Queensland construction and engineering conglomerate BMD Group has backed Brisbane artificial intelligence startup Octant AI, investing nearly $1 million for a 10% stake. Octant uses AI to for predictive analysis aimed at reducing uncertainty in projects to manage costs. BMD CEO Scott Power said his company had been using the tech platform in its project… Read more »
Just over a year into the Consumer Data Right (CDR) regime and Australia is now beginning to understand the competitive advantage this new world of data can offer. Designed to give consumers greater access and ownership over their own data to increase competition, CDR has first been introduced to banking, to be followed by energy… Read more »
A three-year investigation into a cyber attack that stole data from Uber belonging to 1.2 million Australia has found that the US tech company failed to act appropriately in response and paid the cyber criminals responsible a bug bounty for the breach. Privacy Commissioner Angelene Falk’s review said Uber “interfered” with the privacy of around… Read more »
Machine learning startup SourseAI has raised $1.5 million to help bosses make fewer calls based on their gut feeling. The round was led by Aligned Equity and TV and radio company Southern Cross Austereo (SCA), making its second investment in an AI-based analytics startup after backing spoken word analysis venture Sonnant earlier this year. The… Read more »
The roll out the open banking under the Consumer Data Right (CDR) is set to have a major boost 12 months after its launch with 20 Australian banks and credit unions set to join in a partnership with data fintech Adatree. July 1 marks the first anniversary of CDR and a year on, there are… Read more »
Have you ever chatted with a friend about buying a certain item and been targeted with an ad for that same item the next day? If so, you may have wondered whether your smartphone was “listening” to you. But is it really? Well, it’s no coincidence the item you’d been interested in was the same… Read more »
Ground-breaking research by computer scientists at RMIT University has developed an artificial intelligence model that can hear the effects of Covid-19 in the sound of a forced cough, even when people are asymptomatic. While the idea is not new, scientists at Cambridge University and MIT have been investigating the concept, the work at RMIT’s School… Read more »
QR code contact-tracing apps are a crucial part of our defence against COVID-19. But their value depends on being widely used, which in turn means people using these apps need to be confident their data won’t be misused. That’s why this week’s revelation that Western Australian police accessed data gathered using the SafeWA app is… Read more »
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in tech is set to become ubiquitous over the next decade, but getting consumers to embrace products that use it will be a major issue for startups with nearly three-quarters of Australians suspicious of AI. The only thing playing in favour of startups using AI is that most people… Read more »
Canberra-based communications compliance software startup Castlepoint Systems has raised a $3 million series A led by Main Sequence Ventures. The CSIRO’s deep tech investment fund was joined by existing investor IxTx in the round. Castlepoint’s software uses artificial intelligence to automatically discover, classify, and control documents, emails, chat messages, databases, or webpages in a company… Read more »
Australian and US law enforcement officials on Tuesday announced they’d sprung a trap three years in the making, catching major international crime figures using an encrypted app. More than 200 underworld figures in Australia have been charged in what Australian Federal Police (AFP) say is their biggest-ever organised crime bust. The operation, led by the… Read more »
Most of us benefit every day from the fact computers can now “understand” us when we speak or write. Yet few of us have paused to consider the potentially damaging ways this same technology may be shaping our culture. Human language is full of ambiguity and double meanings. For instance, consider the potential meaning of… Read more »
A pioneering project using artificial intelligence (AI) to predict traffic congestion up to three hours before it’s going to happen, and could change the way authorities control traffic in real time, has launched in Melbourne. The University of Melbourne’s Australian Integrated Multimodal EcoSystem (AIMES) has partnered with PeakHour Urban Technologies, the Victorian Department of Transport,… Read more »
ASX-listed payroll and HR software platform ELMO (ASX:ELO) is using artificial intelligence in a new people analytics product that can predict when people are looking to leave the business. The company said its Predictive People Analytics (PPA) module is the first phase of a suite of new machine learning developments to deliver data-driven insights and… Read more »
Apple users across the globe are adopting the latest operating system update, called iOS 14.5, featuring the now-obligatory new batch of emojis. But there’s another change that’s arguably less fun but much more significant for many users: the introduction of “app tracking transparency”. This feature promises to usher in a new era of user-oriented privacy,… Read more »
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