Tech Life's look back at 2025

0:00Hello and welcome to Tech Life from the BBC World Service with me, Chris Vallance. Well, 2025 is almost over, and as our festive season hangovers slowly dissipate, we've been busy at TechLife Global Headquarters here in Scotland, selecting some of our favourite bits from the shows we've made over the past year. So coming up, you'll be hearing some of this...

0:27Jazzy. A bit of this...

0:36Even jazzier. And this. It's rather embarrassing. The one time, and I was 16 at the time, I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have. I forgot to turn it off. And boom.

1:05Well, let's begin by talking about life itself. What you can hear is a recording of the Yangtze River dolphin in China. It's a sound that will probably never be recorded again, because in 2006, scientists declared the dolphin extinct. But what if we could bring extinct species back? A US biotechnology firm called Colossal has the goal of using the reconstructed DNA of long-dead creatures to bring back extinct species. Ice Age mammoths, the dodo, a flightless bird from Mauritius, and the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, a dog-like marsupial predator from Australia. It sounds like the stuff of Hollywood, a bit Jurassic Park perhaps, and it's controversial.

1:59Ben Lam is the chief executive of Colossal Biosciences. Yeah, so Colossal is the world's first de-extinction and species preservation company. And we are working to bring back three flagship projects, the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger and the dodo. And along the path of that, we're working to build technologies that have an application to conservation and make those available for anyone in conservation to use. how quickly will we see one of these extinct animals alive again you know we're on track for late 2028 for our first mammoth calves we're currently on track you know who knows what the future could hold but we feel very good about it number one number two uh we when we set out to launch the thylacine or tasmanian tiger project we thought it was a 10-year project we're two years in and we think we're about a year and a half to two years ahead of schedule.

2:54So we think we could see a thiosine in six to seven years. Now there are limits on what you will try and bring back and what you can try and bring back. So Colossal will not work at our company on humans. There are technologies that will benefit humankind like Ormbio and others that we will spin out and people can go use those under different governance, under different boards and whatnot. We never wanted to be in the position that one door down, we're editing animal cells and one door down, we're editing humans, right? So we've been very, very mindful about putting that safeguard in place just from just our optics and ethics perspective.

3:32We're really focusing on species that, one, you can bring back the lost biodiversity and lost core genes that made that species truly unique and that serves an ecological function. and also serves an application to conservation, right? Ben Lamb talking to me earlier this year, and that interview prompted a lot of you to get in touch. Is it de-extinction or, as many of you felt, just creating new hybrid creatures? I guess we'll find out in the coming years. Well, another subject we cover on Tech Life often is delivering innovations at a much faster rate. I'm talking, of course, about artificial intelligence or AI.

4:12In November, the British monarch King Charles III presented seven pioneers of AI with an engineering award. And friend of the show, BBC technology editor Zoe Kleinman, received a rare and possibly guilt-edged invite to a royal residence, St James's Palace in London, to witness the event. The room that this event was held in was absolutely exquisite. It was kind of like being inside a cake. Everything was incredibly ornate. The walls were red, deep red. There were enormous paintings of, you know, the great and the good from history adorned all over the place. There was gold leaf, an abundance of very beautiful golden candelabras.

4:57It was that real kind of old school opulence that, I guess, in an age of minimalist design, you just don't see very much anymore. Well, not outside of TechLife Global headquarters anyway. One of those who received an award from King Charles was Fei-Fei Li, sometimes called the godmother of AI, who was recognised for her work on advances in computer vision. Professor Li grew up in a poor part of rural China before moving to the United States to study computer science. And the rest, as they say, is history. Zoe caught up with her before the event. You're sometimes referred to as a godmother. Do you like that phrase?

5:36natural instinct of mine I would not call myself godmother of anything but when people started calling me that I don't remember a couple of years ago three years ago I had to pause and recognize if I rejected this it would miss an opportunity for women scientists and technologists to be recognize this way because men are pretty easily called godfathers or founding fathers. What do you think is the next milestone for AI? Well, for me, the next frontier of AI is spatial intelligence. If you look at how animals evolved and how humans developed, the ability to see, to understand the visual world, to navigate, to interact with it, and also to create similar worlds is innately important and native to animals and humans.

6:40And if we can use AI to unlock this capability, it can superpower a human in many ways, including creativity, robotic learning, design, and architecture. I think spatial intelligence is going to play a huge role or central role in bringing the next breakthroughs here. Professor Fei-Fei Li there talking to Zoe Kleinman. Well, as well as letting Zoe hobnob with royalty, AI is helping us hobnob with people who don't speak our language. Here's TechLife's Shona McCallum talking to colleague Liv McMahon about a new smartphone from Google. the company said it could translate conversations in different languages in real time using AI.

7:29Well, could it? Now, Google supplied you with a Pixel 10 phone for you to do this test. Tell us about the live voice translation feature. So live translation for phone calls is among a slew of AI features that Google sought to cram into its new phones. It's designed to let someone with a Pixel 10 make and have calls in English, as well as in 10 other languages, including Hindi, Russian and Indonesian, that can be translated in real time to another user. The feature also tries to match how a person would sound speaking in a different language while translating them. Now, I wanted to test the feature out with a real phone call myself.

8:05So I arranged to call up a friend of yours, Shona Pablo Rodriguez, who speaks Spanish and lives in Madrid. And you're about to hear a recording of that test call. It hasn't been edited, so you will hear some silent moments while I'm activating the live translation option at the beginning, followed by a notification from Google. But this is what I heard when I tried to speak to a Spanish speaker in English using Pixel 10's call translate feature.

8:35Hola?

8:40Call is translated by Google AI. In each speaker's voice, audio is not saved. Hello, Pablo. How are you? Bien. ¿Qué tal? Well, how are you? And how's your day been so far? Muy bien. What have you been up to today? Muy bien. Bueno, si has estado haciendo hoy. Very well. The day is going very well. Well, today I went to work on a normal day and then home and to rest with my family, one special, for the time being. Not quite as slick as Google's demo. That was Pablo in Madrid, brought to us in English, sort of, with the aid of AI.

9:32Well, each week on Tech Life, we invite you, our listeners, to contact the programme. You're a central part of everything we do, so we love reading your thoughts on the show and learning about the tech you're using. And every so often, a really good tale lands out of the blue. For instance, Patrick Wiggins, who lives near Salt Lake City in Utah in the United States, got in touch about a piece of tech he always carries with him when he's plummeting out of a plane. Patrick, who is 76, has been skydiving for 60 years, and his must-have gadget is something called an AAD. You'd better explain, Patrick.

10:16Sure. Automatic activation device, as the name implies. If you don't, it opens the parachute for you. And some people go, well, why? I mean, do you forget? And believe it or not, it does happen. People will get really involved in like shooting videos or something and they forget. And of course, well, it's not a very forgiving sport if you hit the ground at full speed. So it's a device that if you forget or if maybe you're physically incapable, you have a heart attack or something, it will open the emergency or the reserve parachute for you. The old ones were a little haphazard, were they? Were there problems with them?

10:58Well, there were a few problems. I kind of encountered one of those problems. Well, tell us about it. First of all, once you're in the plane and you're climbing to altitude, once you get above a certain altitude, you turn it on, right? It's a physical knob. You turn it. It's armed, okay? So then you get out of the plane, you freefall for a while, you open the parachute, and down you come. And if you forget to reach down and turn the knob the other way, suddenly there's a boom. And the secondary, the reserve parachute suddenly comes flopping out. And if you're not quick, then suddenly you have two parachutes inflated over your head, which actually, by the way, isn't terribly dangerous, but it's rather embarrassing.

11:44The one time, and I was 16 at the time, I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have. I forgot to turn it off and boom. But my reflexes as a 16 year old was pretty quick. So I was able to grab it and keep it from falling down. And so I'm trying to steer the main canopy with one hand and hold the reserve canopy in with the other hand. Made it to the ground OK. That's Tech Life listener Patrick Wiggins talking to us from Utah in the United States. Thanks for getting in touch, Patrick. Now, we were curious to know what tech has made a difference to your life in 2025. 2025, how'd that happen?

12:24So we asked on the BBC World Service Facebook page and Shona McCallum has selected some of your replies.

12:42Tech has definitely made a difference for many of you according to the messages we received. Artificial intelligence was one of the most popular topics you mentioned. Sine from South Korea uses AI to make images and videos, which leads me to the question, what kind of AI are you using? Kuopini Mangar from South Sudan uses ChatGPT and told us it's a world work changer. Catherine Ampema agrees and uses it to write complaints. Now there's an idea, Catherine. but Chris Wolfenden from England has found it's not always correct. Meanwhile it's clear that many of you rely on and are big fans of health tech.

13:26Continuous glucose monitoring devices were mentioned in many of the messages we received. They let people with diabetes check on their blood sugars to see if it's too high or too low and for diabetics this is extremely important as the more information they have the quicker they can take action. Messaging us from the USA, Julie Zuckman said that diabetes products have made a big difference in her life, especially the glucose monitor. Richard Cole told us that his monitor meant that he didn't need to prick his fingers to take readings. He wrote, my blood glucose level is available on my phone, and it warns me if blood glucose is going to be too high or low.

14:05It makes my diabetes much easier to manage. That's good to hear, Richard. Right, on to the next topic now. Martha Ogetchi in Nairobi, Kenya was among quite a few of you who highlighted social media for making a difference in the last year Bazubu Josh in Uganda mentioned TikTok specifically he told us he'd gone through some negative times in his life but he watched motivational lessons on TikTok which had benefited him of course there has to be some tech that makes everyday things just that little bit easier Rob Innell in the UK sent us just one word, adblock. Yes, Rob, I think lots of people are using ad blockers these days.

14:47This tech helps stop annoying ads and improve browser speeds. And in South Korea, Emea Ward is a big fan of a recent Android phone update, which lets you translate the screen when you hold down the home button. She wrote, I live in Korea, but I don't speak Korean yet. And this has simplified my life so much. There's got to be time to mention some fun tech, right? Well, Morten Nielsen from Denmark wrote, The best gadget of 2025 is the Commodore 64 Ultimate. I can game like it's 1985 and use modern features like Wi-Fi. Well, thank you to everyone who got in touch with us. We want to know about your tech plans for 2026.

15:29What do you want to try out for the first time and what tech do you want to get rid of? Maybe you want to give up social media. You can email us your plans. The email address is techlife at bbc.co.uk or send us a WhatsApp message or a voice note. We're on plus 44 330 1230 320. Remember to tell us your name and where you live.

16:00If you're a parent, there are few things more important than the education of your children. So how would you feel if their lessons were replaced with apps and AI? Earlier this year, we spoke to pupils and staff at Alpha School, a network of private schools in the US, where the majority of academic learning is done on laptop screens, with each lesson tailored to the student using AI. Guides, as the school calls the adults in the classroom, focus instead on motivating and inspiring students. It's an idea that provoked quite a few comments from you, our listeners. Alex is a 17-year-old student at an alpha school in Texas.

16:44He told me what a typical day looked like. I come to school, we start off with something called an opening. So we're doing fun exercises, coaching, whatever it might be, getting feedback. Then we'll go into our two to three hour learning block, three hours for high school, and we'll do the Pomodoro method. So 27 minutes of focus and then five minutes of break time, talking with your friends, maybe going out to get a snack. So we'll finish that three hour block. We'll have lunch. And then in the afternoon, we're focused on building a very cool, what we call Alpha X project. So for example, I'm trying to build a startup and in the afternoon, I might talk to investors.

17:20I might be building the product itself. You know, lots of different fun stuff like that. So some of your teaching takes place basically in front of a computer. Do you want to tell me about that? Yeah. So we actually have no teachers here at Alpha High. We instead have guides. And what guides do is mainly help with your emotional kind of aspect of learning and motivational aspect of learning. And instead, in the morning, we're using fully AI-powered apps. Now, these apps aren't chatbots. We're not just talking to ChatGBC all morning. we are having individualized, personalized applications that give us the content that we need that's at the right difficulty for us.

17:56A glimpse there into the world of AI-powered education in the United States. Well, apart from AI, there are few bigger hot topics in tech news than social media and its effect on children. But we don't often talk to the heads of social media firms, which is why we were delighted when Shona McCallum spoke to the boss of Pinterest, Bill Reddy, in September. If you haven't used Pinterest, it's an image-focused platform, the sort of place where people find inspiration for new outfits or a new look for their home. But like all social media platforms, there are questions over the safety of young people.

18:34So Shona asked Bill Reddy to talk about how his platform dealt with that. As a tech CEO and as a dad, I looked at what was happening across social media platforms with random strangers able to contact young teenagers online. And it just makes sense when you say it out loud that it's not safe for strangers to be able to contact children online. Most people say, well, of course not. But somehow social media has conditioned us to accept that that's okay. And so at Pinterest, I made accounts private only for under 16, private by default for under 18. And what that really means is that it's not a feature you can turn on and off.

19:15We just said full stop. We're basically turning off the social features for users under 16. And while our stock dropped over 20 % when we did that, a year later, we had nearly doubled. And Gen Z is now more than half our platform. because it turns out young users are looking for safer, healthier alternatives. Well, that's Bill Reddy, the boss of Pinterest.

19:44One of the joys of working on Tech Life is that we get to hear how tech is used all around the world. In March, our BBC colleague, Mercy Frank, came all the way from Nigeria to our global headquarters in Scotland to tell us about a place that's pretty important to the tech lives of many Nigerians. As Mercy explains, they call it Computer Village. It's called Computer Village for a reason. It's like a super busy giant garage sale for anything tech. It spans the area of two football pitches. Now from smartphones to personal computers to virtual reality gadgets, intelligent home appliances, even software applications, anything tech, you name it, they've got it.

20:31Right now, pay small amounts, collect your phone immediately, and then pay the balance within three to six months. Isn't that amazing? It is packed with thousands of people and electronics. It's such a frenzy of activity. I mean, you hear vendors calling out. Their voices are most times drowned by the constant loud noise from generators powering the stalls because people have to provide their own electricity. as there's the problem of inconsistent power supply in Nigeria.

21:04It's kind of a mixture of contemporary buildings to attract young buyers. Then you have old buildings that are turned into stores. You can also find very tiny stores co-shared by micro-business owners. Then there are those who walk and sell out of WeBaro kiosks. You've been speaking to one of the business owners there. Yes, Ife Luauke runs a shop in Computer Village. But Ife had a degree in computer science, she saw the gap in the tech repair markets. And that was how business started 15 years ago. From just computer repairs, she has launched into sale of high-end tech gadgets and has evolved from hardware to Internet of Things and cybersecurity.

21:47I started to collect laptops for my friends in school. I'll bring it to the market because I had people who were already professionals in the business so they would help me to fix and from there I started the business and moving forward I was able to expand and get my own stock. Sometimes the pictures are just better in radio. A real slice of tech life in Nigeria right there. Well right now in this part of the northern hemisphere It is damp, cold and the gloom thickens into night at around about three o 'clock, all of which is a perfect excuse to visit, via the magic of radio, the clear sunlit waters of the Bahamas, a great place to observe and listen to dolphins.

22:44Well, that's the rather jazzy sound of male Atlantic spotted dolphins having a little bit of a face-off. In April, Dr Denise Hertzing, the research director and founder of the Wild Dolphin Project, talked to me about using Dolphin Gemma. It's an AI large language model from Google, and there are hopes it will help unlock the complexities of dolphins' clicks and whistles. Maybe it will even tell us if dolphins have a language. AI is going to do some great stuff for animal communication researchers. I'm excited to see what it does for other researchers too. What will be the significance if you do find that dolphins have language and it's a rich language that's perhaps comparable to our own?

23:34if other species have language, now it elevates them, we hope. I mean, humans are unique, of course. We're proud of who we are and how unique we are. But if we can look at the natural world and go, whoa, there's a lot more complexity than we thought, maybe it'll help us better preserve, better understand. And I mean, to ask that question finally and answer it with AI, you know, do other animals have language? That would, I think, would be huge. I mean, I know it's not everybody's cup of tea and focus, but I think it would help us understand and better help the natural world, to be honest, and our place in it.

24:15I suppose you might even discover their names for you and the language they used to describe you and your team. Oh, do I want to know? She who swims with a funny turn or something or the woman with the big video camera. Yeah, who knows? I mean, we're going to try to follow what the dolphins do and how they want to interact with us and do our best to honour that. You know, we're pretty non-invasive with our work already. And so we're going to do our best to open that door.

24:46As this is the last Tech Life of 2025, I thought we'd finish with a musical topic. About five months ago, Tech Life's ace reporter Graham Fraser did a deep dive into how AI is upending the music industry. It was filled with interesting insight and great guests. The highlight, though, was when Graham, who's a member of an award-winning brass band, played the tuba. It blew us away. So as we say farewell to the old and in with the new, here it is again.

25:39That's reporter and tuba player Graham Fraser there. Thank you for the music. And thanks to you for listening to Tech Life in 2025. If you want to hear more from the highlights we've brought you today, All our programmes are available online. And if you'd like to send us ideas for programmes in the coming year, do get in touch. Our email address is techlife at bbc.co.uk or you can WhatsApp us on plus 44 330 1230 320. We read and listen to everything you send. Today's programme was produced by Tom Quinn and Imran Rahman-Jones and presented by me, Chris Vallance. Thank you.