:59.5 | economically and otherwise from these folks. |
| 1:06.6 | Apocalyptic vibes is a good shorthand for 2025. |
| 1:10.7 | So much so that when we called Tischish up for our end-of-the-year recap show, we had a very apocalyptic ask. |
| 1:18.6 | Specifically, what was the most dystopian piece of technology you encountered in 2025? |
| 1:25.9 | I think my dystopian tech choice would be AI sunglasses, |
| 1:33.0 | specifically the new fancy-looking Oakley's they got. |
| 1:39.0 | Hey, Meta, how am I doing? |
| 1:41.3 | You have ridden 54 miles. |
| 1:43.5 | Hey, Meta, take a video. Hey, Meta, take your video. |
| 1:46.0 | Hey, Meta, play my hype playlist. |
| 1:49.0 | As someone who's been allergic to smart glasses since the days of Google Glass, I find the idea of embedding generative AI |
| 2:01.0 | into even more sophisticated smart glasses now troubling, |
| 2:05.4 | not least since credit where it's due. |
... |
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