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Keywords: Tech

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Is Artificial Intelligence human?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 May 2023
    3 Comments

    Both the resignation of Google AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton and Pope Francis' recent address on technology highlight concerns about unrestricted technological development and the urgent need for informed discourse on the potential of AI to reshape communication, governance, and self-understanding.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Ballooning risks of finance fictions

    • David James
    • 14 March 2023

    Was Russia's removal from the SWIFT system the moment when the global financial system detached itself from reality? The financial system is at risk from unpayable debt and the delusion that money can be created out of money itself, and wider trust underpinning finance is steadily evaporating.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Extinction machines and the religious gut

    • Nathan Campbell
    • 07 March 2023
    1 Comment

    The evolution of profit-driven poker machines has sparked a debate over the role of personal beliefs in shaping policies aimed at curbing addiction. As society grapples with the ethical implications of technology designed to maximize addiction, can a policymaker rely on a 'religious gut'? 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Does ChatGPT have a place in the classroom?

    • Sarah Klenbort
    • 22 February 2023
    3 Comments

    Does ChatGPT have a place in the classroom? Educators worldwide are grappling with this new ubiquitous technology, fearing not only that it will facilitate cheating, but may create an over-dependence leading to cognitive decline. But the same was once said about writing.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Eureka Street person of the year

    • David Halliday, Michael McVeigh, Laura Kings, Michele Frankeni, Andrew Hamilton, Julian Butler
    • 21 December 2022
    2 Comments

    To close the year for Eureka Street, the editorial team wanted to nominate who we considered to be the Eureka Street ‘person of the year’ based on who we think somehow embody Eureka Street values.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Trust over tech: Confronting tertiary cheating

    • Emma Wilkins
    • 01 December 2022

    University students across the country are using so-called ‘study’ sites to buy essays and answers for online assessments. Australia’s academic integrity regulator has since blocked scores of sites, but there are still work-arounds; experts say the problem is likely worse than we realise, and almost impossible to solve.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Sticking to the environment

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 02 November 2022
    2 Comments

    The campaign against global warming has been heating up, and the latest protests have focused on works of art. Like the burning of books, assaults on paintings seemed to express contempt for human culture at its noblest. But as more details became public, the reality seemed more complex.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Real world problems can’t be solved by finance fictions

    • David James
    • 18 October 2022
    3 Comments

    The world is facing cross-currents: a collapsing financial system that is balanced by the benefits of massive, long term improvements in production efficiencies, mainly because of technological advances. It is a bad news/good news story that can only be seen accurately if the intractable errors of contemporary economics are jettisoned. We are in a battle between finance fictions and reality. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The empty echo chamber: A conversation with Dr Axel Bruns

    • David Halliday, Axel Bruns
    • 22 September 2022

    Despite our differing social and cultural beliefs, we can mostly agree that we live in highly polarised times. But what divides us? ARC Laureate Fellow Prof. Axel Bruns studies social polarisation, and in this discussion we explore the drivers of polarisation, examining the role that digital and social media and broader social and political contexts play in intensifying social conflicts, threatening economic prosperity, undermining public trust, and ultimately destabilising societies.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Morrison shadow government and the romantics of convention

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 01 September 2022
    8 Comments

    The most striking note in the tempestuous outrage regarding Scott Morrison’s self-appointment (technically, appointment with the Governor-General’s approval) to five ministerial portfolios other than his own, is the search for the illegal. Such a search is fruitless in a system that thrives on the principle of convention, perennially uncodified and therefore susceptible to breach.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Is social media harmful? A Roundtable

    • David Halliday, Beth Doherty, Tim Dunlop, Matthew Howard
    • 26 August 2022

    When former Facebook employee Frances Haugen released a trove of documents revealing internal research on the negative effects its social media products were having on mental health, the darker side of social media became hard to ignore. So how might the harmful effects of social media be mitigated into a social benefit for a saner, more coherent society? 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    LaMDA and the (lack of) body

    • Julian Butler
    • 05 July 2022
    3 Comments

    Just over a fortnight ago Google suspended Blake Lemoine, an engineer for Google’s AI organisation, for publicly claiming a computer chatbot he was working on is sentient and thinks and reasons like a human. The publicity surrounding the suspension has raised questions about the development of artificial intelligence (AI), about our shared understanding of what it means to be conscious and sentient.  

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