News
In my regular chat with RNZ's Nine To Noon host Kathryn Ryan, we discuss the first known criminal case of a 'deepfake' being used to discredit a witness; Meta AI claiming to be the parent of a disabled child - in a chatgroup of parents with disabled children; how the new US Department of Homeland Security's AI Oversight Board assigns the foxes to guard the henhouse; and what happens when you ask a chatbot to play act as a Catholic Priest?
Listen here.
The Project TV: Meet the nightmare robots taking over the world
Some commentary on 'humanoid' robots on Channel 10's The Project on 1 May 2024 - and why those robots really don't pose a threat to flesh-and-blood humans...
Devaluing content created by AI is lazy and ignores history
The answer is not to hide from ML, but be honest about it
It's taken less than eighteen months for human- and AI-generated media to become impossibly intermixed. Some find this utterly unconscionable, and refuse to have anything to do with any media that has any generative content within it. That ideological stance betrays a false hope: that this is a passing trend, an obsession with the latest new thing, and will pass. It won't.
Wisely AI has identified five key risks associated with the use of AI in organisations: Anthropomorphising AI chatbots; Malicious and commercially sensitive training data; hallucinations; privacy, data security and data sovereignty; and prompt attacks. In our 'De-Risking AI' white paper, we outline these risks, and suggested mitigation techniques. It's part of Wisely AI's mission to 'help organisations use AI safely and wisely.'
From a “zombie self” to the reshaping of cities and nanobots in your blood stream, here are nine ways things might be different 40 years from now.
ABC News 'What will life be like for Australians in 2064?': Interviews with a number of future-oriented thinkers - including myself - about what the world of 2064 holds for us.
Your PC can probably run inferencing just fine – so it's already an AI PC
Language models are entirely happy on the desktop
What is it that makes a PC an AI PC? Beyond some vague hand-waving at the presence "neural processing units" and other features only available on the latest-and-greatest silicon, no-one has come up with a definition beyond an attempt to market some FOMO.
Tech giant nVidia breaks Wall Street record after posting an enormous increase in profits
ABC News Radio 'The World Today' programme, Friday 23 February 2024 - Interview for ABC 'The World Today' radio programme about why nVidia has suddenly become the 3rd most valuable company in the world, and how they're litterally printing money on silicon with their must-have AI chips.
As we grapple with 'sovereign AI', perhaps we should treat computational resources as finite and precious
COSMOS column 21 February 2024 - "While both commercial and political imperatives drive some of the explosive growth in 'foundation' large language models, more of it – much, much more – will be driven by an increasingly nuanced understanding of the value of these models...."
AI has a terrible energy problem. It’s about to hit crisis point
COSMOS column 14 February 2024 - "Unless something knocks us off this path, it’s reasonable to expect that by around 2030 there will be more than a billion people using AI day-to-day in their work, and perhaps another 3 or 4 billion using it..."
It's time we add friction to digital experiences and slow them down
Decades of obsessing about always going faster have left us in constant danger.
Microsoft's new subscription 'Copilot Pro' service - is it worth AUD $45 per person per month? Read our white paper to learn whether the business case makes sense for your organisation.
In my regular chat with RNZ's Nine To Noon host Kathryn Ryan, I talk about the huge advance in "spatial computing" introduced by Apple's Vision Pro. It comes with a hefty price tag - and will people really want to wear them?
Deepfakes keep getting better - just ask the Hong Kong employee whose company lost $40m on an extremely real scam and what are the implications of Google no longer backing up the web?
Listen here.
Apple has botched 3D for decades, so good luck with the Vision Pro, Tim
It looks like a fine product, but it's the ecosystem that will determine success
It's uncertain where consumer technology is heading, but judging from CES, it smells
Our vulture spent a week in Las Vegas – here are his key takeaways
Second of two reports from CES 2024 for COSMOS
COSMOS column 11 January 2024 - "...the most interesting and innovative takeaways can reliably be found amongst the thousands of startups and tiny companies vying for the attentions of the 200,000+ CES attendees..."
First of two reports from CES 2024 for COSMOS
COSMOS column 7 January 2024 - "I’d come to CES this year expecting to see AI pretty much everywhere, integrated into pretty much everything, but I very quickly learned that this wouldn’t be the big story of 2024...."