Cambridge Analyticas use of Facebook data for political micro-targeting becomes a defining AI-ethics scandal. Public trust in social-media AI is permanently damaged.

Tesla begins teasing a custom AI chip for Autopilot — the "FSD Computer" — which would replace NVIDIA hardware and lead to the Dojo supercomputer effort.

Within months of release, BERT and its larger variant dominate every major NLP benchmark. Google adds BERT to Search, affecting 10% of all queries worldwide.