Afleveringen
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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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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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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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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.
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We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]
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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.
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Get in touch:
We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]
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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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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:
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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]
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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.
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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.
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Imagine an AI model built on everything you know, how you communicate, how you reason, how you write, trained to act and respond like you so thoroughly that it can attend meetings, answer questions, and handle tasks on your behalf while you do something else entirely. This reality isn't as far away as you might think. Mark Zuckerberg is already making one.
Plus, Apple has a new CEO. What does the handover mean for the future of Apple?
And, Meta has installed tracking software to harvest their employee's computer activity to train AI. What protections do workers have against it?
GUESTS:
Georgia Dixon -- Managing Editor at Whistleout Singapore.
Chris Berg -- Professor of Economics at RMIT.
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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.
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Anthropic claims its latest AI model, Claude Mythos, is “too dangerous” to release given its exceptional cyber hacking capabilities. Is it all a PR stunt, or is this a genuine threat?
Plus, the FBI extracted messages from the secure messaging app Signal after exploiting a loophole involving iPhone notification databases. So how secure is Signal? And how might the loophole be closed?
Meanwhile, several major global news sites are blocking the Wayback Machine, an initiative of the Internet Archive. What threat does it pose to these sites? And what will it cost us to lose this information preservation?
GUESTS:
Justin Hendry -- technology and business reporter and editor of Innovation Aus.
Fergus Halliday -- technology & gaming journalist at reviews.org Australia
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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.
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In this special episode, what's happening in Australia's space industry? Between Australia's first lunar rover, and putting plants on the moon (this year!), we'll take a peek behind the curtain.
Space technology is having a moment right now. NASA’s Artemis mission is the first time humans have launched themselves into space since 1972. The 2026 Australian of the Year, Katherine Bennell-Pegg, is an astronaut. So, what does our local space industry look like right now? And where is it headed?
GUESTS:
Professor Andy Koronios -- Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of the Australasian Space Innovation Institute.
Dr Lauren Fell -- outreach and marketing specialist at Lunar Outpost Oceania, co-lead of the ELO2 industry consortium building Roo-ver. She's also a director at Lunaria One, who is putting plants on the moon.
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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.
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The world's biggest tech companies are scoping Australia out as a data centre hub. As they see it, we have an abundance of space, electricity and water. But do we actually have enough?
About 270 data centres have already been built in Australia, and there are a whole lot more on the way.
The amount of electricity and water these massive buildings are projected to consume is staggering. We'll walk through the numbers this episode, and who is likely to end up footing the bill.
The MIT Technology Review article Bronwyn referenced during the episode is here.
GUESTS:
Petra Stock, climate and environment reporter for The Guardian Australia.
Bronwyn Cumbo, lecturer at University of Technology Sydney and transdisiciplinary social researcher. Her Conversation article is here.
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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.
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John Livingstone is the Head of Digital Policy at UNICEF Australia. He's been talking directly to students about how the Australian social media ban is affecting young people, and whether it's making their lives better.
This is Rae's full conversation with John. You can hear a broader analysis of the social media ban in our recent episode.
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This is the first edition of our 'on the down-low' series -- longer standalone interviews with interesting people in the tech world.
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Australia banned under-16s from social media at the start of summer, and the world has been watching.
Today, we're doing a full audit. What the ban is doing, what it isn't, and whether we even built it on the right foundations.
GUESTS:
Josh Taylor -- technology reporter for The Guardian.
Jocelyn Brewer -- psychologist and founder of Digital Nutrition.
With a special appearance from John Livingstone, Head of Digital Policy at UNICEF Australia. You can hear Rae's full interview with him when it's released next Wednesday (25/03/2026).
Rae also mentioned If Books Could Kill's analysis of The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt.
This episode was produced on the lands of the Burramattagal people.
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There's a fresh wave of headlines claiming that AI is eating the workforce whole, and that the only way to have a job is to become the person who builds the robots. Is this a reasonable assumption? Or has "AI-washing" just become the most convenient way to excuse a restructure?
Plus, a genuine artistic community has grown around taking photos in video games. Who owns those creations?
And, wired headphones are back? Wired headphone revenue jumped 20 percent in the first six weeks of 2026. Why?
GUESTS:
Kath Albury -- Professor of Technology at Swinburne University, and Associate Investigator at the ARC Centre for Excellence In Automated Decision Making and Society.
Mark Serrels -- Editorial Director at Choice and co-founder of Continue Magazine.
This episode was produced on the lands of the Burramattagal people.
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VPNs have topped the charts this week, after major adult websites blocked Australian users. Several of these most popular VPNs are free, but at what cost?
Plus, fake videos of the war in Iran have been circulating online. How do we tell what's real from what's not?
Also, the Macbook Neo. It runs on an iPhone chip, is remarkably cheap, and comes in a variety of colours. Has Apple become fun again?
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Benjamin Law's episode of Compass, Outsourcing Our Souls, will be out on Sunday 15th of March.
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GUESTS:
Michael Cowling — Professor of Educational Technology at RMIT and Director of the Hub for Apple Platform Innovation. AKA Professor Tech, and you can find his YouTube channel here.
Tobias Venus — technology and travel journalist, and video producer at tobygv.tv. His YouTube channel is here.
This episode was produced on the lands of the Burramattagal people.
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A US government official has called Anthropic a national security risk, after the company drew ethical lines around its technology being used for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. How comfortable would you be with AI firing missiles?
Plus, Facebook's parent company, Meta, sold seven million pairs of AI-enabled Ray-Bans last year. And now they want to add facial recognition. How will that change public spaces?
And, Microsoft tried to ban the word 'microslop'. It didn't go well.
GUESTS:
Seamus Byrne — tech reporter and PhD research candidate with the ARC Centre of Excellence in Automated Decision Making & Society.
Hannah Geremia — digital content editor at Whistleout Singapore.
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New research about the social media platform X suggests that just a few weeks on what used to be Twitter can shift political attitudes AND the effects can last long after we log off. So is it really possible to use these sites at all without being affected by the system?
Plus, Australia's planned AI advisory body has been scrapped after 15 months of preparation. It's been replaced by the Australian AI Safety Institute. What does this mean for AI regulation?
And, scientists have found a way to make 3D printed guns traceable.
GUESTS:
Seamus Byrne, tech reporter and PhD research candidate.
Erica Mealy, senior lecturer of computer science at the University of the Sunshine Coast.
This episode was produced on the lands of the Burramattagal people.
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AI is sliding into game development pipelines, but the rules around telling players what is machine-made and what is made by people are patchy at best. So, how much transparency do players deserve, and does it even matter?
Also on the program, how the RAM shortage is impacting the price of game consoles. And, why VR is better suited to the medical and training fields than replacing the open-plan office.
GUESTS:
Chloe Appleby, games curator at the Powerhouse Museum.
Alex Kidman, freelance technology journalist at Alex Reviews Tech.
This episode was produced on the lands of the Burramattagal people.
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If you liked this episode, you might like to check out our previous episode about whether a dating app for games could be the solution for that indecision of what to start next. You can find the link here.
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The Winter Olympics is using drones, AI and cloud-based broadcasting to track curling stones, freeze mid-air jumps, even talk to an official Winter Olympics chatbot. It’s turning sports spectatorship into something more high tech than ever before. Is it likely to be used in other sports?
Plus, a battle is being waged in court between a 20-year-old and Meta/YouTube. The argument is over whether Meta and YouTube's social media sites are engineered to be intentionally addictive. What precedent will this set if the case is successful?
GUESTS:
Chris Berg, professor of economics at RMIT.
David Braue, technology journalist at Information Age.
If you want to get in touch, you can contact us at [email protected]
This episode was produced on Dharug and Burramattagal land.
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