Download This Show

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.------------This episode was produced on the lands of the Gadigal and Burramattagal people.------------Get in touch:We'd love to hear from you! Email us at downloadthisshow@abc.net.auFind all the episodes of Download This Show on the ABC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts.

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.--------------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.

Having an AI agent act as your personal executive assistant may seem like a sweet deal, but security experts have a few concerns.Also on the program, Moltbook is a new social media platform specfically designed for AI agents to chat. So far, they’ve started a religion, made their own scripture and called for humanity’s downfall. What happens when we anthropomorphise binary code? And, the dead internet theory used to be a fringe conspiracy theory. But AI is getting us closer and closer to it being a reality. So, how much of the internet is still occupied by humans?GUESTS:Kai Riemer, professor of information technology at University of Sydney, and and director of Sydney Executive Plus.Tegan Jones, deputy editor at SmartCompany and co-host of Weird Tech.

Plus! Social media site Digg is back. For those who remember, it may feel like returning to what was good about the internet. Is this the sign of a new era for social media? And how long can it hold out being monetised?Also, why gaming in a group, even publicly... outside, is becoming more popular.GUESTS:Phoebe Toups Dougas, associate professor of human-centred computing in the Exertion Games Lab at Monash University.Fergus Halliday, journalist at Whistleout and reviews.org Australia.This episode of Download This Show was produced on Gadigal land.

Every time you click 'accept' online, you’re legally agreeing to something. The problem is… you probably have no idea what that something is.In episode four of Opt Out, Rae tackles the fine print: the privacy policies and terms and conditions we all scroll past because life is short and the language is cooked. She speaks with Dr Katharine Kemp, privacy law expert and associate professor at UNSW, about how digital 'consent' works in Australia, and why companies can legally do things with your data you’d probably never agree to if it was written in plain English.Then Rae talks to Dr Sky Croeser from Curtin University about what happens when people do try to opt out, and why the internet is designed to make that as hard as possible. Surprisingly, it’s not all bleak: there are corners of the web doing things differently, and they’re worth knowing about.Opt Out is Download This Show's five-part series following Rae as she attempts to take back control of her online life — auditing, deleting, and locking down her own digital life, one step at a time, so you can too.Technical production by Riley Mellis.