From murderous machines to the looming abortion surveillance dragnet, the technology stories we covered in 2022 were enough to give even the most seasoned science fiction writers a run for their money. Here were some of our top hits:

The rise of the killer robot

Forget fantasyland Westworld machine murderers. Real-life lethal robots are now fighting their way into warzones and police departments worldwide. 

Coda’s Ilya Gridneff explored the rollout of a new generation of autonomous machines on Ukraine’s battlefields. Naval drones and unmanned, machine gun-equipped ground vehicles are “poised to upend modern warfare,” Gridneff wrote. The emergence of these “killer robot” devices raises all sorts of terrifying questions about the ever-blurring boundary between machines and humans and the existential risk of ceding too much control from the latter to the former. 

They’ve made it to California, too. Lawmakers in San Francisco, one of several U.S. cities doubling down on police surveillance in response to concerns about crime, recently faced severe backlash after nearly approving a measure that would have let police use robots to kill. The neighboring city of Oakland also explored (and then scrapped) a plan to arm police robots with guns.