Elon Musk receives a golden key from Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington DC on 30 May 2025. Elon Musk receives a golden key from Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington DC on 30 May 2025. I myself have a cold. Today, we are looking back at the biggest stories in tech of 2025 - Elon Musk's political rise, burst, and fall; artificial intelligence's subsumption of the global economy, all other technology, and even the Earth's topography; Australia's remarkable social media ban; the tech industry's new Trumpian politics; and, as a treat, a glimpse of the apocalypse offered by one of Silicon Valley's savviest and strangest billionaires. Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends a memorial service for slain far-right commentator Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium, in Glendale, Arizona, on 21 September 2025.

The Cybertruck, sycophantic AI, and humanoid robots all made this year's list of the biggest technology failures. Welcome to our annual list of the worst, least successful, and simply dumbest technologies of the year. This year, politics was a recurring theme. Donald Trump swept back into office and used his executive pen to reshape the fortunes of entire sectors, from renewables to cryptocurrency. The wrecking-ball act began even before his inauguration, when the president-elect marketed his own memecoin, $TRUMP, in a shameless act of merchandising that, of course, we honor on this year's worst tech list. We like to think there's a lesson in every technological misadventure.

Tech companies may have lost their moral standing, but at least they added shareholder value. Elon Musk holds up a chainsaw onstage during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, U.S., February 20, 2025. Sure, we've seen millions poured into lobbying and other means of influence during every presidency, but the last two years set a whole new bar. Business leaders, including those from almost every Big Tech company, stepped over themselves to prove fealty to Donald Trump's second administration. It's easy to see why: Their kowtowing was meant to secure regulatory favors, gain tax and tariff advantages and avoid Trump's ire.

Publicly significant images from events hold valuable contextual information, crucial for journalism and education. However, existing methods often struggle to extract this relevance accurately. To address this, we introduce GETReason (Geospatial Event Temporal Reasoning), a framework that moves beyond surface-level image descriptions to infer deeper contextual meaning. We propose that extracting global event, temporal, and geospatial information enhances understanding of an image's significance. Additionally, we introduce GREAT (Geospatial Reasoning and Event Accuracy with Temporal Alignment), a new metric for evaluating reasoning-based image understanding. Our layered multi-agent approach, assessed using a reasoning-weighted metric, demonstrates that meaningful insights can be inferred, effectively linking images to their broader event context.

There was a lot of news last week. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Donald Trump, Sam Altman, Masayoshi Son and Larry Ellison announced a 500bn initiative to expand infrastructure supporting artificial intelligence dubbed Stargate. On its heels came a press release from Meta vowing to expand its capital expenditure to 65bn in the coming year to expand its data centers.

United States President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders on Monday aimed at reshaping military policies, including the removal of diversity, equity and inclusion programmes (DEI), reinstating service members discharged for refusing COVID-19 vaccines, and barring transgender people from military service. Earlier in the day, newly confirmed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who secured the position after a narrow Senate vote, said he would ensure the orders "are complied with rapidly and quickly". Here is the latest news from Monday and a look ahead for the week. Speaking with reporters on board Air Force One on Monday, Trump said that he signed four executive orders. Among those, Trump revealed he signed an order to establish a framework for developing what his administration calls an "American Iron Dome," a missile defence system designed to protect the homeland.

CNN's Jake Tapper warned on Monday that the country was about to enter an "era of deepfakes and all sorts of disinformation" under President Trump, while discussing the Big Tech presence at his inauguration. "We're about to enter an era of deepfakes, and all sorts of misinformation and the degree to which those five gentlemen play a role or do not play a role, will be pivotal in terms of where the American people are four years from now, in terms of understanding what is true and what is false," Tapper said before Trump took the oath of office. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla founder Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai were among the tech giants attending the inauguration. Tapper said those five people "control so much of the information that we receive, so much is in their hands when it comes to ascertaining, monitoring, or refusing to monitor what is real, what is not real." CNN's Jake Tapper speaks on CNN on Jan. 12, 2025.

President Biden delivers his farewell address to the nation from the White House. President Biden warned in his farewell speech of an "ultra-wealthy" "oligarchy" posing a threat to America as big tech CEOs have been warming up to President-elect Trump in recent months -- despite his own administration accepting donations from Democratic mega-donors. Biden spoke Wednesday as reports emerged this week that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg – the three most wealthy people in the world who collectively are worth more than 850 billion, according to Forbes – will be seated next to Trump's Cabinet picks and elected officials next Monday at his inauguration. "I have no doubt that America is in a position to continue to succeed. That's why in my farewell address tonight, I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern. And the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked," Biden said from the Oval Office.

President Biden delivers his farewell address to the nation from the White House. President Biden warned in his farewell speech of an "ultra-wealthy" "oligarchy" posing a threat to America as big tech CEOS have been warming up to President-elect Trump in recent months. Biden spoke Wednesday as reports emerged this week that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg – the three most wealthy people in the world who collectively are worth more than 850 billion, according to Forbes – will be seated next to Trump's cabinet picks and elected officials next Monday at his inauguration. "I have no doubt that America is in a position to continue to succeed. That's why in my farewell address tonight, I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern. And the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked," Biden said from the Oval Office.

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Indonesia Artificial Intelligence Society (IAIS) inaugurated its establishment inder the Smart Indonesia Initiative Association. IAIS is led by Lukas with a vision to create new inventions through innovation and artificial intelligence in Indonesia. During the inauguration of IAIS on Friday, October 25, 2019, Lukas stated that IAIS was established with two main missions: to create an artificial intelligence ("AI") roadmap for the country, and "to develop the competency of local AI and technological leadership with a focus on academic, business, and government." Lukas said that to achieve its vision and mission, IAIS was established on three main foundations: research department, technology, and innovation. "The three departments are the foundation to achieve Indonesia's interest," Lukas added.