Australia can avoid an US-style backlash against AI if it acts now to keep Australians safe from the harms of the new technology, Assistant Minister Andrew Charlton said as he announced that the government's AI Safety Institute is now up and running.

Telstra's chief expects the telco will have a smaller workforce by end of the decade because of the influence of AI

AI scam Onlyfans slop has hit the AFL…

Scoop: Australia has picked a philosopher and air force reservist to lead a new body tasked with keeping Australians safe from the harms of AI. Dr Kate Conroy will lead Australia's AI Safety Institute, which will monitor, test and share info on emerging threats from AI. www.abc.net.au/news/...

A PhD in philosophy and a former academic is the inaugural general manager of the Australian AI Safety Institute. We need more of her. Kate Conroy appointed inaugural general manager of Australian AI Safety Institute www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05...

Scoop: Australia has picked a philosopher and air force reservist to lead a new body tasked with keeping Australians safe from the harms of AI. Dr Kate Conroy will lead Australia's AI Safety Institute, which will monitor, test and share info on emerging threats from AI. www.abc.net.au/news/...

Vermeer’s Girl With The Pearl Earring will be shown in Osaka, later this year, and the press conference was as Japanese as you’d expect #Vermeer

Attorney-General Michelle Rowland rules out explicitly trading copyright reform for Australian access to AI models "This notion that access to mythos depends on Australia weakening its current copyright regime is a false one, and will not be entertained by the government.”

Data centres powering AI could demand as much new electricity as cars & houses until 2040, per Greenpeace analysis. It's not just the size of the energy demand, but also its immediacy: forecasts for data centre energy use jumped 6x over the last year www.abc.net.au/news/...

DCA: "claims that data centre growth is going to demand the energy grid uses more fossil fuels applies equally to electric vehicle charging, household electrification & manufacturing" Important context missing! Something I said earlier to @cameronwilson.bsky.social: www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05...

Data centres powering AI could demand as much new electricity as cars & houses until 2040, per Greenpeace analysis. It's not just the size of the energy demand, but also its immediacy: forecasts for data centre energy use jumped 6x over the last year www.abc.net.au/news/...

Correcting the record: I have a body

Attorney-General Michelle Rowland says there are no plans to weaken Australia's copyright laws for AI, as Australia's top creative and media groups urge the government to "hold the line" in response to my report earlier this week.

Attorney-General Michelle Rowland says there are no plans to weaken Australia's copyright laws for AI, as Australia's top creative and media groups urge the government to "hold the line" in response to my report earlier this week.

NEW: Anthropic's top lawyer is in Australia & government officials are asking after its new AI model, Mythos, that it says is "too dangerous" to release. It's fueling Australia's efforts to woo Anthropic, even opening up talks on copyright reform, an internal briefing shows www.abc.net.au/news/...

NEW: Anthropic's top lawyer is in Australia & government officials are asking after its new AI model, Mythos, that it says is "too dangerous" to release. It's fueling Australia's efforts to woo Anthropic, even opening up talks on copyright reform, an internal briefing shows www.abc.net.au/news/...

rack off LG I’ve got a lot on my plate right now

A newly established senate inquiry will examine the impacts of AI data centres. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson Young says it'll will look at "the environmental, economic & social impacts of AI data centres, including their energy and water consumption, effects on local communities & the regulations"

after zero AI related terms appeared in last year's budget main paper, this year has the most mentions since Labor came to power in 2022. The 26-27 budget has a dedicated section includes some new money for AI research & to build an AI tool to speed up housing approvals

A few big numbers in the budget linked to AI & the economy - Data centre spend (fuelled by AI) is singled out first as powering projected non-mining business investment growth over the next few years - Tech/media business investment has spiked 50% in the past year

I've started as the ABC’s national AI tech reporter, after 5 unreal years at Crikey. AI is one of the biggest stories of our time. The sheer amount of money, influence and hype makes it ripe for critical, nuanced and accessible reporting. Got a story about Aussies and AI? email: [email protected]

how's this for an unintended consequence: some research suggests that teens perceive peers who comply with Australia's teen social media ban as less popular. i.e. banning social media for teens made it cool again

[solemnly] there’s an ai for that now

interestingly, my very cursory search suggests that this "smart compose" predates the LLM boom. my initial assumption was that it was gemini being shoved into a product!

I'm not sure if anyone else is having this experience, but in the past few months Google has rolled out its "tone and style suggestions" in Gmail for me that puts purple squiggly lines below any writing that has personality or voice, and suggests replacing it with something that sounds like a robot

Australia's government has signed $60m of Palantir contracts. It owns $160m of Palantir shares. But what does the pro-Trump company actually do for us? Internal documents shows how an agency uses it to analyse 42 million call records, messages and other data points

Australia's government has signed $60m of Palantir contracts. It owns $160m of Palantir shares. But what does the pro-Trump company actually do for us? Internal documents shows how an agency uses it to analyse 42 million call records, messages and other data points

"Trump keeps staging assassination attempts" is the same Infowars brainworm strain as "Obama keeps staging mass shootings." Different party, same paranoia.

woke 2 is here

Australia's cyber security co-ordinator just dropped what I think will be a very useful reaction meme

This dry Australian delivery of "are you mogging me right now?" has been reverberating in my head for over a week

Broadside is fine. Not crash hot on doing a “spray” but I’ll survive

one of my rules in life is try to avoid writing things that others will describe as a “manifesto” or “screed”.

ok but in fairness did they really need 40 employees to man the dog mascot costume?

families are always rising and falling in America:

NEW: The privacy regulator raised concerns Australia teen social media tech trial "overstated" how well these technologies protected people's privacy — especially since it didn't technically test the products' privacy protections or assess them against Australian privacy law. www.crikey.com.au/20...

POV: you’re my phone and I’m sending a good morning message

NEW: Clive Palmer's United Australia Party won't face any penalties for a data breach that exposed every document and email it held because of the Privacy Act's exemption for political parties... despite it not being registered as a political party at the time. www.crikey.com.au/20...

NEW: Clive Palmer's United Australia Party won't face any penalties for a data breach that exposed every document and email it held because of the Privacy Act's exemption for political parties... despite it not being registered as a political party at the time. www.crikey.com.au/20...

hell yes i love entertainment-led content

if you're not familiar with public servant-ese, you might not realise that this quote is a big sledge

NEW: The privacy regulator raised concerns Australia teen social media tech trial "overstated" how well these technologies protected people's privacy — especially since it didn't technically test the products' privacy protections or assess them against Australian privacy law. www.crikey.com.au/20...

haven't been posting as much lately. just dropping in to say i've been listening to a lot of chaka khan. tunes. end transmission

buddy the only LLM I need is: Let me Locate my Messages without having to open each app individually

would love to see a tally for the time i've spent looking for a specific email/message across my various inboxes. shame that there's no way that computers could ever make it easy to search multiple databases at once. oh well, maybe one day.

at this point, i reckon just let 'er rip. what's the worst that could happen

inside you, there are two wolves