Welcome to Eureka Street
Looking for thought provoking articles?Subscribe to Eureka Street and join the conversation.
Passwords must be at least 8 characters, contain upper and lower case letters, and a numeric value.
Eureka Street uses the Stripe payment gateway to process payments. The terms and conditions upon which Stripe processes payments and their privacy policy are available here.
Please note: The 40-day free-trial subscription is a limited time offer and expires 31/3/24. Subscribers will have 40 days of free access to Eureka Street content from the date they subscribe. You can cancel your subscription within that 40-day period without charge. After the 40-day free trial subscription period is over, you will be debited the $90 annual subscription amount. Our terms and conditions of membership still apply.
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
AI and transhumanism will continue to transform economic life on the planet. Rather than trying to stop it, which will fail, the counterattack should instead be to repeatedly insist on the obvious: that the ‘I’ in AI is not human intelligence, and that the ‘humanism’ in transhumanism is not human.
Mama was a master of the kitchen, revered for her culinary magic and domestic miracles. Her cooking was an unsurpassed conjurer of traditional Bosnian pita, a sublime miracle that drew the infinite from the minimal. Mama's death left a void of ignorance, indifference, and inability that hovered over the village, mourning the loss of an unassailable figure.
With the launch of ChatGPT, my initial amazement quickly gave way to unease and a sense that something essential could be about to be lost. We will need help to navigate such complexity and considering what is essential to our human nature would be an important place to start.
There is a great deal of commentary about the growing importance of artificial intelligence, or AI, especially in business circles. To some extent this is a self-fulfilling prophecy — if people think something will have a seminal effect then it probably will. But if the supposed commercial benefits are significant, the dangers are potentially enormous.
It is unfortunate that World Communications Day is celebrated in the middle of an election campaign. We have seen the worst of partisan media coverage, of shouting as a preferred form of communication, of endless experts promising Armageddon if the result is not to their taste. And yet we have also seen the best of media informing us of the issues that concern people in different parts of Australia. Without such public communication, for all its defects and excesses, our society would be the poorer.
Emotional intelligence is one of those terms that is hard to define. They take their meaning from people whom we think certainly possess it and those whom we think certainly lack it. In the aftermath of the Victorian election we might also ask whether it matters if political leaders have emotional intelligence or not. Will it help them win elections or contribute to their defeat?
University students across the country are using so-called ‘study’ sites to buy essays and answers for online assessments. Australia’s academic integrity regulator has since blocked scores of sites, but there are still work-arounds; experts say the problem is likely worse than we realise, and almost impossible to solve.
LIV Golf chief executive officer Greg Norman, financed by the pockets of the House of Saud via Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, continues the corporate march across the putting greens of the planet. Complementing the Saudi Kingdom’s funding, South Australia's Major Events Fund is contributing $40 million and in doing so, Premier Malinauskas has linked his government with a regime with a notorious human rights record.
Who wields the most power in the world? If one follows the money trail, it becomes clear that Western societies have become ruled by a new type of aristocracy: a management aristocracy.
When former Facebook employee Frances Haugen released a trove of documents revealing internal research on the negative effects its social media products were having on mental health, the darker side of social media became hard to ignore. So how might the harmful effects of social media be mitigated into a social benefit for a saner, more coherent society?
Few Australians of Irish descent will now be familiar with this history and the experience that accompanied it. They would see themselves as simply Australian. But the emphasis on social justice, the recognition of the value of community, and the concern for people who are marginal that are communicated through Catholic schools and the sympathy with the underdog owe much to the Irish heritage.
To many who work in the arts industry, the rise of art-making artificial intelligence may pose an eventual threat to their livelihoods. Will independent artists be replaced by corporations using AI to generate mass entertainment?