Author: The Conversation

Policymakers are sounding the alarm about AI and social media in schools, as PISA’s latest report confirmed that student performance in reading continues to decline. French Education minister Édouard Geffray lamented the “cognitive destruction” of a generation, while his Spanish counterpart, Milagros Tolón, recommended a focused effort to improve reading because “reading is the foundation of everything”. The Economist’s editorial board called it a “slow-moving catastrophe”, emphasising that “while machines are getting brighter (… ) teens are getting dimmer”, and pinned blame on the weak, “radical” leftists in university education departments. Meanwhile, the “radical left” is taking meaningful action. On September 2,…

Demand for mental health care in Canada has risen sharply. In a health-care system already short of publicly funded specialists, Canadians often wait months for support. Many are filling this gap with general-purpose generative AI chatbots (like ChatGPT), presumably because these systems are free, immediate and available at all hours. However, these chatbots carry assumptions about what distress is and how it should be described, and those assumptions may not fit everyone. In 2024–25, there were roughly 94,000 referrals for community mental health counselling across the provinces and territories that report this data. Half of those people were seen within 30 days.…

I recently typed a simple question into Google search: How much screen time is too much for teenagers? Instead of presenting links, as Google had been doing for many years, it gave me an AI-generated answer. The artificial intelligence agent cited a number, then complicated that reply, noting that quality and balance of time could matter more than the number of hours, and that “too much” time could depend on a teenager’s sleep, exercise, school demands and mood. I tried another search: Should I take a daily aspirin? This time the AI answer presented me with medical information, warned about…

On Saturday, Donald Trump said, “We’re leading China on AI… and, frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins.” But the danger the world is waking up to is that this is a game both the US and China could lose, potentially fatally, with AI itself emerging as the winner. Last week, Evan Hubinger, a researcher at Anthropic, warned that he believed there was a greater than 10% chance that AI could “kill all humans” within the next decade. Shortly afterwards, Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, backed Hubinger, calling for progress on artificial intelligence models to be slowed down in response to…

Robots no longer exist only in popular culture or science fiction. While we might be familiar with the likes of WALL-E, Baymax, the Terminator and Ultron from the big screen, versions of them are increasingly entering everyday life. If you visit the University of Waikato campus, you may even encounter a robot in the wild. Cruz and Marshmallow are robotic student ambassadors who, as well as giving out snacks and treats, generally delight visitors at community and outreach events. Some people stop to take photos, some wave, often kids will “herd” the robot to see if it can escape. But others can have quite…

The debate about AI consciousness is growing in academic articles, newspaper opinion pieces, and even among AI bots themselves. I doubt this is a passing wave of interest. As AI systems become more capable and human-like, and more involved in our lives, the question will become harder to avoid. Many people may come to regard AI bots as conscious beings whose feelings matter. Others will strongly disagree. I think this debate could split societies. In my chapter of the new book Perspectives on Machine Consciousness, I argue that the issue could become as divisive as abortion or climate change. Uncertainty, high stakes and competing interests are…

When Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were still university researchers, they warned that advertising could undermine the trustworthiness of search engines. In their landmark paper presenting Google, they also wrote: “The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users[…]We expect that advertising-funded search engines will be inherently biased toward the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.” More than two decades later, a similar question is emerging around artificial intelligence. As companies race to commercialise AI systems to offset the amount of cash they are burning through, advertising is becoming…

AI is beginning to influence how boards of directors make decisions in South African companies. Directors use it to do things like assess financial information, predict market trends or identify potential risks before making strategic decisions. But there is a problem. South African company law does not regulate its use by boards. This matters in relation to the rules governing directors’ duties and responsibilities. Many countries already regulate AI through binding legislation. For example, the European Union, South Korea and Vietnam adopted comprehensive AI laws. Other countries such as China introduced more targeted AI regulations. As a company law researcher, in a recent paper I looked at four company law…

In August 2026, Meta agreed to one of the largest consumer protection settlements in American history. The settlement resolves claims from 47 states alleging that Meta intentionally designed its Facebook and Instagram platforms to be addictive to young users and harmful to youth mental health. As part of the settlement, Meta agreed to pay up to US$17.1 billion – approximately 20% of Meta’s 2025 pretax profits – in penalties over the next 10 years. Meta also agreed to implement changes to its platforms for young users, including daily time limits, access restrictions during school hours and late nights, and “productivity breaks” that interrupt scrolling every 60…

Over the weekend, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei called for artificial intelligence (AI) companies, including his own, to slow down their work. Sam Altman and Elon Musk, heads of rivals OpenAI and xAI respectively, agreed. The move reflects concern across the AI industry and more broadly about the dangers of new, rapidly improving systems. Recent high-profile incidents such as OpenAI AI agents hacking another company and hijacking a public website have shown current systems can break out of safety confines – and even more capable systems are in development. Further complicating AI safety is the tension between safety and performance. Companies will be reluctant to limit the performance…