State and territory governments have agreed, with the Commonwealth, to increase their use of biometrics for identification in a bid to make the federated ID scheme more resilient to fraud and identity theft. Identification services are spread across the states and territories, that are in charge of driver licences and birth certificates, and the Commonwealth… Read more »
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman downplayed the potential for the technology to take over jobs at an event in Melbourne last week, saying instead the technology will instead put “higher expectations” on human beings. Altman has an unsurprisingly optimistic view about human nature will respond to the rise of AI, saying he doesn’t think people will… Read more »
Buoyed by dramatic changes in the way consumers pay for goods and services, Australia’s payments processing ecosystem will be overhauled based on a new strategic plan that includes the phasing out of cheques and full transition to the New Payments Platform (NPP). The newly launched Strategic Plan for Australia’s Payments System – developed through consultation with regulators,… Read more »
Tech giants will be forced to scan Australians’ emails, online photo libraries, cloud storage accounts and dating sites for illegal content or face fines of nearly $700,000 per day, the eSafety Commissioner has said after rejecting two proposed industry codes as inadequate. Developed by key service providers and delivered to eSafety in February for review, the problematic… Read more »
A National Anti-Scams Centre will be up and running by July under a $58 million federal budget commitment. Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones revealed details of the new centre on Monday, saying it will sit within the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and act as a central place to report scams and share information with… Read more »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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