Author: The Conversation

A South African court case made headlines for all the wrong reasons in January 2025. The legal team in Mavundla v MEC: Department of Co-Operative Government and Traditional Affairs KwaZulu-Natal and Others had relied on case law that simply didn’t exist. It had been generated by ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by OpenAI. Only two of the nine case authorities the legal team submitted to the High Court were genuine. The rest were AI-fabricated “hallucinations”. The court called this conduct “irresponsible and unprofessional” and referred the matter to the Legal Practice Council, the statutory body that regulates legal practitioners in…

Social media has reached more than half (63.9%) of the world’s population since it got started in 1996. Social network platforms grew from 970 million users in 2010 to 5.41 billion in July 2025. The average social media user engages with between six and seven platforms. The average person spends two hours 21 minutes on social media per day. All this time on social media shapes people’s perceptions, influences emotions and fuels anxieties, but its impact on social stress remains difficult to measure. Herkulaas MvE Combrink is a specialist in computational infodemiology, a field which studies the spread of information in digital spaces, at high volumes…

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming commonplace, despite statistics showing that only approximately 7% to 13% (depending on size) of companies have incorporated AI into their regular business workflows. Adoption in specific business functions is far higher, with up to 78% of companies reporting use of AI tools in at least one business area. And more than 90% of companies plan to increase AI investment within three years. This surge in adoption is underpinned by expectations of significant efficiency gains and cost reduction. Widespread implementation of AI is also accompanied by layoffs. Estimates vary, but it’s clear that within the next decade, millions of jobs will be reshaped or…

The latest generation of artificial intelligence (AI) models is sharper and smoother, producing polished text with fewer errors and hallucinations. As a philosophy professor, I have a growing fear: When a polished essay no longer shows that a student did the thinking, the grade above it becomes hollow – and so does the diploma. The problem doesn’t stop in the classroom. In fields such as law, medicine and journalism, trust depends on knowing that human judgment guided the work. A patient, for instance, expects a doctor’s prescription to reflect an expert’s thought and training. AI products can now be used…

After Christmas dinner in 2021, our family was glued to the television, watching the nail-biting launch of NASA’s US$10 billion (AU$15 billion) James Webb Space Telescope. There had not been such a leap forward in telescope technology since Hubble was launched in 1990. En route to its deployment, Webb had to successfully navigate 344 potential points of failure. Thankfully, the launch went better than expected, and we could finally breathe again. Six months later, Webb’s first images were revealed, of the most distant galaxies yet seen. However, for our team in Australia, the work was only beginning. We would be using Webb’s highest-resolution mode, called the…

What if the problem with social media isn’t just how much we use it, but when? A new study suggests that scrolling and posting through the small hours may be a red flag for mental well-being – and the effects could be as significant as binge drinking. For the study, published in Scientific Reports, my colleagues and I analysed the Twitter (now X) habits of 310 adults and discovered that those who regularly posted between 11pm and 5am showed meaningfully worse mental well-being than daytime users. This finding challenges the current policy obsession with screen time limits and points toward a more…

A “transformation” is upon us. After a multi-year procession of educational technology products that once promised to shake things up, now it’s AI’s turn. Global organisations like the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, as well as government bodies, present AI to the public as “transformative.” Prominent AI companies with large language model (LLM) chatbots have “education-focused” products, like ChatGPT Education, Claude for Education and Gemini in Google for Education. AI products facilitate exciting new ways to search, present and engage with knowledge and have sparked widespread interest and enthusiasm in the technology for young learners. However, there are crucial areas of concern regarding AI use such as data privacy, transparency and…

Last week, OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT Atlas, a web browser that promises to revolutionise how we interact with the internet. The company’s CEO, Sam Altman, described it as a “once-a-decade opportunity” to rethink how we browse the web. The promise is compelling: imagine an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant that follows you across every website, remembers your preferences, summarises articles, and handles tedious tasks such as booking flights or ordering groceries on your behalf. But beneath the glossy marketing lies a more troubling reality. Atlas is designed to be “agentic”, able to autonomously navigate websites and take actions in your logged-in accounts. This introduces security…

Artificial intelligence (AI) is fast becoming part of the furniture. A decade after IBM’s Watson triumphed on “Jeopardy!,” generative AI models are in kitchens and home offices. People often talk about AI in science fiction terms, yet the most consequential change in 2025 may be its banal ubiquity. To appreciate how ordinary AI use has become, it helps to remember that this trend didn’t start with generative chatbots. A 2017 Knowledge at Wharton newsletter documented how deep learning algorithms were already powering chatbots on social media and photo apps’ facial recognition functions. Digital assistants such as Siri and Alexa were performing everyday tasks,…

The consulting firm Accenture recently laid off 11,000 employees while expanding its efforts to train workers to use artificial intelligence (AI). It’s a sharp reminder that the same technology driving efficiency is also redefining what it takes to keep a job. And Accenture isn’t alone. IBM has already replaced hundreds of roles with AI systems, while creating new jobs in sales and marketing. Amazon cut staff even as it expands teams that build and manage AI tools. Across industries, from banks to hospitals and creative companies, workers and managers alike are trying to understand which roles will disappear, which will evolve and which new ones will emerge. I research and teach at Drexel University’s LeBow…