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Search Results: terminator

  • AUSTRALIA

    Why the threat of AI is invisible

    • David Halliday
    • 13 June 2023
    1 Comment

    As artificial intelligence evolves, warnings of an AI surpassing us in cognitive abilities grow louder. Yet, these threats, which echo sci-fi nightmares, are met with skepticism and complacency, rather than fear. Are our human minds, fine-tuned by evolution to grapple with tangible, immediate threats, ill-equipped to comprehend the abstract risk of a runaway AI?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Matters of interest

    • David Halliday
    • 14 November 2022

    How much financial strain can a system tolerate? With families simultaneously staring down the four horsemen of wage stagnation, higher prices of goods, higher bills, and higher mortgage repayments, something’s got to give.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Meet the robots who would be human

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 22 February 2019
    1 Comment

    More Human Than Human's exploration of the history and present reality of artificial intelligence is not a tale of terror. It is a thoughtful and nuanced engagement with the people who are making, using, or thinking about AI; those who have been touched by its life-changing potential, or come a-cropper of its more sinister aspects.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Is Nixon the celebrity anti Trump we need?

    • Saman Shad
    • 27 March 2018
    1 Comment

    When Cynthia Nixon announced she was running for governor of New York the excitement was instantaneous. Not because she was a woman, as there have been no female governors of the state, nor because she once played Miranda on Sex and the City, but because she spoke in a way that captured leftie hearts the world over.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Foster kid finds healing in the New Zealand wilderness

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 02 June 2016
    2 Comments

    It's the last chance for Ricky, who has been through a lot of other foster homes before winding up at Bella and Hector's. We don't know the detail of these experiences, but it is telling that the natural nurturer Bella's smallest gestures - cooking breakfast for Ricky, or putting a hot water bottle in his bed at night - are kindnesses like none he has ever known. It contrasts with the child welfare worker''s mantra of 'No child left behind', which on her lips becomes menacing, or at best a bureaucratic inanity.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    A plague of killer robots

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 April 2014
    6 Comments

    Killer robots — drones in an advanced stage of development — are now a daytime reality. They will be autonomous in their operation, able to identify targets, track them down, work out the best way to destroy them, and learn from their failures, all without the need for human direction. These qualities raise serious ethical questions. Obama's use of just war theory to defend such drones was misguided at best, pernicious at worst.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Getting intimate with the da Vinci robot

    • Brian Matthews
    • 02 March 2012
    3 Comments

    Invisible hands parted my gown and stroked my spine with stuff that was exquisitely cold. 'Put your bum in there,' he said, 'wriggle round till you're comfortable then lie back.' I knew very well that when I lay back, securely anchored by my bum in the space provided, the adhesive would hold me in its grip.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rudd the Terminator

    • Michael Mullins
    • 03 May 2010
    19 Comments

    Increasing the cost of cigarettes hurts the poor more than the rich. Kevin Rudd is acting with the callous efficiency of The Terminator when he really needs to find a more equitable incentive to give up smoking.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    GM patents exploit the poor

    • Charles Rue
    • 26 May 2008
    2 Comments

    Brazil produces plenty of food and has large exports thanks to its plentiful GM crops. Yet 40 per cent of its people go to bed hungry. GM is about making money, not feeding the hungry.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Tally-ho!

    • Brian Matthews
    • 30 April 2006

    I see that the Brits are about to bite the quirt and outlaw fox hunting. Only in England would the pursuit of the common fox threaten to divide the nation.

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