Author: The Conversation

That trust in media is declining throughout the world is almost an unquestioned truth today. But researchers have found it hard to clearly demonstrate how we went from an era of high trust in 20th-century media to one of low trust in the digital age. The ways people engage with media and where they go for trusted information are changing. From 2011 to 2024, my colleagues and I at the Glasgow University Media Group have charted these trends through a series of focus group studies. Our findings, summarised in my book The Construction of Public Opinion in a Digital Age, suggest that many people…

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to make today’s artificial intelligence (AI) systems work at the scale required to keep advancing. They require enormous amounts of memory to ensure all their processing chips can quickly share all the data they generate in order to work as a unit. The chips that have mostly been powering the deep-learning boom for the past decade are called graphics processing units (GPUs). They were originally designed for gaming, not for AI models, where each step in their thinking process must take place in well under a millisecond. Each chip contains only a modest amount of memory,…

The world’s most valuable publicly listed company, US microchip maker Nvidia, has reported record $US57 billion revenue in the third quarter of 2025, beating Wall Street estimates. The chipmaker said revenue will rise again to $US65 billion in the last part of the year. The better-than-expected results calmed global investors’ jitters following a tumultuous week for Nvidia and broader worries about the artificial intelligence (AI) bubble bursting. Just weeks ago, Nvidia became the first company valued at more than $US5 trillion – surpassing others in the “magnificent seven” tech companies: Alphabet (owner of Google), Amazon, Apple, Tesla, Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp) and Microsoft.…

The global investment frenzy around AI has seen companies valued at trillions of dollars and eye-watering projections of how it will boost economic productivity. But in recent weeks, the mood has begun to shift. Investors and CEOs are now openly questioning whether the enormous costs of building and running AI systems can really be justified by future revenues. Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, has spoken of “irrationality” in AI’s growth, while others have said some projects are proving to be more complex and expensive than expected. Meanwhile, global stock markets have declined, with tech shares taking a particular hit, and the value of cryptocurrencies has…

Viewers of Apple TV’s new science fiction series, Pluribus, have been quick to point out eerie similarities with modern concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) – even if that’s not what its maker intended. Writer and producer Vince Gilligan – who also created Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul – told Polygon he wasn’t thinking of AI when he had the idea for the series: Because this was about eight or ten years ago. Of course, the phrase ‘artificial intelligence’ certainly predated ChatGPT, but it wasn’t in the news like it is now. […] I’m not saying you’re wrong […] A lot of…

Let’s be honest, even just writing this sentence has meant engaging with some very basic artificial intelligence (AI) as the computer checks my spelling and grammar. Ultimately, the quality and integrity of the finished article are a human responsibility. But the questions this raises go well beyond everyday word processing. Powerful AI is now changing what it means to be good at your work. The debate has moved from whether robots are taking over our jobs to who or what gets the credit for the work in a world of AI. Three-quarters of global knowledge workers are now using AI, but many are…

It’s a beautiful, clear night. The stars are out and the Moon looks breathtaking against the sky, so you reach for your phone to take a snap. The results are, to be blunt, disappointing. Try again. Steady your hands, focus on the Moon, take a photo and… it’s another underwhelming white smudge against a dark background. Hardly Instagram-worthy. Phones often take superb photos, but why do they struggle with the Moon? It’s a little bit to do with what we are photographing, and a little bit to do with phone camera technology. It’s not actually night The first mistake novice…

In the most talked-about film from the final year of the 20th century, “The Matrix,” a computer hacker named Neo finds that the world he lives and works in isn’t real. It’s a virtual reality, created by artificial intelligence (AI). At the time, the idea seemed like science fiction. In the years since, however, that concept has become an increasingly credible theory: “the simulation hypothesis.” This theory posits that, like Neo, living things are characters inside a computer-generated simulation – or, as I describe in my 2025 book, a massively multiplayer video game. In this hypothesis, the physical world around us…

As nearly half of all Australians say they have recently used artificial intelligence (AI) tools, knowing when and how they’re being used is becoming more important. Consultancy firm Deloitte recently partially refunded the Australian government after a report they published had AI-generated errors in it. A lawyer also recently faced disciplinary action after false AI-generated citations were discovered in a formal court document. And many universities are concerned about how their students use AI. Amid these examples, a range of “AI detection” tools have emerged to try to address people’s need for identifying accurate, trustworthy and verified content. But how do these tools actually work? And are they…

If last week’s trillion-dollar slide of major tech stocks felt familiar, it’s because we’ve been here before – when hype about innovation last ran headlong into economic reality. As markets slump on the back of investor unease over soaring valuations of artificial intelligence (AI) companies, commentators are asking the same question they were during the dotcom crash 25 years ago. Can technology really defy basic economics? It’s a question I discussed in my inaugural professorial lecture at the University of Otago back in August 2000, just as internet stocks were tumbling and hundreds of dotcoms were failing. I argued then that many internet firms were…