Author: The Conversation

On Monday, a nine-member federal jury in Oakland, California, took less than two hours to dismiss Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman. Crucially, the jury did not rule on the core claims of the case. These included whether OpenAI, the company behind the popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT, strayed from its founding mission and whether Altman and OpenAI’s co-founder Greg Brockman enriched themselves at the expense of a charitable purpose. It decided only that Musk had waited too long to sue in relation to his core claims about breaches of a founding contract or breach of…

How does a medium once branded “the devil’s own box” become the fireplace around which a nation tries to rekindle its broken identity? This question lies at the heart of our recently published book that marks 50 years since the flicker of the first official TV broadcast in South Africa in 1976. The volume takes stock of television’s journey from a tool of state propaganda to a contested site of democratic expression. Today, this fireplace has expanded beyond the state-owned public broadcaster to incorporate private TV channels and platforms. It has evolved into the digital frontier of streaming services like Netflix, SABC+ and the…

Tech giant Meta recently announced a set of new features to give parents greater oversight of how their children use Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Horizon. This follows the company’s announcement earlier this month that it is expanding age assurance checks to filter 13-to-17-year-old users into teen accounts in the United States and other countries, following Australia’s rollout in 2025. Meta is also implementing new age checks and easier reporting of underage users to support account removals. These changes come as Meta faces increasing pressure internationally to do more to keep kids safe on its platforms. So what exactly are the changes? And will they likely work…

Artificial intelligence (AI) has crossed a threshold in the modern workplace. It is being used for everything from helping employees manage schedules to supporting financial forecasts. A similar shift is now unfolding inside research laboratories. There is currently a boom in national initiatives to accelerate the integration of AI into science. These include the US Genesis Mission and South Korea’s AI Co-Scientist Challenge. But despite clear benefits, we believe these institutional drives are neglecting important issues that carry immense risks for scientific research. Today, more than half of researchers use AI for work tasks, including reviews of academic journals and designing experiments. AlphaFold is an AI tool developed…

From live speech translation in video calls to auto-dubbing on TikTok, the technology to dissolve language barriers has arrived. Real-time translation powered by artificial intelligence (AI) is now embedded in everyday life. Tools from OpenAI, Meta, Google and many others now offer near-instant translation across dozens of languages, and they keep improving. All this raises a vital question. If machines can do this faster and more accurately than humans, is investing years in learning another language still worth it? The logic is appealing. Humans have always offloaded cognitive work onto tools. Writing reduces demands on our memory. Calculators removed the burden of mental arithmetic. AI…

I teach writing and rhetoric, but my college students and I often overlook a surprisingly complicated question: What is writing? And can artificial intelligence really do it? Many people think of “writing” as putting words on a page. However, even from very early on, writers have seen their craft as something more. From Enheduanna, the first named author on record, to Plato and Aristotle, writing has been portrayed and defined in ways that suggest AI may not be “writing” at all. If not, what should we call AI text? ChatGPT and I have an idea. Praising and pleading Enheduanna, who lived around…

The nonprofit ARC Prize Foundation, on May 1, 2026, released the results of a new benchmark: a test of an AI system’s ability to solve a game. The results were striking – humans scored 100%, while the most advanced AI systems scored under 1%. At first glance, this may be surprising to users of AI who are impressed by its polished essays, codebases and multistep projects generated in seconds. How can these brilliant AI systems struggle with these simple Tetris-shaped puzzles? That confusion points to a risk: AI is becoming integrated into everyday life faster than people can make sense of it. We…

A billboard tries to sell you something. So does a used car salesman. But no matter how smooth the pitch, you’re quite aware of the profit motive, and you can walk away at any time. What if that pitch is invisible, plays to your unique fears and vanities, and is delivered in a voice that sounds like a trusted friend? Generative AI has changed the equation of persuasion entirely: chatbots can now deliver a personalised, adaptive and targeted message, informed by the most intimate details of your life. Large language models (LLMs) can hyper-target messages by drawing from your social media posts and…

Judging by a slew of recent corporate announcements, your next “co-worker” might be an artificial intelligence (AI) agent – doing the work of an assistant, job scheduler, morning debriefer, learning coach and more. JPMorgan Chase, the largest U.S. bank, describes a clear vision for a new world of omnipresent AI agents: “Every employee will have their own personalised AI assistant; every process is powered by AI agents, and every client experience has an AI concierge.” In brick-and-mortar retail, Walmart is already implementing its vision around agents, which involves support of customers, in-store employees and other business areas, with supervisor agents assigning…

If you suffer from information overload, or are unsure what to trust online, you’re not alone. Australians are increasingly disengaging from traditional news, turning instead to social media, influencers and – more recently – generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots and summaries. It’s a murky, polluted world where opaque algorithms decide what you see. They’re known to have little regard for accuracy, quality or the evidence-based reporting we need for a safe and thriving community. At the same time, local journalism is disappearing. Distrust in mainstream news is growing. This issue has escalated rapidly with “zero-click” AI search results. Instead of serving links, they show…