Author: The Conversation

It’s been 30 years since a group of scientists led by Carl Sagan found evidence for life on Earth using data from instruments on board the NASA Galileo robotic spacecraft. Yes, you read that correctly. Among his many pearls of wisdom, Sagan was famous for saying that science is more than a body of knowledge – it is a way of thinking. In other words, how humans go about the business of discovering new knowledge is at least as important as the knowledge itself. In this vein, the study was an example of a “control experiment” – a critical part of the scientific method. This…

Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the world – and one of the main areas it will affect in the short-to-medium term is the workforce. AI algorithms imitate real-world systems. The more repetitive a system is, the easier it is for AI to replace it. That’s why jobs in customer service, retail and clerical roles are regularly named as being the most at risk. That doesn’t mean other jobs won’t be affected. The latest advances in AI have shown all kinds of creative work and white-collar professions stand to be impacted to various degrees. However, there’s one important point that’s usually not addressed in discussions about AI’s impact…

Think about your favourite devices – your smartphone, laptop, tablet, computer or console – the things you use to play cool games, watch hilarious videos and connect and chat with friends. Many young people spend a lot of free time looking at them. Turns out that teens spend an average of 8½ hours on screens per day, and tweens – that’s ages 8 to 12 – are not far behind, at 5½ hours daily. Keep in mind those numbers are for only social media, gaming and texting. They do not include the time that kids used screens for schoolwork or homework. What’s…

AI chatbots are already widely used by businesses to greet customers and answer their questions – either over the phone or on websites. Some companies have found that they can, to some extent, replace humans with machines in call centre roles. However, the available evidence suggests there are sectors – such as healthcare and human resources – where extreme care needs to be taken regarding the use of these frontline tools, and ethical oversight may be necessary. A recent, and highly publicised, example is that of a chatbot called Tessa, which was used by the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) in the US.…

The world is infatuated with artificial intelligence (AI), and for good reason. AI systems can process vast quantities of data in a seemingly superhuman way. However, current AI systems rely on computers running complex algorithms based on artificial neural networks. These use huge amounts of energy, and use even more energy if you are trying to work with data that changes in real time. We are working on a completely new approach to “machine intelligence”. Instead of using artificial neural network software, we have developed a physical neural network in hardware that operates much more efficiently. Our neural networks, made from silver nanowires, can…

How do you choose your next travel destination? Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok are handy tools for holiday research, full of #inspo for new and beautiful places to go. However, behind those mesmerising selfies, highlights and reels, there’s often a stark reality that isn’t shared. Our ongoing research shows that dangers abound from social media related misadventures. These include the hidden dangers of getting to the location, as well as the ecological strains on sites that get overcrowded with tourists. Australia, with its breathtaking natural wonders, is no stranger to the downsides of social media tourism. Many people have been…

Social media platforms have been implicated in conflicts of all scales, from urban gun violence to the storming of the US Capitol building on January 6 and civil war in South Sudan. Scientifically, it is difficult to tell how much social media can be blamed for one-off incidents. But in much the way that climate change increases the risk of extreme weather, evidence suggests that current algorithms (which mostly optimise for engagement) raise the political “temperature” by disproportionately surfacing inflammatory content. This may make people angrier, increasing the risk that social differences escalate to violence. But what if we redesigned social media to bridge divides? “Bridging-based ranking” is an alternative…

Where is the text you’re reading, right now? In one sense, it lives “on the internet” or “in the cloud”, just like your favourite social media platform or the TV show you might stream tonight. But in a physical sense, it’s stored and transmitted somewhere in a network of thousands of data centres across the globe. Each of these centres is whirring, buzzing and beeping around the clock, to store, process and communicate vast amounts of data and provide services to hungry consumers. All this infrastructure is expensive to build and run, and has a considerable environmental impact. In search of cost savings,…

Discussions around science and technology can become controversial, such as public conversations around climate science or gene-editing tools. That might leave the impression that such conversations are best avoided. But it is important to have constructive conversations about scientific and technical subjects because of how they impact our lives. Not having these conversations can lead to further division and strained relationships. Avoidance of such conversations could also have serious implications for scientific research support such as the continued development of life-saving vaccines or in deciding how we might regulate emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence. The ancient Greeks had a term for…

In the 2018 documentary “The Cleaners,” a young man in Manila, Philippines, explains his work as a content moderator: “We see the pictures on the screen. You then go through the pictures and delete those that don’t meet the guidelines. The daily quota of pictures is 25,000.” As he speaks, his mouse clicks, deleting offending images while allowing others to remain online. The man in Manila is one of thousands of content moderators hired as contractors by social media platforms – 10,000 at Google alone. Content moderation on an industrial scale like this is part of the everyday experience for users…