AI
AI/Machine Learning

AI ‘godfather’ Geoffrey Hinton pulls the pin with Google over artificial intelligence dangers

- May 3, 2023 2 MIN READ

Turing Award winner and AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton has resigned from his position with Google in order to speak more openly about the dangers of artificial intelligence, raising questions about whether tech giants have silenced the people most qualified to inform the public about the emerging technology’s effects. In 2012, Hinton and two of his students, Ilya Sutskever… Read more »

dog under blanket
Cyber security

Cybersecurity people are so stressed out, they’re bailing from their jobs after breaches

- April 27, 2023 3 MIN READ

The lack of skilled cyber security talent is a bigger challenge for companies in Australia than overseas, according to new research that also found high stress levels and inadequate supporting technologies are causing many workers to bolt after a data breach. Fully 45% of the Australian CISOs surveyed for Trellix’s newly released global study, The… Read more »

AI voice
AI/Machine Learning

What happens when AI voice generation goes rogue – the dangers of ‘voiceprints’ for ID

- April 21, 2023 4 MIN READ

Rampant misuse of AI voice generation is stirring fear and speculation across multiple industries, as the rapidly developing technology spurs increasing cases of imitation, political deepfakes and security disruption. Five years on from the now-infamous PSA clip showing a deepfake of US president Barack Obama forewarning the dangers of misinformation due to burgeoning artificial intelligence… Read more »

Twitter
Social Media

How Elon Musk crashed Twitter

- April 19, 2023 3 MIN READ

When Elon Musk closed the deal to buy Twitter late last year, the company suddenly found itself facing a US$3 billion yearly deficit and was four months away from bankruptcy, the billionaire told the BBC in an interview last week. Why was Twitter in trouble? Because Musk bought it. “In rough numbers, in a normal… Read more »

ChatGPT
AI/Machine Learning

A Victorian mayor is suing ChatGPT for defamation after it said he was a convicted criminal

- April 14, 2023 3 MIN READ

An Australian council mayor may become the first person in the world to sue AI platform ChatGPT for defamation over false claims he was imprisoned over a bribery scandal. The mayor of Hepburn Shire in Victoria, Brian Hood, discovered late last year that artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT was incorrectly claiming that he had pleaded guilty… Read more »

Binance
Cryptocurrency

Coporate cop ASIC cancels Binance Australia’s licence after it misclassified retail investors, leaving them without consumer protections

- April 11, 2023 3 MIN READ

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange can no longer legally operate within Australia after financial regulator ASIC cancelled the firm’s financial services license due to policy breaches that left consumers financially exposed. Although it was licensed to sell financial derivatives to wholesale customers, Binance Australia Derivatives – the trading name of Oztures Trading Pty Ltd –… Read more »

TikTok
Politics

The Australian government has banned TikTok on public service devices amid China fears

- April 6, 2023 3 MIN READ

The Australian government has banned TikTok from all public service devices, claiming the app poses “significant protective security risk” to the Commonwealth. Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus announced on Tuesday he had authorised a mandatory direction to ban the TikTok social media app from any device issued by a Commonwealth department or agency. State and territory governments… Read more »

Ai
AI/Machine Learning

The AI race is ‘out of control’ & starting to freak out tech titans, with Musk, Woz and others wanting a 6-month freeze

- March 31, 2023 3 MIN READ

Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and over 1300 academics, tech and business luminaries have signed a Future of Life Institute (FLI) open letter calling for a 6-month freeze on “out-of-control” AI development that, they say, poses “profound risks to society and humanity.” That development has accelerated at a furious rate since last November’s release of GPT-3… Read more »

Binance
Cryptocurrency

US regulators launch legal action against crypto giant Binance alleging they broke US money laundering laws

- March 28, 2023 2 MIN READ

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has launched a suit against the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, claiming the company was deliberately skirting local regulation and knowingly facilitated the illicit flow of money. In a complaint against Binance, its founder Changpeng Zhao, and chief compliance officer Samuel Lim, the CFTC alleged the Binance team… Read more »

NBN Layoffs
People

NBN Co surfs layoff wave, cutting 500 staff to ‘simplify’ as competition grows

- March 23, 2023 2 MIN READ

The ongoing wave of tech layoffs is buffeting NBN Co, which announced this month it will lay off 500 people as the company adjusts its operational and funding strategies to accommodate a climate of increasing competition and intensifying borrowing pressure. The company, which has built and operated the National Broadband Network (NBN) since 2009, will… Read more »

Business

Amazon axes again, sacking another 9,000 staff at AWS and Twitch

- March 21, 2023 2 MIN READ

Amazon is laying off another 9,000 employees, with senior management citing “the uncertain economy in which we reside”. The cuts will come from its cloud business Amazon Web Services (AWS), streaming platform Twitch, and its advertising department. This latest round of layoffs comes just two months after Amazon said it would cut more than 18,000… Read more »

Cyber attack
Cyber security

Hackers steal 100,000+ drivers licenses in Latitude Financial cyber attack

- March 16, 2023 3 MIN READ

The driver licence information of a hundred thousand Australians has been stolen after a major consumer finance company was targeted with a “sophisticated and malicious cyber-attack”. Latitude Financial, a major non-bank lender of consumer credit in Australia boasting 2.8 million customer accounts, revealed on Thursday that it had been breached following a significant cyber attack… Read more »

Work
Workplace

Senate committee urges government to lead the way in 4-day work week trial

- March 15, 2023 3 MIN READ

Government and Greens Senators have called for a significant trial of the four-day working week after hearing “substantial evidence” of its effectiveness. The Select Committee on Work and Care, chaired by Greens Senator Barbara Pocock, released its report late last week. A key recommendation from the report is for the federal government to undertake a… Read more »

facebook
Social Media

Facebook’s fight with Australian privacy regulators over the Cambridge Analytica scandal has hit the High Court

- March 10, 2023 2 MIN READ

The battle between Facebook and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) had a hearing in the High Court this week over the infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal in which the personal data of 300,000 Australians was harvested without their consent. Facebook has been fighting a court battle for three years following revelations that between… Read more »