Half of Australians use AI, but many mistrust, even fear it

17 May 2025

The findings come as part of a global study into the use of, and attitudes to artificial intelligence (AI), carried out by multinational professional services network KPMG, in conjunction with Professor Nicole Gillespie and Dr Steve Lockey, of the University of Melbourne.

“The public’s trust of AI technologies and their safe and secure use is central to acceptance and adoption,” Professor Gillespie says. “Yet our research reveals that 78% of Australians are concerned about a range of negative outcomes from the use of AI systems, and 37% have personally experienced or observed negative outcomes ranging from inaccuracy, misinformation and manipulation, deskilling, and loss of privacy or IP.”

While the benefits of AI use in the workplace are understood, many Australians harbour concerns the technology may result in job losses. These fears are justified to an extent however, and not only in Australia, with some freelance IT and creative professionals reporting declines in work availability, something that they are attributing to the prevalence of AI technology.

The 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award longlist

17 May 2025

Ten novels have been included on the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award longlist, which was published on Thursday 15 May 2025.

Chinese Postman, by Brian Castro
The Burrow, by Melanie Cheng
Theory & Practice, by Michelle de Kretser
Dirt Poor Islanders, by Winnie Dunn
Compassion, by Julie Janson
Politica, by Yumna Kassab
Ghost Cities, by Siang Lu
Highway 13, by Fiona McFarlane
The Degenerates, by Raeden Richardson
Juice, by Tim Winton

Australia’s oldest literary award, the Miles Franklin honours novels “of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases“. The shortlist will be announced next month on Wednesday 25 June, with the winner being named a month later on Thursday 24 July.

Floodland, a documentary about the Lismore floods, by Jordan Giusti

15 May 2025

Lismore, a city located in northern NSW, Australia, suffered catastrophic flooding in 2017, and again in 2022. During the latter event, flood waters reached unprecedented levels, almost completely submerging some buildings in the process.

Floodlands, trailer, a documentary directed by Melbourne based filmmaker Jordan Giusti (Instagram page), is a up close look at the devastation caused by the flooding, and the impact on the residents of the local community.

Floodlands will premier at this year’s Sydney Film Festival, where it will screen on the evening of Saturday 14 June 2025. The film is also a finalist in the festival’s Documentary Australia Award.

AI coding tools will make vibe code output a thing of the past

14 May 2025

Mark Sullivan, writing for Fast Company:

Google DeepMind research scientist Nikolay Savinov said in a recent interview that AI coding tools will soon support 10 million-token context windows — and eventually, 100 million. With that kind of memory, an AI tool could absorb vast amounts of human instruction and even analyze an entire company’s existing codebase for guidance on how to build and optimize new systems.

When a developer uses an AI technology to produce some code, but has no regard for the quality of the generated code, there you have vibe coding.

It might be bad code of the worst sort, but who cares? Not that particular developer. Future coding tools however will eventually — one day — be so proficient that all the code they create will be top notch. Bad code, and vibe coding, will be a thing of the past.

Or will it? The super-duper code these super-duper AI tools generate will be so good, no one will need to worry about its quality any more. That will be vibe coding, but an entirely different form of vibe coding. If you enjoyed the joke, you can start laughing now.

Is artificial intelligence taking work away from freelance designers, developers?

14 May 2025

Serbia based SEO consultant Nenad offers a grim assessment of the industry:

The number of available jobs is dwindling. Companies are tightening their budgets and relying more on AI to handle basic tasks. Why hire a freelancer for graphic design when you can get an AI to whip up something decent in seconds? Decent? Yesterday I tested a new Ai service called Readdy, and I got a landing page in 5 minutes that looks like a $1,000 job (5 years ago).

I’ve been hearing anecdotal reports locally (NSW), in recent months, of freelance design and development professionals taking on gig-economy work, point-to-point driving, and food delivery, to help make ends meet. There’s people saying AI will bring about new work opportunities in time, but it seems like there will be a fair few job losses before that happens.

The motherf***ing website, the way all websites used to be

13 May 2025

A long time ago, that is. But the motherf***ing website (hopefully them asterisks slip this post through them filters wherever they may be) is lightweight, responsive, and works.

Websites aren’t broken by default, they are functional, high-performing, and accessible. You break them.

Designed by someone called Barry Smith, the motherf***ing website has been around for over ten years — the Digiday article I linked just then, is dated December 2013. I don’t know how I missed seeing this before.

Needless to say, NSFW on account of strong language.

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design, technology

The birthday effect: you are somewhat likely to die on your birthday

12 May 2025

The birthday effect is a thing it seems. Russell Samora, writing for The Pudding crunches the numbers. It looks like quite a few people expire on their “special day”.

Why is there a birthday effect at all? One popular idea centers on the psychological impact of death postponement versus anniversary reaction: Does the looming birthday cause people to postpone death until after they’ve celebrated their special day, or does the birthday itself somehow trigger mortality?

I’ve never liked birthdays, and now I know why…

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mathematics, trends

Mark Zuckerberg says one day our friends will be AI chatbots

12 May 2025

Way back in 1979, a British new wave band called Tubeway Army asked the question: Are ‘Friends’ Electric. Note the band’s use of scare quotes around the word friend. Are they suggesting friends that are electric are not real friends? Listen to the song and see what you think.

Forty-six years later, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, believes the majority of people’s friends will soon be AI chatbots of some sort. These AI ‘friends’ might be okay to talk to, but there wouldn’t be much else you could do with them. For example, you couldn’t really go out to dinner together.

Zuckerberg thinks most Americans only have three friends — I wonder what the average friend count is for Facebook members? — but is pretty sure they would like more. He thinks fifteen is the optimal number. The way then to make-up the shortfall is to generate AI companions.

An AI ‘friend’ might be a bit like an imaginary friend who could think for themselves. The Facebook co-founder goes on to suggest therapists and business agents will also be AI chatbots. I’m not sure if chatbots would be ideal therapists, but as business agents they might work.

Julie Fragar wins Archibald Prize with Justene Williams portrait

10 May 2025

Brisbane based Australian artist Julie Fragar has won the 2025 Archibald Prize for her portrait of fellow Brisbane based artist Justene Williams (Instagram link), a work as intriguing as its title, Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene).

Sydney based Jude Rae was named winner of the Wynne Prize, for landscape painting, with her work titled Pre-dawn sky over Port Botany container terminal. Gene A’Hern, meanwhile, took out the Sulman Prize for genre or mural painting, with Sky painting.

This year’s prizes saw more work by women being selected as finalists, than men, for the first time. If you’re in Sydney between today and Sunday 17 August 2025, the works of the Archibald, Wynne, and Sulman Prize finalists and winners can be seen at the Art Gallery of NSW.

Vortex by Rodney Hall wins The Age Book of the Year fiction prize

10 May 2025

Vortex, by Queensland based Australian author Rodney Hall, has won the fiction prize in The Age Book of the Year award for 2025.

The two times winner of the Miles Franklin literary award, says the basis for his latest novel were some pages for a book he started writing, but later gave up on, in 1971. It pays to hold onto those old manuscripts, even the ones you don’t like, or thought you didn’t.

Lech Blaine, also living in Queensland, won the non-fiction prize, with his memoir Australian Gospel.

The announcement of the winners coincided with the opening of this year’s Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF), on Thursday. The Age Book of the Year awards have a story worthy of a novel themselves. They were first presented in 1974, by The Age newspaper, for fiction and non-fiction writing. In 1993 a poetry award, the Dinny O’Hearn Prize was added.

In 1998, the awards became a feature of the MWF, until they were ceased all together in 2013. However, in 2021 the award was rebooted, but for fiction only. Then in 2022, an award for non-fiction was introduced (or should that be reintroduced?).

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