Ed Husic
AI/Machine Learning

‘A little light and a little late’: a risk the federal government’s AI policy doesn’t address is missing our chance

- January 18, 2024 3 MIN READ

On Wednesday, the federal Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic revealed an interim response from the Australian government on the safe and responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI). The public, especially the Australian public, have real concerns about AI. And it’s appropriate that they should. AI is a powerful technology entering our lives quickly.… Read more »

Robot lawyer in a trial
AI/Machine Learning

AI is set to transform how we get legal advice, but it could still leave people without access to justice

- January 9, 2024 3 MIN READ

The legal profession has already been using artificial intelligence (AI) for several years, to automate reviews and predict outcomes, among other functions. However, these tools have mostly been used by large, well established firms. In effect, certain law firms have already deployed AI tools to assist their employed solicitors with day-to-day work. By 2022, three… Read more »

The Treachery of Images, by Rene Magritte (1929)
AI/Machine Learning

The Artist Strikes Back: How creative people are using ‘data poisoning’ to fight generative AI

- December 19, 2023 3 MIN READ

Imagine this. You need an image of a balloon for a work presentation and turn to a text-to-image generator, like Midjourney or DALL-E, to create a suitable image. You enter the prompt: “red balloon against a blue sky” but the generator returns an image of an egg instead. You try again but this time, the… Read more »

Tom Finnigan, TalkingBrands.ai
AI/Machine Learning

AI-powered content creation startup TalkingBrands is offering its MVP to test for free

- December 5, 2023 2 MIN READ

An artificial intelligence-powered startup that helps business leaders turn their ideas into content has launched with users able to test the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) of TalkingBrands.ai for free. Cofounder Tom Finnigan, who previously managed PR at AusCyber and Stone & Chalk, developed TalkingBrands.ai to take away the fear people have when it comes to… Read more »

Sam Altman
AI/Machine Learning

The fight at OpenAI is a reminder that we need to take a closer look at whether AI developers can regulate themselves

- December 5, 2023 3 MIN READ

OpenAI, developer of ChatGPT and a leading innovator in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), was recently thrown into turmoil when its chief-executive and figurehead, Sam Altman, was fired. As it was revealed that he would be joining Microsoft’s advanced AI research team, more than 730 OpenAI employees threatened to quit. Finally, it was announced… Read more »

Grok, AI
AI/Machine Learning

What the Grok! Elon Musk’s new AI tool is sarcastic and potty-mouthed – so who’s it for?

- November 17, 2023 4 MIN READ

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 »

AI/Machine Learning

Book review: Toby Walsh’s Faking It Faking unpacks how we’re being tricked into thinking AI is human.

- November 17, 2023 3 MIN READ

Toby Walsh is one of Australia’s most well-known experts on artificial intelligence and his latest book Faking It: Artificial Intelligence in a Human World aims to dispel the common illusion that machine intelligence is comparable to human intelligence. It’s an illusion deeply embedded in the history of AI that could have disastrous consequences, Walsh believes, unless… Read more »

Robot with digital screen
AI/Machine Learning

ACS calls for digital skills action after its analysis of artificial intelligence finds that 9 in every 10 jobs will be disrupted

- November 14, 2023 2 MIN READ

The Australian tech sector is in crisis and it’s set to intensify with AI. That’s the key message from the Australian Computer Society’s Digital Pulse 2023 report, which also found artificial intelligence will disrupt up to 90% of Australian jobs. To tackle the impending crisis, ACS proposes a National Digital Skills Strategy including a skills-first education… Read more »

TikTok
AI/Machine Learning

We asked ChatGPT to write a story about the rebranding of a fintech people confuse with a Chinese social media site – so it made up fake names for the CEO

- November 14, 2023 4 MIN READ

First up, the TL:DR version.  Adelaide fintech Tic:Toc has rebranded as Tiimely, six years after the home lending assessment platform launched. You can guess why. The ByteDance social media video platform with the same name (but different spelling) now has 1.5 billion users, having launched in 2016, several months before Tic:Toc. That leaves the local… Read more »

Richard Flanagan
AI/Machine Learning

AI is stealing from Australian authors to make its owners even richer

- October 5, 2023 2 MIN READ

Australian authors have been caught up in a major controversy around the data used to train large language models after an investigation uncovered 183,000 pirated books were included in a commonly used dataset called Books3. Booker Prize winning novelist Richard Flanagan was among the Australian writers whose works were in the dataset that was reportedly… Read more »

Sam Kerr, AI
AI/Machine Learning

A newspaper created an AI version of Sam Kerr holding a trophy and it’s a lesson in why humans still matter

- September 28, 2023 2 MIN READ

Nine newspaper The Australian Financial Review celebrates a bunch of people in its annual “Power” issue of the AFR Magazine tomorrow. Among them is Matildas captain Sam Kerr as the top of the ladder when it comes to people “who made the biggest mark on culture this year” as “arguably Australia’s most successful sportsperson on… Read more »