Wednesday Jul 16, 2025
Poisoning AI with Prof Toby Walsh
The Large Language Models are powered by stolen data but there are new and innovative ways to make the thieves pay. Professor Toby Walsh explains the tech-driven resistance to Big AI from data poisoning to responsible cloud computing.
With panellists Digital Rights Watch Chair Lizzie O’Shea, Editor of the Sizzle Cam Wilson, and Per Capita’s Peter Lewis we also discuss:
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Qantas’ big data hack
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Victoria’s foray into AI policing
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and how Velvet Sunset’s fake music is bringing tears to Peter’s eyes
To discuss the issues raised in this episode join us in the Democracy Sandpit - https://civility.bettermode.io/welcome
2 months ago
There are still about 5,000 indigenous groups left in the world. They constitute less than 1% of the world’s population, but they are guardians of most of our unspoilt ecosystems, and they are generally excellent guardians. This is because they all tend to have a council of wise elders who are well versed in the metaphysics of survival. They look at existence wholistically. They use their vast knowledge of the past, to predict the future. Their job is to steer society away from the pitfalls. As far as I know, all indigenous societies have such a council whose sage advice is sought on existential matters. But the system that operates 99% of the world today, has no such council, we let the market decide. Once the market has set the ball rolling, we then let the politicians decide how to subtly alter its direction as it hurtles down hill, gathering momentum. ‘That’s no way to run a railroad!
2 months ago
On April12 1856 the stonemasons of Melbourne Australia, went on strike for an 8 hour working day. They won. After some argie- bargie, the rest of the industrialised world reluctantly followed suit, more or less. The pundits were in agreement that this was just the beginning of the inexorable erosion of working hours. We were promised that machines would do our work for us. Philosophers predicted that by the year 2000 our greatest social problem would be boredom, how to fill up our day. As it turns out, boredom is the least of our worries. This is because, as the machines took over our jobs, rather than being given less work to do, we were given other jobs. Entire new industries were invented just to keep us employed. All the benefit went to the shareholders. This was good for the economy, it kept growing at a cracking pace, but it was not good for workers, and it was not good for the environment, and ultimately it was a total disaster for the entire planet. So let’s not make the same mistake with AI. Just for a change, let’s let the workers whose jobs are being replaced, get some of the benefit, so they will not have to work quite as hard. Eventually, as more and more jobs are replaced with machines and AI, we will all work less and less, just as we were promised way back when.