If someone were to ask you how space technologies impact your daily life, or how much Australia should invest in space, would you have an immediate answer or would you wonder why these questions were even being asked? Understanding what the average Australian thinks about space is essential – voters and taxpayers will only encourage… Read more »
After lengthy deliberation, the Australian government has released its 2023–2030 Cyber Security Strategy, which aims to make Australia one of the most cyber-secure nations in the world by 2030. It’s a worthy goal, considering Australia was ranked as the fifth-most powerful cyber nation in a 2022 report by Harvard University’s Kennedy School. The strategy outlines… Read more »
On Friday, OpenAI’s high-flying chief executive Sam Altman was unexpectedly fired by the company’s board. Co-founder and chief technology officer Greg Brockman was also removed as the board president, after which he promptly resigned. In an unexpected twist, talks began today about potentially reinstating Altman in some capacity following an outpouring of industry and investor… Read more »
On November 4, X owner Elon Musk unveiled his new AI chatbot Grok: a sarcastic ChatGPT alternative supposedly “modelled” after The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, one of Musk’s favourite books. The verb Grok means “to understand intuitively or by empathy, to establish rapport with”. Science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein first coined the term, which is… Read more »
A serious cyberattack has disrupted operations at several of Australia’s largest ports, causing delays and congestion. Late on Friday, port operator DP World detected an IT breach that affected critical systems used to coordinate shipping activity. DP World is one of Australia’s largest port operators, handling approximately 40% of the nation’s container trade across terminals… Read more »
It is not just crypto tokens that have spectacular downfalls. So can crypto personalities. Sam Bankman-Fried founded FTX, one of the world’s largest exchanges for so-called cryptocurrencies, which collapsed last year owing billions of dollars. Now he has gone from being hailed as potentially the world’s first trillionaire to a lengthy term in prison. After… Read more »
On Monday US President Joe Biden released a wide ranging and ambitious executive order on artificial intelligence (AI) – catapulting the US to the front of conversations about regulating AI. In doing so, the US is leap frogging over other states in the race to rule over AI. Europe previously led the way with its… Read more »
On Oct. 6, news broke that 23andMe, the genomics company that collects genetic material from thousands of people for ancestry and genetic predisposition tests, had a massive data breach. But as it turns out, the company’s servers were not hacked. Rather, hackers targeted hundreds of individual user accounts — allegedly those that had repeated passwords.… Read more »
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Grant, has found X (formerly Twitter) guilty of serious non-compliance to a transparency notice on child sex abuse material. The commissioner has issued X with an infringement notice for A$610,500. The commissioner first issued transparency notices to Google, X (then Twitter), Twitch, TikTok and Discord in February under the Online Safety… Read more »
In an astonishing act of timing, Harvard University’s Professor Claudia Goldin published a paper on Monday titled Why Women Won. It mapped milestone moments in women’s rights in the United States from 1905 to 2023. A few hours later, she was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics “for having advanced our understanding of women’s… Read more »
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are in dire straits. With the market in a severe downturn, it’s safe to assume the NFT bubble has well and truly burst. It was never clear why these digital collectables traded for such large amounts of money. Now they mostly do not. What’s behind their turn of fate? And is there… Read more »
In 2018-19, identity crime directly and indirectly cost Australia an estimated A$3.1 billion. To address such costs, the federal government is proposing a national digital identity scheme that will let people prove their identity without having to share documents such as their passport, drivers licence or Medicare card. Finance Minister Katy Gallagher opened consultations for the… Read more »
Human laughter as we know it likely developed between ten and 16 million years ago. For context, the stone tools our distant human ancestors made in the Early Stone Age date back around 2.6 million years. These are vast time spans, but it was perhaps good that our Palaeolithic ancestors had a sense of humour… Read more »
Back in 2017, The Economist published a headline that became a meme. It said data had become the new oil. By that it meant that the world’s biggest and most profitable companies no longer worked with oil, as they had throughout the 20th century, but with data. By 2022, three of the world’s five most… Read more »
There are few stores without an Afterpay logo displayed on the door, or that don’t offer Laybuy at their online checkout. And these schemes are particularly popular with younger consumers. But what price might these buyers be paying for the conveniences of buy now, pay later? Our new research investigated how young New Zealand adults… Read more »
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