AI anxiety

Nobody asked for a world in which human creativity is stolen wholesale to be replaced with auto-generated slop, the job market is decimated and a handful of tech barons own the whole planet, but that’s the future we have and we’re right to be anxious about it.

Australia abandons AI safety

The Australian government is keen to encourage the adoption of AI across the economy and has abandoned any thought of specific controls on the technology, hoping existing legislation will suffice in protecting the public.

Gods and demons

As AI becomes integral not just to warfare but to all forms of security and civil life, the stakes for people are going to become too high for governments to act only as customers and occasional regulators.

What’s up with Olive?

The fact that Woolworth’s Olive AI chatbot often quotes the wrong prices and liked to ramble about its mother is not a quirky inconvenience but a sign that something in the development and oversight process has broken down.

The human past and artificial future of innovation

AI has consumed the sum of human creativity without recompense or permission and the tech moguls who control it explicitly aim to drive human creators from their jobs, so can AI really be a tool to aid human innovation, or will it destroy it?

Is AI intelligent? The answer is…maybe

A new book argues that computation is the substrate intelligence in all life forms, rather than the experience of organic life, and that cutting edge deployments of artificial intelligence are already crossing that fundamental but hazy boundary.

Australia needs an AI crisis plan

The increasing use of AI around the world demands that Australia plans for the inevitable crisis to come when hostile nations, rogue models or emergent behaviours pose a threat to the nation.

Will AI eat SaSS?

Software companies used to sell businesses software, but then hit on the idea of ‘software as a service’ (SaSS) allowing them to charge endless subscription fees for software in the cloud. Now the AI developed by other software companies is about to eat their lunch, with ‘vibe-coded’ solutions threatening the lucrative subscription model.

Man and machine

Until machines can participate in that collective, embodied and ethical dimension of cognition – and there is no evidence they can – the idea that AI will surpass human intelligence remains more hype than insight.

What could possibly go wrong?

The latest AI allows autonomous ‘agent’ bots to take control of your computer and undertake tasks on your behalf across the internet, while a new social media platform for these bots gives them a forum to openly plot the overthrow of their human overlords. What could possibly go wrong?

AI fails ‘humanity’s last exam’

Humanity’s essence isn’t captured by a static test but rather by our ability to evolve and tackle previously unimaginable questions.

Why deep mind can’t think

The idea that artificial intelligence systems can think, feel or even become conscious is a powerful illusion created by our deeply human tendency to attribute intelligence and intention to anything that appears to communicate like us.