All Things Equal

How can our oldest continuing culture, and our Australian heritage, inform tech development? Perhaps Indigenous Knowledge Systems seem far removed from Silicon Valley. But it could be exactly the injection of cultural values that our profit- and disruption-driven tech sector desperately needs, especially given the discrimination already faced by people of colour at the hands of technology.

Education will be as affected as everything else by technology, not just because of the innovations coming into the classrooms, but because of the students we need to send out.

Artificial Intelligence is the holy grail of technology. But the dawn of AI has already broken: we see it in algorithms that predict what you want to buy, decide what news you see… even judge whether or not you should go to prison. But should we trust these algorithms to make our choices for us? Do we have the right to a human-made decision?

Who's watching? When was the last time you read all the Terms and Conditions before clicking “I agree”? We sign away our right to privacy on a daily basis, often for no more than a game. High-profile hacks have put the vulnerability of our information in the headlines. But is it foreign actors we need to beware of, or a threat closer to home? As governments ask for ever greater surveillance capabilities, should we more urgently question powers taken in the name of security?

When it comes to medicine, we can see some of the most obvious benefits new technology offers human kind. But equality of access to these expensive technologies will prove problematic, especially when it comes to our greatest, and most terrifying, feat: gene editing.