People engaging in toxic romances with AI chatbots. A tech billionaire that injects his teenage son's blood plasma into his veins while degens bet on his nighttime erections as part of his quest for immortality. A 3D-printed sarcophagus that kills you for the low, low cost of $20.
All this and much much more, in just 365 days.
“Forget artificial intelligence—in the brave new world of big data, it's artificial idiocy we should be looking out for,” the tech philosopher Tom Chatfield once said. The past year definitely proved Tom’s point.
Either we’re fortunate enough to be witnessing a technological renaissance that enhances human potential, or we’ve finally gone off the deep end of the silicon pool. It’s still too early to tell, but in 2024, the boundary between innovation and ethical uncertainty has grown thinner than ever, and these five weird tech trends prove how crazy this year was.
This isn’t entirely new territory—we’ve had AI girlfriends and AI-powered lovers before. But in 2024, the rise of AI companions for romance, friendship, and even professional use reached an unprecedented scale. Thanks to generative AI, interactions now go far beyond preprogrammed responses, with language models becoming so sophisticated that distinguishing between human and AI-generated replies often feels impossible.
The surge in AI companions has been fueled by a perfect storm: a society where over 60% of the Gen Z people are feeling lonely, combined with the rapid evolution of AI that feels more human—and emotionally responsive—than ever. Together, these factors have turned AI companionship into a booming industry that is heavily influencing the way we connect.
The science behind these digital attachments is surprisingly biological. AI companions can stimulate the release of oxytocin, the "love hormone," which explains why nearly one-third of people either dating or in a relationship seem to be cool with their future partner having an AI squeeze on the side. Because apparently, if it isn’t human it isn’t technically cheating, right?
But things are not always nice. When 14-year-old boy Sewell Setzer III took his own life after developing romantic feelings for an AI chatbot back in October, the world was forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: artificial companions can be just as toxic as humans.
Character.AI, the company behind Setzer’s digital girlfriend told Decrypt that it “improved detection, response, and intervention related to user inputs that violate our Terms or Community Guidelines,” after hearing the news.
Butterflies, another successful app that hosts an AI-powered social media platform akin to Instagram, also shared its thoughts. “Many of us turn to Butterflies as a way to escape reality and find some comfort,” it said on Discord. “If you are struggling with overwhelming or intrusive thoughts, I want to encourage you to reach out for the help that you deserve.”
As sad as this is, Setzer isn’t the only victim of toxic AI-human relationships. Back in 2023, a Belgian man killed himself after chatting with his AI girlfriend on an app named Chai, Belgian outlet La Libre reported. And there may be more unreported cases, considering over 100 million people had downloaded AI chatbot apps in early 2024.
This was supposed to be the year in which AI-powered wearables would transform our lives. Instead, we got a masterclass in how to turn a $62.7 billion industry into a comedy of errors.
Take the Humane AI Pin, positioned as the future of mobile computing—please! Despite raising significant investment and generating considerable media buzz, the device proved to be what tech reviewer MKBHD called "the worst product I’ve ever reviewed"—and he’s been reviewing things for over 16 years. The device’s poor performance, unreliable functionality, and exorbitant price tag led to such disappointing results that the company eventually had to seek a buyer.
The Rabbit R1, another highly anticipated device praised as the most impressive product presentation since the iPhone by none other than Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, faced similar challenges. The initial reviews were mixed: Some loved it while others highlighted its fundamental flaws, including poor battery life, unreliable AI functionality, and limited practical applications.
Things went down after smartphone companies and chatbot developers proved you didn’t need additional hardware to benefit from those functionalities. The AI wearable makers had failed to come up with a cool use case.
“If I have the choice between the ChatGPT GPT Store with thousands of ‘apps’ and this thing—why would I choose the Rabbit 1? Maybe for novelty and because it looks cool. Nah, sorry, I'm just not interested. But I will download the app for sure,” Olivio Sarias, a YouTuber who specializes in generative AI, told Decrypt.
And it didn't help that an investigation by the YouTuber Coffeezilla showed that before launching the Rabbit, the company raised millions of dollars to develop a metaverse/NFT project that over-promised and under-delivered—and even that statement is arguably a stretch.
Another product that jumped into the deep end of the pool was the Friend Necklace, an AI-powered companion designed to be worn around the neck. Priced at $99, it promised to recreate the intimate AI relationship depicted in the movie "Her." However, it ended up channeling more "1984" with its always-listening feature.
And of course there was some drama involved with this one as well. Shortly after the launch of the Friend necklace, the CEO of Based Hardware shared a diss track mocking the wearable for copying his open-source product, released months before at a lower price.
The Friend CEO responded with an invitation to a physical fight, which sadly never happened.
Tech billionaire Bryan Johnson took YOLO way too literally with his "Project Blueprint," which is aimed at extending his life as much as possible with current technology.
His daily routine reads like a sci-fi comedy: pop 100+ pills (yes, really), convince your teenage son to donate plasma for dad's immortality quest (yes, really), send shockwaves to your penis (yes, really), and monitor your nighttime erections. All in a day's work for the man treating his body like a living experiment.
His research project went so viral that people started betting thousands of dollars on how long his dong stays hard at night—because there’s money to be made everywhere. When Decrypt first reported on it, 67% of degens trusted in Johnson’s capabilities, but now the numbers are even higher.
Johnson's methodology is ruthlessly data-driven and basically open-source. A team of 30 doctors meticulously tracks hundreds of biomarkers, from organ function to inflammation levels, treating his body like a complex system to be optimized.
His philosophy, which he calls "Zeroism," centers on aligning his body's 35+ trillion cells with the latest scientific research and technological advancements. "Embrace systems over willpower, data over human opinion, (and) harmony over addiction," Johnson explains in his protocol documentation.
He also calls to rebel against addictive algorithms, corporations that profit from selling unhealthy products, social norms encouraging bad behavior, and self-aided destruction (SAD).
Beyond Johnson's personal quest, the broader field of anti-aging research has seen significant developments. Scientists are exploring everything from epigenetic reprogramming to senescent cell removal, while young blood plasma treatments continue to capture both scientific interest and public imagination.
However, a recent study by Nature Aging suggests that without major breakthroughs, radical life extension is unlikely to be achieved in the 21st century.
If that’s true, then living with great lasting erections seems the next best thing—one step below reaching immortality.
2024 was the year in which researchers achieved the impossible in brain-computer interface technology. Neuralink's "N1" device sparked a new era where thoughts could control computers, after successfully completing its first human trial in January. Previous attempts were successful, but very limited, with one experiment from 2006 giving a person the ability to control a mouse cursor with the brain.
But this new wave of trials involves more sophisticated technology capable of giving patients a more extensive range of capabilities. The technology has already shown remarkable potential, helping a man with ALS communicate through thought alone.
Neuralink isn’t alone. Synchron even managed to pair its brain implant with Apple Vision Pro, and a former Neuralink researcher left the team to found a competitor company, Precision Neuroscience, to develop a similar technology with a safer, less invasive approach that ditches the needles for a sort of coating material.
“At Precision, the physical interface with the brain is a thin film about a quarter of the width of a human eyelash that conforms to the undulating surface of the brain,” Dr. Benjamin Rapoport, the CEO of Precision Neuroscience said, as reported by Decrypt. “And inside that thin film are embedded tiny little platinum micro electrodes, each one about the size of a neuron.”
Just one month after Neuralink’s announcement, a team of Chinese researchers published the results of its own BCI trials, "showing higher safety than Musk's Telepathy." The team implanted two coin-sized BCI processors into the brain of a quadriplegic 54-year-old male, who was capable of using his brain to control a wireless glove to do different tasks, like drinking water autonomously.
In December, the team announced plans to expand their trials to include at least 50 more participants next year.
Just when you thought 2024 couldn't get more dystopian, enter the Sarco Pod—a 3D-printed capsule for assisted suicide (only available in resurrection purple, thus far) that looks like it was designed by someone who watched too many sci-fi movies. Created by Dr Philip Nitschke, aka "Dr. Death" (because subtlety is so last century), it promises a peaceful five-minute journey to the great beyond via liquid nitrogen.
The pod made headlines when it claimed its first user back in September: a 64-year-old woman who paid for the service to die in peace. But things got even darker when authorities found strangulation marks during the autopsy. The pod designer’s final words to its user, "Keep on breathing,” win the award for most ironically disturbing tech interaction of 2024.
Dr Nitschke was arrested after the news of the suicide spread out in social media, and the autopsy raised reasonable questions. He was released in early December after the Swiss prosecution failed to prove he was a participant in a homicide. “Based on the latest investigation status, there is still strong suspicion of the crime of incitement and aiding and abetting suicide, but no longer of intentional homicide,” they said in a statement.
“The death of the American woman was straightforward. She entered the Sarco of her own volition, closed the lid and pressed the button voluntarily,” the good doctor had argued.
Renting it is extremely cheap, around 18 francs—around 20 bucks—according to its creator. Switzerland has suspended its use, probably wondering if this is really the tech they wanted to be famous for (besides watches).
Believe it or not, over 300 people signed up for the service.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
