Billionaire tech bros plunder downunder
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BIG TECH
Mathew Knott called the prime minister’s AI speech “a masterclass in short-term stakeholder management” (“Albanese echoes Pope Leo in his own missive AI missive”, 16/7).
AI should be used to create good jobs, not be a threat to existing ones; data centres should not compete for land with housing developments; firms must look after their own water and power needs etc.
However, the rubber has now hit the road and all these feared negative outcomes are already here. The mining giant, Mineral Resources, has announced it will use AI in precedence to human labour (“No hiring if AI can do the job, mining giant staff told”, 17/7); massive chunks of potential residential land have been made and are proposed (“Labor revolt over data centres”, 18/7); planned data centres near our capital cities will be significant users of energy and water supplies.
Clever speeches will not rein in the AI juggernaut and legislation next year will be too little too late – as usual.
Peter Thomson, Brunswick
Data centres a runaway train
Given the rise of hyperscale data centres built without proper risk assessment or community consultation, your correspondent is right to call for a moratorium on data centre development (Letters, “AI and data centres”, 18/7).
With the proposed Plumpton project requiring more electricity than Victoria’s coal-fired power stations (“Labor revolt over data centres”, 18/7), the pace of Victoria’s data centre growth feels like a runaway train.
Despite Prime Minister Albanese’s speech (“PM is right to pump brakes on data centres”, 18/7), Australia doesn’t even have a leash ready to hold back the tide of construction that is draining energy and water, taking valuable land and creating unwanted noise for local communities.
Big tech companies are enjoying their wild west era at our expense.
At a bare minimum, governments must ensure all data centre projects bring enough renewable energy and battery capacity to match their demand.
Regulate them now, or this runaway train will keep taking Australians for a ride.
Isabelle Henry, Ascot Vale
Morality and public interest lacking
As the prime minister announces measures to regulate AI, the ABC screening of the British drama The Capture provides a useful backdrop.
Therein, the British establishment accepts AI control to avoid contamination by human error but manipulates images via “correction” to secure false convictions.
Hoping for a sequel where human control restores morality and public interest.
Jackie Fristacky, Carlton Nth
Takes no power to ask a human
Once again, we’re facilitating, at our expense, the transitioning of billionaires into trillionaires. This time by allowing the open slather proliferation of data centres at discount rates throughout the country.
It’s already perfectly clear, the sole purpose of AI is wealth generation for the already ultra-rich. Everyone else is being screwed by yet another euphemism like “the cloud”.
AI is simply an advance in software allowing it to interrogate and modify itself. It makes the lowest common denominators of typical responses, using the input of quadzillions of data bits from billions of users.
It needs an enormous amount of computing power to ask Siri. It takes none to ask a human. AI is completely unnecessary.
John Laurie, Riddells Creek
THE FORUM
Optics and illusion
Re “Pauline Hanson has momentum. Her biggest challenge is the company she keeps” (18/7): There are many dangers from Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party. Even if they never form a government,
Hanson’s populism is nudging other parties towards her policies. Despite protestations, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor will need One Nation preferences to win the next federal election. The same applies to state Liberal leader Jess Wilson at this year’s Victorian election.
All major parties have a wide range of supporters. But many of Hanson’s associates are extremist, far worse than just “populist”.
Alex Jones lied about murdered schoolkids. Tommy Robinson has been convicted of stalking and assault. One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts denies the climate science of the CSIRO and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. At the National Press Club, Hanson said she was “on the same page” as US President Donald Trump.
For One Nation, more than Labor and the LNP, politics is certainly “about optics as much as policy”.
John Hughes, Mentone
Hanson brings the feels
Re ″We are a threat: Pauline takes her ambitions to fellow travellers″ (19/7): Pauline Hanson’s speech at the CPAC gathering in the UK exemplified her grievances and, as usual, no solutions. Too much of what she said about our past indicates a mindset of ignorance and racist rhetoric.
It appears much of how she operates is about ″feelings″, not logic or historical truths, which appeals to those who support her. We are at a low ebb where the dominant political parties are fraying and trust is evaporating. We also live in a fraught world with unforeseen challenges – climate crisis, AI, greater disparity between wealth and poverty, insecurities and wars. Hanson can only provide performances around a embroidery of bigoted social-nativist nightmare.
Judith Morrison, Nunawading
We deserve better
One Nation’s Pauline Hanson thinks the end of the White Australia Policy is the cause of current problems. One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts says Vladimir Putin has earned his respect by invading Ukraine, and has also refused to rule out the Bondi attack as a “false flag” event. He has called conspiracy theorist Alex Jones a “beacon of hope”.
This is the party Tony Abbott, president of the Liberal Party, thinks the Coalition should preference.
Mind you, Liberal senator Andrew Bragg thinks the Labor government is “communist”. The public deserves better.
Julie Conquest, Brighton
School separatism
I am pleased that the government is trying to reduce these prejudices which cause dangerous division in our society, but has it not considered that separating children in separate religious-based and class-based schools will increase divisions and store up bigger problems for the future?
I grew up in Northern Ireland where separate schools for Catholics and Protestants meant that I never rubbed shoulders with kids from the other side, not even in sport, since Catholics schools played Gaelic games and the Protestants played soccer and rugby. Thirty years of bombing and murder was the result.
Parents can have choice, but should pay for it, too. Why should they be subsidised so heavily when we are told there is not enough in the public purse to properly pay for our public schools, nor for our public school teachers?
David Scott, Eltham
Glasgow boy’s tips
As an ex-pat Glasgow boy, I’m writing to apologise to all those Commonwealth Games competitors and visitors to my home city of Glasgow for the dreadful state of the airport at which you’re soon to land.
Everything from the aircraft to arrivals is sadly decrepit and reminiscent of a 1970s comprehensive school. Threadbare carpet, faded blue paint on the plasterboard divider between the EU and Other (that’s you folks) corridor leading up to passport control and final entry.
When you finally arrive on Scottish soil, you’ll find yourself in a small newsagent’s where you can treat yourself a copy of the Daily Record which will carry a front-page splash on an MP doing something they shouldn’t along with a story about a miracle cat that survived six weeks stowed away on a Clyde ferry.
Glasgow is a very small city, with a grid arrangement like Melbourne’s, and we’re a very friendly bunch.
Just make sure you stand your round. And the best breakfast for a hangover is sausage, bacon,egg and chips with a cup of tea and a slice of white bread at the University Cafe.
Don’t laugh until you’ve tried it.
Simon Clegg, Donvale
Pregnant pause
Requiring a British passport to enter the UK as I am a citizen by descent (despite holding a valid Australian one), I was asked to supply proof of my parents’ passports “at the time of my conception”. Now aged 70 myself, I would have found it unseemly to imagine ever having asked them when I was conceived, and alas, it is now too late.
Talk about barmy.
Sue Higgs, She Oaks
Mad as hell
Re Neil Mitchell’s opinion piece, ″These ‘witches’ claim to have brought down Kyle, Karl and Alan Jones. In fact, they’re bullies″ (19/7): Really?
In a world where anyone can proliferate whatever opinion or idea they want, no matter how damaging, I think the idea of supporting ″media organisations with morals and a social conscience″ is refreshing.
Some people have had enough of the “system of self-regulation that has worked reasonably well” for men over the past 200 years.
MFW’s approach to activism is clever and speaks to ″sad, stale older men who’ve had all the say for far, far too f—ing long″ in a language they understand – money, power and control.
Kate Hadley, Mount Eliza
Get real, Neil
I take exception to Neil Mitchell’s article condemning the actions of the MFWs, (“These media ‘witches’ are bullies”, 19/7). It is a group who encourages its followers to boycott products that buy advertising space on various programs with content many people find offensive.
Australian society has some major problems that our various governments have shown themselves either unwilling or unable to address.
We have a violence against women crisis, we have a gambling addiction crisis, and we have sections of our media making money from peddling ideas that are often biased, incorrect and counterproductive to a healthy society.
Mitchell says: “The Witches are playing with a fragile system.” There is widespread belief that Rupert Murdoch has already played with this fragile system to his financial benefit and the community’s cost.
Despite a concerted effort from a bipartisan campaign led by Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd, the government has refused to hold a royal commission.
The fact that these advertising boycotts are effective comes down to a large number of people being motivated to change their usual buying patterns to make a point. This will only be effective when there is widespread support for the issue being addressed. It is clever and it has been well executed.
From a community where it’s clear that the mighty dollar rules, I say all power to the Witches.
Jan Downing, Hawthorn East
A completed life
Your correspondent (Letters, 17/7) suggests a required two-year period of confirmation of a desire for voluntary assisted dying for people who do not want care in an aged care facility, without the need for having a terminal illness.
Having the feeling of a “completed life”, as advocated by voluntary assisted dying pioneer, Rodney Syme, could ethically be considered a requirement for voluntary assisted dying for those with preserved decision-making capacity. It could also allow voluntary assisted dying for those with early dementia who wish to avoid the indignity of late dementia.
Dr Harley Powell, Elsternwick
Magpie repellent
I was intrigued by the article, “Attacker tracker” (18/7). A Melbourne couple has developed a warning app to alert people to recently reported attacks by magpies, and it can redirect people to alternative routes to use at the time.
While it is important to applaud innovation, it is also important to acknowledge the tried-and-true strategy of wearing a broad-brimmed hat and sunglasses – which also doubles as a sun-
smart strategy.
It is also important to be aware of the myths surrounding the ways of dealing with magpie attacks such as waving a stick or umbrella at the offending magpie.
I have read that bike riders have been recommended to wear a wig on their helmets but am unaware of its success. An interesting idea.
Genevieve Leach, Carlton
Gates of Yarraville
Having been born in Yarraville and having grown up in the late 1950s and 1960s, the terminology for the level crossing in Anderson Street, Yarraville, was the “gates”, and people knew exactly where you were. To me, they are an icon.
I saw the manually operated gates go to boom gates, and have seen many changes to the shops.
The article, “This level crossing is among Melbourne’s most dangerous. Plans to remove it have riled the community” (19/7), says the level crossing can be closed for almost an hour during the morning peak. This may put temporary pressure on the surrounding streets leading to Anderson Street, and if the gates are closed permanently, this pressure may be permanent.
Greg Bardin, Altona North
AND ANOTHER THING
Fact finding
Pauline Hanson’s “fact-finding mission” will serve only to reinforce her baseless assertions – she has never let the truth get in the way of her “facts”.
Colleen Heatley, Drouin West
It is ironic that some of the British people believe their culture is being destroyed by the very people whose cultures the British destroyed.
Tom Stafford, Wheelers Hill
Neil Mitchell
A man who worked in mainstream media for “more than 50 years” uses it to express his outrage that a feminist protest group suggests “the mainstream media refuse to regulate themselves” (“These media ‘witches’ are bullies”, 19/7).|
Lesley Walker, Northcote
Neil Mitchell is really asking for it. The MFWs will be coming after him now. He is “pale, male and stale” and, most importantly, he disagreed with them. Better cancel him.
Murray Horne, Cressy
Furthermore
The upstairs-downstairs public housing concept is very bad policy.
Dan Drummond, Leongatha
The removal of 891 mature trees to build the West Gate Tunnel (18/7) is very disturbing. Especially as the City of Melbourne’s proposed tree-replacement program is not available to the public. What have they got to hide?
Sandra Torpey, Hawthorn
Sport
Melbourne needs a Royal Football Hospital.
Paul Drakeford, Kew
It has taken up to the penultimate game in the FIFA Soccer World Cup for soccer to be played the way it was meant to be.
John Cummings, Anglesea
They should make every game at the World Cup a third place play-off game.
Huw Dann, Auckland, NZ
Finally
Your letters correspondent (18/7) can be assured that coffee in Italy is about $1.50-$3, provided you drink an espresso standing up at the bar. A few minutes, a few sips, and you are on your way. If you sit down, it is more like $8.
Heather Barker, Albert Park
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