The Australian government wants to double the penalty tech companies will face for not keeping kids off their social media platforms. The proposed bill would also compel companies to release documents that prove whether they have been keeping kids off their platforms. How effective will this actually be?

Plus, there's been shifts in the energy sector that mean everyday Australians are missing out on potential savings. Changes have also been made to the energy requirements of data centres in Australia, but will that actually make a difference to household energy prices?

Our final topic this week is the 'tokenpocalypse'. After encouraging everyone to use it as much as possible, all sorts of companies are blowing through their AI token budgets. What does this mean for the viability of AI?

GUESTS:

• Petra Stock, climate and environment reporter for Guardian Australia. You can find Petra's work here.
• Daniel Van Boom, business journalist at Forbes Australia. You can find Daniel's work here.

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This episode was produced on the lands of the Gadigal, Burramattagal, Darug, Gundungurra, and Wurundjeri peoples.

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Get in touch:

We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

Find all the episodes of Download This Show on the ABC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts.

If your phone seems impossible to put down, that's because it's intentional. So how can we break our addictions?

Also on the show, how safe is online voting? With our traditional political system in a bit of a chaotic state at the moment, it's safe to say we're lacking trust in our politicians. But Australians are still very trusting in our electoral processes. Will changing to online voting jeopardise that?

And, more Australian artists have identified they have been caught up in AI model training without permission. And they're not happy about it! Cate Blanchett has just launched the Human Consent Registry as one way to combat this. Is there an end in sight?

GUESTS:

• Professor Vanessa Teague, CEO of Thinking Cybersecurity and Adjunct Professor at UNSW.
• Professor Michael Cowling, Professor of Educational Technology at RMIT aka Professor Tech.

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This episode was produced on the lands of the Burramattagal people.

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Get in touch:

We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

Find all the episodes of Download This Show on the ABC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts.

Tech is being marketed as the solution to taking care of our aging parents and our young children: AI companions, improved surveillance tools, and wearables. How much are robots truly able to replace genuine human care, and ethically should we let them?

Plus, how much do we actually know about the effect of screen time hours on children's brains? Turns out, some of the initial experiments were a bit off the mark.

And, 'tech tourism' is China's latest booming industry. Whether it's a special interest or a general curiosity, all sorts of people are being invited to tour factories that use robots (and some humans) to assemble their products. What are these tours like? And who are they serving?

NB: Kath mentioned Lelia Green's work. You can find her book The Digital Child here.

GUESTS:

• Alice Clarke, freelance technology journalist. Her Substack is called Press Any Button.
• Kath Albury, Professor of Media at Swinburne University of Technology and Chief Investigator at the ARC Centre for Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society.

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This episode was produced on the lands of the Gadigal and Burramattagal people.

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Get in touch:

We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

Find all the episodes of Download This Show on the ABC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts.

While Meta and Google are fighting lawsuits about their technology being intentionally addictive, Microsoft’s strategy deck for their new AI assistant Scout has been leaked. It lays out three phases of launch, and phase one is simply "make people addicted."

Apple just held it’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where they announced an "entirely new version of Siri". How different can this Siri be?

And the Mythos tool Anthropic claimed was too powerful to be released to the public... has been released to the public. What could possibly go wrong?

GUESTS:

• Dr Erica Mealy, Discipline Lead for Technology, at the University of the Sunshine Coast
• Tobias Venus, tech and travel journalist.

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This episode was produced on the lands of the Gadigal and Burramattagal people.

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Get in touch:

We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

Find all the episodes of Download This Show on the ABC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts.

Meta has officially launched premium subscription tiers across Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. Does this mean we'll finally be able to rid ourselves of ads on social media?

Plus, it's been a rough few weeks for the 'clankers'. During Vivid, nearly 90 drones fell from the sky into Sydney Harbour. And they're not alone. Humanoid robots are finding creative new ways to embarrass themselves in public. Why have we seen so many of them out and about, if they're not ready?

And, a growing number of people are actively searching for ways to avoid AI-generated search results. How big will this emerging market become?

GUESTS:

• Seamus Byrne, technology researcher and PhD research candidate with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADMS).
• Josh Taylor, technology reporter for The Guardian.

Seamus and Josh mentioned a few tech products during the chat. They are: search engine alternatives StartPage and Kagi; RSS aggregator Feedly; and dice roller Roll Hammer.

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This episode was produced on the lands of the Gadigal and Burramattagal people.

------------

Get in touch:

We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

Find all the episodes of Download This Show on the ABC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Catholic Church has entered the AI debate, with Pope Leo XIV warning against "digital slaveries" while seated beside the co-founder of Anthropic. We ask whether the Vatican is positioning itself as a moral counterweight to Silicon Valley — and whether religion could shape the future of AI.

Google says AI-generated answers are the future of search, replacing the familiar list of blue links with chatbot-style summaries. Critics argue it risks killing source literacy and turning the internet into a machine-generated feedback loop.

And if smart glasses weren't enough, smart contact lenses may be next. We look at the push toward invisible wearable tech — and the privacy concerns already following close behind.

GUESTS:

• Tegan Jones, Deputy Editor at SmartCompany and Co-host of Weird Tech
• Gianfranco Di Giovanni, ABC Radio Perth content director and an arts, gaming and tech reporter.

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This episode was produced on the lands of the Gadigal and Burramattagal people.

------------

Get in touch:

We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

Find all the episodes of Download This Show on the ABC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts.

Amazon's new Alexa feature allows anyone to create a podcast using AI. Could this be a genuine competitor to the podcast industry? Or will it become another dangerous source of misinformation?

And Meta's latest parental controls promise greater oversight of teens' social media use through AI age checks and a centralised Family Center, but their effectiveness ultimately depends on imperfect technology and whether families actually engage with the tools.

Plus, the fallout after the legal showdown between Elon Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman. Now that the jury has rejected Musk's accusations, what comes next?

GUESTS:

• Alex Kidman — Freelance technology journalist
• Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson — Technology journalist at AAP

NB: Jennifer mentioned a book. It's called Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

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This episode was produced on the lands of the Gadigal and Burramattagal people.

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Get in touch:

We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

Find all the episodes of Download This Show on the ABC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts.

Mixtape is a new Australian-made video game set in the 90s featuring burned CDs, shopping trolley rides and feelings of adolescent freedom. Nostalgia for that era is trending, so what is it about those years that makes us feel so fond? And are we remembering it correctly?

Plus, AI is making the internet sound like one not-quite-real person. What are the new indicators of AI writing, and is a 'human in the loop' still enough to keep it all in check?

Finally, Polymarket. It's been blacklisted by Australian regulators, but companies in the United States are treating it like serious financial infrastructure.

GUESTS:

• Mark Serrels – Editorial Director at Choice and co-founder of Continue Magazine.
• Phoebe Toups Dugas – Associate Professor of Human-Centred Computing in the Exertion Games Lab at Monash University, AKA Trans Gamer Professor.

NB: Phoebe mentioned a book. It's called Disabling Intelligences: Legacies of Eugenics and How We Are Wrong About AI.

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This episode was produced on the lands of the Burramattagal people.

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Get in touch:

We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

Find all the episodes of Download This Show on the ABC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Book publishers including Hachette and Macmillan have filed a lawsuit in New York against Mark Zuckerberg and Meta. They're trying to stop AI companies from allegedly illegally copying millions of books and articles from piracy sites to train their models. How likely is it that the case will succeed?

Locally, there's a NSW inquiry into data centres. Can a state government actually force some of the world's most powerful companies to clean up their act?

And hard drive shortages driven by AI is making archiving the internet more expensive.

If you want to learn more about whether Australia has the energy and water to power the Australian AI data centre boom, we covered it on an earlier Download This Show episode.

GUESTS:

• Meg Coffey – founder of State of Social.
• Leigh Stark – the editor of Pickr.com.au.

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This episode was produced on the lands of the Burramattagal people.

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Get in touch:

We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

Find all the episodes of Download This Show on the ABC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts. 

xAI's Elon Musk and Open AI’s Sam Altman were once on the same team, united by the belief that artificial intelligence was too important to be left to profit motives. Now, Musk is accusing Open AI of betraying its original charitable mission. How genuine are his motivations?

Plus, Microsoft Xbox chief Phil Spencer has retired. Who will replace him, and how will it change how we game?

GUEST: 

• Alice Clarke – freelance tech and games journalist, co-author of Press Any Button on Substack.
• David Braue – technology journalist at Information Age. 

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This episode was produced on the lands of the Burramattagal people.

------------

Get in touch:

We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

Find all the episodes of Download This Show on the ABC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts.