A big topic of conversation Down Under over the past couple of weeks has been copyright — namely, whether we should loosen the rules to make it easier for AI companies to operate in Australia, and for data centre companies to build here. The Productivity Commission and Tech Council boss Scott Farquhar think we should. Creatives are less enthused. We go into the dynamics of the conversation, the asymmetry between the parties, and answer the question once and for all: how much money do artists deserve??See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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GPT-5: Here We Go Again
After many months of hype and news stories, OpenAI has released GPT-5, the next major numbered iteration of its large language model. There have been all sorts of models since it released GPT-4 in 2023, but this is supposed to be the big dog. In this ep, we talk about the rocky launch — starting with the fact that most people aren't that impressed with it, and ending with the much weirder world of people who developed an emotional attachment to GPT-4o and became furious that their friend is gone.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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What Are They Planning? (ft. Cam Wilson)
Today James is joined by previous Down Round guest Cam Wilson, who has written a new book with (another former Down Round guest) Ariel Bogle, Conspiracy Nation, which is about the Australian conspiracy community. While Raph is living it up on the coastline of Croatia, James and Cam had a freewheeling chat about online conspiracy culture, how it has engaged with online platforms, and the future of going crazy on the computer in the age of AI. Also, we check in on Australia's teen social media ban.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Knock On (ft. Tim Stewart)
Several years ago, Down Round listener Tim Stewart submitted a question to one of our Q&A mailbag episodes: when is the new rugby league video game for PlayStation 5 coming out? We couldn't answer him, because we didn't know what the hell he was talking about. But now, years later, it has come out, and everyone seems to agree it's really not very good. So we decided to bring Tim on to finally answer his own question. What follows is an odyssey into the world of Australian sports video games, and the virtues of pestering CEOs on Twitter.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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That's Tea
Tea, the app which offers what it describes as "dating safety tools which protect women", has been hacked. It follows a couple of weeks where it went viral and led the app charts in the US. For those not familiar, it is basically an app version of those 'are we dating the same guy' Facebook groups, where women share pics, tips and intel on bad dates and dangerous men. In this ep, we talk about the hack, the app's surge in popularity, and where it fits in range of social surveillance and trust tools that have emerged to serve an increasing scaled social ecosystem where you can no longer be sure who you're talking to. (We actually recorded this ep for release just before the hack, and our recording was corrupted — maybe a good thing, given that it would have been immediately irrelevant.)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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