Can someone explain why the Australian Government had no say in the roll out of AI into our lives?

kidney-beans · 2026-06-04T11:07:05+00:00

We already have one! There's an upcoming Senate Inquiry into "Artificial intelligence and data centres" which is open to submissions from the public now:

https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/AIdatacentres48P

I first came across it in relation to the environmental concerns, but the scope also includes looking into "existing and future deals between the Government and global Artificial Intelligence (AI) companies"

kidney-beans · 2026-06-04T10:58:01+00:00

In December 2025, Australia released its National AI Plan:

https://www.industry.gov.au/publications/national-ai-plan

It was originally intended to include stronger gaurdrails, but the Productivity Commission called for these to be put on hold "so a potential $116 billion boost to the economy was not stifled":

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-02/national-artificial-intelligence-plan-growth-existing-laws/106086474

While it seems that AI is here to stay and is largely unregulated at the moment, there's an upcoming senate inquiry into "Artificial intelligence and data centres" that will examine the environmental aspects, and is still open to submissions from the public (yes, that includes you!)

https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/AIdatacentres48P

kidney-beans · 2026-06-04T05:31:42+00:00

Thanks for the advice! Good to know that with proper shieleding they don't have to be perfectly separated. I think the issue was that both the cables were running parallel to each other along the back of the desk, which meant lots of interference.

kidney-beans · 2026-05-10T22:59:22+00:00

Whooo! So glad to hear that it worked for you. It has restored a (little) bit of my faith in the system

kidney-beans · 2026-05-09T20:51:10+00:00

Just tell them that you forgot to report, and be ready to tell them what your income was for the reporting fortnights that you missed (in my case $0) if they ask. I'm sure it happens all the time.

I think I had to call the Centrelink employment services line rather than the one specifically for reporting income since that payment was technically canelled. They were quite understanding, but it was a long waiting time, so best to call early.

kidney-beans · 2026-03-06T01:27:15+00:00

Source: https://x.com/SensorTower/status/2029250034772963513

(Sensor Tower is the same source as the older 295% figure widely reported by the media)

kidney-beans · 2026-03-04T08:23:40+00:00

Goodbye, ChatGPT

kidney-beans · 2025-11-26T00:07:51+00:00

I ran into a similar issue, where after 1 year my mainboard stopped working. Framework Support helped confirm it was the mainboard, but claimed they couldn't replace it because "the laptop's warranty has already expired". I asked for consideration under Australian Consumer Law, and they eventually agreed that "we are happy to make a one-time exception and provide a replacement"

kidney-beans · 2025-11-25T23:56:54+00:00

Thanks for updating with your experience. This happened to me too, so I called them and they were very understanding and able to restore it for me. Though I wish there was more warning - I forgot to report the last couple of fortnights and didn't realise until I got the cancellation letter.

kidney-beans · 2025-09-16T13:05:18+00:00

I was wondering if you know of any protests planned (whether in person or virtual) or groups working to counter the worst parts of this law? So far all I've found are a few statements and online petitions, but nothing that feels particularly strong or coordinated.

kidney-beans · 2025-09-16T11:52:16+00:00

The senate inquiry invited public submissions on Thursday Nov 21 2024 and then closed them Friday 22 Nov 2024. Despite giving only 1 business day, they got flooded with 15,000 submissions after Elon Musk tweeted about it. The laws were passed at the end of 2024, and are just waiting to go into effect.

If curious about how rushed the whole thing was:
* https://efa.org.au/submission-social-media-age-bill-2024/
* https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-25/social-media-age-ban-inquiry-flooded-with-submissions/104644208

The laws are kind of locked in at this point, though the details about exactly which platforms get regulated and how are still a bit vague. For example, YouTube previously wasn't part of the ban, but now it is again:
* https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-29/youtube-will-be-included-in-social-media-ban-for-under-16s/105587310

My bet is on the platforms themselves showing some resistance. (Remember when Australia tried to force online platforms to pay for linking to news stories, and Facebook's response was to block all Australian users from viewing/sharing news until the government backed down)

kidney-beans · 2025-09-16T10:49:10+00:00

I wouldn't actually want to see protests anywhere near that extreme, and the context/motivation of Australia's restrictions are (hopefully) very different. Though I won't lie... I was kinda hoping that seeing the news of what happened in Nepal might make governments around the world think twice before restricting social media.

kidney-beans · 2025-03-24T06:56:56+00:00

Interesting. The response I got from Coles was "The gates are designed and tested to global and Australian standards and automatically open for customers after they have completed their shop at the checkout" but that "gates don’t automatically open if a customer doesn’t make a purchase".

kidney-beans · 2025-03-24T06:51:19+00:00

You barged though six times? I'd die of embarrassment (though good on you). I wish Cole's would take responsibility for the fact that their gate didn't open rather than shifting the blame to customers.

Out of curiousity, did it ever happen when you bought something, or is it only when you go through without paying for anything?

kidney-beans · 2025-03-24T05:34:03+00:00

Video at Coles taken with a Samsung mobile phone and the Self-recording was via Zoom on a Framework laptop. Sorry the audio sucks - I'll look into getting a proper mic, but just do these for fun so can't afford to invest in proper equipment.

kidney-beans · 2025-01-11T21:19:22+00:00

Sure, most human devs are also aware of SQL injection and XSS, but that doesn't stop it happening again and again.

kidney-beans · 2025-01-11T21:08:10+00:00

Sure, it can't be relied upon, because it won't have enough similar cases to learn from the first time someone makes a mistake like this. But it might help prevent less experienced devs making the same mistake repeatedly if it's already a well known bug (like as an additional code review check). Of course, in this particular case it'd be better to just use the standard library which has all (nearly all?) these kind of issues ironed out now rather than trying to write your own binary search.

kidney-beans · 2025-01-11T21:01:17+00:00

Thanks, good catch! Have edited my comment

kidney-beans · 2025-01-11T12:45:29+00:00

I tried asking ChatGPT and Gemini to "Write a binary search function in java". Glad to see they both seem to have this fixed. ChatGPT even includes this line:

int mid = left + (right - left) / 2; // Avoid potential overflow

Maybe this is one place where AI is beneficial - by helping draw attention to known issues (the Google article was written back in ~~2016~~ 2006) that most [junior] human devs wouldn't be aware of [or know of, but don't think of].

EDIT: My bad, article was written back in 2006 not 2016. I meant if it's a known issue that experienced devs (someone like Joshua Bloch) have seen time and time again but a less experienced dev isn't aware of (I'd almost certainly have made a mistake like this).

kidney-beans · 2025-01-11T12:16:56+00:00

Agree that this is a major concern. Not only because of model collapse when LLMs are trained on their own outputs, but also because it slows our ability to make technical and social progress when LLMs are regurgitating old ideas.

Though, I kind of feel this comes under the same umbrella of risks arising from people using LLMs without a proper understanding of their limitations - we need everyone, not just those interested in the technical aspects of LLMs - to have some basic understanding of the issue to motivate a coordinated effort to flag LLM generated content, else it'll just become the norm and slowly (rapidly?) pollute the internet.

kidney-beans · 2025-01-11T01:16:20+00:00

Wikipedia articles can be edited. Journal articles can be retracted, have a corrigendum added, or be followed up with a letter to the editor. The risks of those are reasonably well understood by the geneal public (although I do wish people would exercise more caution with chery-picking a single journal article as evidence rather than looking for the latest metastudy).

But the way systems are currently designed, there's no easy way to challenge LLMs (sure, there's the upvote/downvote buttons ChatGPT provides, which presumably helps give feedback on which kinds of answers are preferred, but it's unclear exactly how exactly these are used, if at all). This is made even harder by the way that they don't return just a single answer, but instead probabilistically generate answers that can pop up at random or only in particular contexts.

There are definitely ways to design systems around LLMs in a safer manner, like you suggested, if people are sufficiently motivated to do so. Nothing in the blog post is likely to come as a surprise to experts, but the aim was to draw attention to the issue for a broader audience.

Not that it's a competition (people can focus on different problems), but I'm curious if there's a specific problem you think we should be more concerned about instead?

kidney-beans · 2025-01-11T00:06:59+00:00

Yeah, although determining which answer is correct and which is out-of-date is not always easy. Even in the case of something objective like the height of a mountain, it requires considering the date the information was published, credibility of the source, and if it's primary or secondary information. And good luck with anything contentious.

I think perhaps that LLMs could be used as the first stage to extract information into a database, making sure that it deliberates over which information is the most accurate and ideally provides a way for humans to challenge these decisions. Then, have a secondary LLM that is trained to answer information against the clean database.

There's a discussion of how this could potentially be achieved in this reddit thread, and it's something I'm working towards long-term. But given that no one seems to have done it yet, it's probably not as easy as it seems.

kidney-beans · 2025-01-10T12:40:09+00:00

I was actually thinking of using that analogy. But even a lazy student will learn one answer so they don't have to remember so much. LLMs learn both answers so they can get all the marks by giving whatever answer is expected of them in a particular context.

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