From today, Monday August 26, many employees in Australia get a new right, called the right to disconnect from work. This entails the right to refuse to read or respond to work-related calls, texts and emails outside their working hours, unless that refusal is unreasonable. The Fair Work Commission says what will matter is whether… Read more »
The office of the Australian Information Commissioner announced this week it would be taking no further action against facial recognition company Clearview AI. This marked a significant victory for one of the most controversial technology companies in the world. In 2021, Australia’s privacy regulator ruled Clearview AI broke privacy laws for scraping millions of photographs… Read more »
Less than two years ago, the launch of ChatGPT started a generative AI frenzy. Some said the technology would trigger a fourth industrial revolution, completely reshaping the world as we know it. In March 2023, Goldman Sachs predicted 300 million jobs would be lost or degraded due to AI. A huge shift seemed to be… Read more »
Artificial intelligence (AI) prophets and newsmongers are forecasting the end of the generative AI hype, with talk of an impending catastrophic “model collapse”. But how realistic are these predictions? And what is model collapse anyway? Discussed in 2023, but popularised more recently, “model collapse” refers to a hypothetical scenario where future AI systems get progressively… Read more »
Next week, changes to the Australian Fair Work Act will give workers the formal right to disconnect from all work communication outside their usual work hours. The main driver for introducing “right to disconnect” laws has been to protect the health and wellbeing of workers in an increasingly hyper-connected world. But what exactly will the… Read more »
On Tuesday, Australia’s minister for government services, Bill Shorten, announced the federal government is developing a new digital identity and credential system. Known as the Trust Exchange (TEx), Shorten said the new system will be “world leading” and represents an “exciting step forward for Australia’s digital infrastructure”. But details about the system are scarce. Shorten… Read more »
The minister for government services, Bill Shorten, will unveil a new initiative that would allow people to have more control over the personal information they share. The scheme, called the Trust Exchange (TEx), would allow people to verify their identities and credentials based on official information already held by the federal government. The plan is… Read more »
Announcing the directive to work “primarily in an approved office”, NSW Premier Chris Minns said overseas studies showed people were less productive when working from home. “There is a drop in mentorship. There is less of a sense of joint mission,” he said. “This is about building up a culture in the public service.” Having… Read more »
Automated facial recognition is becoming widespread in Australia. The technology has already been used by retail outlets, sport stadiums and casinos around the country. And in November, the Australian government’s digital identification system will be expanded, after new laws passed parliament earlier in the year. As the technology becomes less expensive and more powerful, it… Read more »
Our insatiable demand for digital content and services has been driving a rise in energy-hungry data centres. The International Energy Agency reports global data centre electricity consumption could double in a few short years, reaching 1,000 terawatt hours (TWh) by 2026. That’s roughly the same as generated by the whole of Japan per year. Some… Read more »
In the world of artificial intelligence (AI), a battle is underway. On one side are companies that believe in keeping the datasets and algorithms behind their advanced software private and confidential. On the other are companies that believe in allowing the public to see what’s under the hood of their sophisticated AI models. Think of… Read more »
The late David Graeber was an American professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. His best-known writings challenged views in liberal economics about the origins of money, attempting to reconceive the historical relationship between debt and social institutions. He was also known for his political activism, notably as one of the original organisers… Read more »
Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from cafes and restaurants via the DoorDash app and have it brought to them in minutes by a small aircraft. This is the… Read more »
Social media is a problem for economists. They don’t know how to value it. It has long been argued that it ought to be in the national accounts as part of gross domestic product. One 2019 study estimated Facebook alone is worth US$40 to US$50 per month for consumers in the United States. But that’s… Read more »
Friday’s global IT outage caused by a software update gone wrong highlights the interconnected and often fragile nature of modern IT infrastructure. It demonstrates how a single point of failure can have far-reaching consequences. The outage was linked to a single update automatically rolled out to Crowdstrike Falcon, a ubiquitous cyber security tool used primarily… Read more »
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