Ed Husic
AI/Machine Learning

The Australian government wants feedback on regulating artificial intelligence and its risks

- June 2, 2023 2 MIN READ

The federal government is seeking feedback on mitigating any potential risks from the use of artificial intelligence technologies (AI) and how to build a safe framework for its use amid growing global concerns that seeing machine learning as potentially an existential threat to humanity. Science and industry minister Ed Husic released two discussion papers on… Read more »

AI/Machine Learning

The good news is AI probably won’t wipe out humanity, but Big Tech is certainly hoping to wipe out competition

- June 2, 2023 4 MIN READ

Doomsaying is an old occupation. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a complex subject. It’s easy to fear what you don’t understand. These three truths go some way towards explaining the oversimplification and dramatisation plaguing discussions about AI. This week outlets around the world were plastered with news of yet another open letter claiming AI poses an… Read more »

Other tech

US authorities have approved human trials of Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain chip – but the current lessons from AI need to apply here too

- May 31, 2023 4 MIN READ

Since its founding in 2016, Elon Musk’s neurotechnology company Neuralink has had the ambitious mission to build a next-generation brain implant with at least 100 times more brain connections than devices currently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The company has now reached a significant milestone, having received FDA approval to begin… Read more »

Professor Hind Benbya,
Events

Deakin University’s annual AI festival is on next week

- May 25, 2023 2 MIN READ

Deakin University’s Centre for AI and the Future of Business is holding its third annual AI Festival in Melbourne next week on June 1-2. The 2023 theme ‘Co-creating value with AI’ will bring together more than 150 business leaders, tech innovators, scholars, and policy makers, including 25 expert presenters. A series of panel sessions will… Read more »

Servicely founder Dion Williams.
Funding

AI-based task automation startup Servicely banks $3 million

- May 22, 2023 2 MIN READ

Enterprise software startup Servicely has raised $3 million as it looks to transform how people work. The round was led by Sydney B2B SaaS focused venture fund EVP. The funding is allocated towards further international expansion and enhancing the startup’s Enterprise Service Management (ESM) platform.  Servicely’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform uses artificial intelligence (AI) to augment… Read more »

Cadmus founder Herk Kailis
Funding

Breakthrough Victoria plants $600,000 in anti-plagiarism edtech Cadmus

- May 19, 2023 2 MIN READ

Breakthrough Victoria, the state government’s $2 billion investment fund, has backed edtech startup Cadmus, which is helping universities detect generative AI plagiarism, chipping in $600,000 as part of an undisclosed total round for global expansion. Cadmus emerged in 2015 out of a research project at the University of Melbourne. The software platform has sophisticated learner… Read more »

AI
AI/Machine Learning

AI guru Geoffrey Hinton says AI is a new form of intelligence unlike our own, so are we thinking about it the wrong way?

- May 8, 2023 4 MIN READ

Debates about AI often characterise it as a technology that has come to compete with human intelligence. Indeed, one of the most widely pronounced fears is that AI may achieve human-like intelligence and render humans obsolete in the process. However, one of the world’s top AI scientists is now describing AI as a new form… Read more »

AI
AI/Machine Learning

AI ‘godfather’ Geoffrey Hinton pulls the pin with Google over artificial intelligence dangers

- May 3, 2023 2 MIN READ

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 »

Prof Andrew Parfitt, Victor Dominello, Prof Attila Brungs.
People

Former NSW minister Victor Dominello has a new university gig running tackling ethics and trust in digital life

- May 1, 2023 3 MIN READ

Former NSW digital government minister Victor Dominello has a new job after leaving politics at the March state election, signing on as the director of the university-based UNSW-UTS Trustworthy Digital Society Hub. The announcement comes on the same day Jihad Dib, the new Labor minister in charge of digital government marked Privacy Week, announcing the… Read more »

Spam, mail
AI/Machine Learning

AI-generated spam is on its way to your inbox – and its secret weapon will be personalisation

- April 24, 2023 4 MIN READ

Each day, messages from Nigerian princes, peddlers of wonder drugs and promoters of can’t-miss investments choke email inboxes. Improvements to spam filters only seem to inspire new techniques to break through the protections. Now, the arms race between spam blockers and spam senders is about to escalate with the emergence of a new weapon: generative… Read more »

AI voice
AI/Machine Learning

What happens when AI voice generation goes rogue – the dangers of ‘voiceprints’ for ID

- April 21, 2023 4 MIN READ

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 »