Category: The Conversation

ShutterstockYou might not know it from reading Tuesday’s statement announcing Australia’s eighth consecutive increase in interest rates, but our Reserve Bank might finally have done enough. The statement says inflation is still “too high” and that the bank expects to increase rates further, although it is “not on

ShutterstockWe’ve all had some kind of interaction with a chatbot. It’s usually a little pop-up in the corner of a website, offering customer support – often clunky to navigate – and almost always frustratingly non-specific. But imagine a chatbot, enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI), that can not only

Shutterstock/ DisneyIn Travis Linnemann’s book The Horror Of Police, he quotes David Grossman, founder of the “bulletproof warrior” seminar series, notorious for teaching police that killing is “just not that big of a deal.” At the end of a long day, Grossman says, police should “look out on

It’s been some journey for Anwar Ibrahim, the new Malaysian prime minister appointed last month. It took 24 years to go from being the country’s deputy prime minister in 1998 to becoming the prime minister today, at 75 years old. Along the way, he was jailed twice, found guilty on

Mick Tsikas/AAPClimate action is firmly on the political agenda in both Australia and the United States, following a recent change in government in both nations. As this year’s Australia-US Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) get underway in Washington, the Albanese and Biden administrations appear keen for deeper bilateral cooperation on

Urchin barrens David Harasti, Author providedWhile crown-of-thorns starfish on the Great Barrier Reef have long been ecological villains in the popular imagination, sea urchins have mostly crawled under the national radar – until now. Long-spined sea urchins (Centrostephanus rodgersii) have invaded Tasmania and Victoria from their historical range in New

Flinders Ranges, South Australia Megan Clark/Unsplash, CC BY“How are they losing their children like this, all over the country? They aren’t used to the desert.” These are the thoughts of a Pashtun cameleer in Fiona McFarlane’s second novel, The Sun Walks Down, set in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges in 1883.

ShutterstockHaving a baby can be an empowering experience when women are treated with kindness and respect. However, some women are left feeling traumatised by how they were treated. When women receive disrespectful and abusive care from health providers during pregnancy, labour and birth, or after the baby

Getty ImagesIf the debate about Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter tells us anything, it’s that people – including those in governments – don’t understand how the World Wide Web works. We know that the algorithms Twitter uses to recommend content can guide people to develop more extreme

The Australian people will soon be asked to vote in a referendum to constitutionally recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people through a First Nations Voice. Unfortunately, the political debate on this question has become mired in arguments over “detail” that are either ignorant or deceitful about the nature of

Mikhail Metzel/AP/AAP“Nobody listened to Russia,” Vladimir Putin intoned in 2018, as he unveiled the poisonous fruit of Russia’s military modernisation project: a nuclear-powered cruise missile; a hypersonic glider; and a nuclear warhead atop a drone submarine, designed to flood coastal cities with tsunamis. “Well, listen up now.” Whether

X and Y chromosome. Nathan Devery/ShutterstockThe sex of human and other mammal babies is decided by a male-determining gene on the Y chromosome. But the human Y chromosome is degenerating and may disappear in a few million years, leading to our extinction unless we evolve a new sex gene. The