Australian Professional Standards Forum

Greetings from the Professional Standards Forum of the Professional Standards Councils. Today's forum is on AI, with Dr Ryan Payne, University of Canberra. 

The councils set professional standards, including computing. In return members of participating organisations have their liability capped. AI creates many challenges for organisations wanting to ensure their members act legally and ethically. 

Dr Payne claimed that NFTs are making a comeback, which I hadn't noticed. He also mentioned a number of other technologies which have been coming real soon for a long time, but which AI will make mainstream. 

Dr Payne claimed that AI had changed the words MPs use in Parliament and drafted in laws. He then touched on doomsday scenarios of AI optimizing human out of existence, or just subtly nudging human behavior. Of course, given governments, individuals and corporations have engaged in crimes against humanity, so could AI be worse? 

Today Meta started suspending the accounts of children, ahead of the Australian ban. It occurs to me that it should be possible to use AI to make a safer social media for children. I worry that in the next few weeks we will have millions of children suffering real pain and at risk of their lives, due to the ban. 

Then we got to play with Lego! Dr Payne used Lego to explain how a Large Learning Model (LLM) works. This was cleaver, as it got us out of the mode of just looking at Powerpoint slides.

New Canberra Innovation Fund

Greetings from the last First Wednesday of the year at Canberra Innovation Network. at Ken Kroeger just pitched ACTivate Capital. He is not exactly new to the process. ;-)

Networking the Old Way

 Greetings from Tasa Cafe at the Australian National University. After dealing with the morning's mail I wandered over for a coffee. On the way one staff member explained the "Quiet Hour" at student services, for those who can't cope with noise. Then I offer a colleague a coffee, but they are off to talk at consulting company about an initiative to recruit and support a more diverse student population. Then I met someone talk at tomorrow's training on dealing with cheating in the age of AI. After coffee I am planning to make a training video, then attended a seminar on AI warfare tactics. The teaching year may be over, but there is still much to do.