Author: The Conversation

Children are innately curious, and throughout any given day, they come up with all manner of questions: Why don’t fish have hair? Why do flowers wilt so quickly? Their need to understand the world – and develop their language skills and ideas – makes them tireless conversationalists. While their inquiries would usually be directed at parents or teachers, in modern homes, even the youngest kids might now talk to a digital interface like Siri or Alexa. These AI systems are fast becoming part of many children’s everyday lives, as kids ask them to play music, help with their homework, answer…

Imagine if one company could become the railroad, electric utility and cloud-computing provider of the emerging space economy. That potential fueled excitement around the long-anticipated initial public offering of SpaceX. Investors are not simply betting on rockets anymore. They are betting on an entire orbital ecosystem. Among the most ambitious and challenging ideas riding this wave of enthusiasm is something that sounds almost like science fiction: orbital data centres. SpaceX may be one of the most well-known companies seeking to build them, but it is not the only one. The logic is seductive: Launch the data centres into orbit, where solar…

Football fans everywhere are gearing up to celebrate the sport’s most skilled athletes as they prepare for the start of another FIFA World Cup. But few get to see how the next generation of Messis and Ronaldos are discovered. For decades, the beautiful game depended on the human eye: a scout on the sideline, attentively watching, waiting for that something special. That process, however, is becoming increasingly data-driven. Across elite football academies worldwide, technologies such as GPS trackers, automated video analysis, and AI-powered platforms are changing how players are identified and assessed. In a sport shaped by money and global…

In the last few years, the hype around artificial intelligence has become stratospheric. Riding a wave of venture capital, tech leaders promised us AI would revolutionise work, boost productivity and lead to incredible new breakthroughs. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, set a new record when it attained US$110 billion in investments several months ago – and its CEO, Sam Altman, recently claimed Australia could become a “data capital of the world.” Sky-high promises have been accompanied by sky-high investment in data centres, the sprawling server farms that power the training, execution, and maintenance of these models. A monstrous new hyperscale facility proposed for Sydney’s west…

Most of us think of espresso as a hot, high-pressure ritual. Finely ground coffee goes into a machine, boiling water is forced through it, and in about 30 seconds we get a concentrated shot with crema, aroma, bitterness, body and caffeine. As someone from Colombia, I like to think coffee is in my blood – and I’m proud to come from a country known for producing some of the best coffee beans in the world. So perhaps that’s why I have spent a lot of time in my laboratory with my team asking a simple question: does espresso really need…

As the United Kingdom and other countries make moves to follow Australia’s lead in restricting access to social media for under-16s, there is still much we don’t know about how the technology impacts young people’s mental health over time. For example, does using social media for a certain number of hours each day lead to increased harm? Are younger adolescents more vulnerable than older ones? Is there any difference between boys and girls? Our new study, published today in the Medical Journal of Australia, provides some important answers to these questions. It found clear risks from heavier social media use on young…

At the start of cosmic history, galaxies were big clouds of gas, and they grew by turning that gas into stars. If a galaxy runs out of gas, it will stop forming stars and die. Present-day galaxies have had more than 10 billion years to grow old and die. But this is not true in the early universe: we expect to see very few dead galaxies in the first billion years of cosmic time. In 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope gave us our first clear glimpse of galaxies in the early universe. What we saw completely defied our expectations:…

Mauritius set out its national AI strategy in 2018, the first by an African country. Since then, over a dozen African states have adopted national AI policies of some sort or another. As a national policy plan, an AI strategy typically sets out the priorities and aspirations in achieving certain policy objectives. At the continental level, the African Union has adopted an AI strategy. Kenya and Ethiopia have tabled draft AI laws that set out how the countries want AI governed. Morocco, Egypt and Nigeria are already mulling the idea of AI legislation. The trend shows that policymakers are slowly turning their attention from unchecked enthusiasm…

Conservationists analyse overwhelming volumes of ecological data in their work. For example, they might need to process decades of weather data or the movements of millions of insects. Up until now, these scientists and decision makers have had to manually find and sort information, then use statistical tools which often oversimplify the source information. Artificial intelligence (AI) tools now promise to help with all that. But can they deliver on the promise? They are far from perfect. It’s been shown that they can confidently make up information and amplify hidden biases in their training data. And different AI tools have different uses, strengths and…

The moment of first contact with extraterrestrials is a staple of science fiction. It usually involves a frantic scientist having a Eureka moment, realising in a single dramatic instant that Earth is being visited by creatures from light-years away. Aliens are in the public consciousness once again thanks to Steven Spielberg’s latest film, Disclosure Day, which follows a whistleblower’s attempts to reveal extraterrestrial visitations to the world. In reality, the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence is far more likely to emerge as a faint anomaly in astronomical data, followed by a slow, painstaking process of verification, peer review and intense international deliberation. There might…