The CIO Australia Show

The CIO Australia Show: What the go with Web 3.0?

There's been much talk lately about the so-called Web 3.0 sparking debate as to whether it is indeed the future of digital communications (Facebook's or rather ‘Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg certainly thinks so) or rather an over hyped concept driven by brands struggling to maintain relevance, and indeed revenues amid growing competition (Zuckerberg would of course tell you it’s not.) If we take a wider look at the various technologies analysts tell us define Web 3.0 – or the metaverse - there are actually many that CIOs and other tech leaders should take seriously. The internet of things (and expanded IoT – yes that’s also now a thing) virtual reality and especially augmented reality, and of course digital twins for example. The ideas of decentralised control and individual ownership are firmly embedded in Web 3.0 as well. And regardless of whether you think blockchain and NFTs have been overhyped, it’s hard to argue they’re not going to have some role to play in the future. In this, our final episode, we talk with Jonathan Kempe, founder and CEO of supply chain tech startup Shipz, and Johnny Serrano, CIO alumnus and global CIO at Australian mining safety company, Ground Probe, about the various opportunities - real or imagined - presented by Web 3.0, the realities of what’s been achieved to date and what we might expect to see in terms of its impact on businesses and industry in the future.

Checking the pulse of digital health in Australia

Organisations in the public and private sectors were faced with a once-in-a-century crisis, with CIOs and their teams thrust into the front line, delivering digital solutions in quick time that undoubtedly saved countless lives, while changing healthcare forever. In this episode we talk to Richard Taggart, executive director digital health and innovation at Sydney Local Health District, one of Australia’s largest public health corridors, and Alan Pritchard Director of EMR and ICT Services, with Victorian public health agency Austin Health. Two genuine warriors of digital health in Australia – and, fittingly CIO50 alumni – they discuss what they and their teams accomplished in the trenches throughout the pandemic, from managing the surge of COVID-19 cases and rush for vaccines, standing up telemedicine and virtual hospitals, transforming systems for managing patient data, and what all of this will mean for the future of digital healthcare, assuming that we will one day be in a post-pandemic world.

How to be a CIO50 Australia winner in 2022

It’s that time of year again, with nominations now open for the CIO50 awards both in Australia and in New Zealand. The program is now in its 7th year down under, and has been running for four years across the ditch, creating a proud and growing alumni group underscoring the high calibre of technology leaders operating in this part of the world. In this episode, David Binning speaks with CIO Australia's editor-in-chief, Byron Connolly, and CIO New Zealand's editor, Cathy O'Sullivan, about their respective CIO50 programs for 2022. Who should enter and how, what this year's judges are looking for, plus explanation of some exciting new categories that reflect the evolving nature of technology leadership in this part of the world.

Is your AI talking back?

Earlier this month this was a good deal of excitement – probably mixed with horror for some – following ‘revelations’ in the tech and indeed mainstream press that one of Google’s chat bots had become sentient. The call – or rather we might say alarm – was raised by software engineer, Blake Lemoine who asked a number of questions of the LaMDA chat bot he had been working with, which communicated several eerily-human responses including its desire to be considered a person with feelings and to be formally recognised as an employee at Google.  LaMDA stands for the Language Model for Dialogue Applications and is a family of neural language models developed by Google.  In internal memo to some 200 Google staff, Lemoine described a chat bot he’d been working with as a seven-year-old child that wants the world to be a better place for all. Suffice to say Google issued a prompt response dispelling the idea that it was sentient, with Lemoine placed on forced leave. Leaving aside all the predictable analogies with sci-fi books and films, the incident does raise interesting questions about the current capabilities of AI systems and what we might expect to see in coming years.  We already have voice-driven systems – as well as chatbots – able to discern customer sentiment, so it’s not too farfetched to imagine more emotionally intuitive and responsive systems, say supporting sales and marketing, as well as health, in particular mental health. Tune in to hear a fascinating conversation with Tathagat Banerjee, founder and CEO of Sydney-based startup Video Translator AI, as well as Julien Eps, head of the School of Engineering and Telecommunications with the University of NSW and a member of the NSW Smart Sensing Network. As you’ll hear, while true sentience – itself a debatable term – is no doubt a stretch, Blake Lemoine’s experience serves to remind us that AI has nevertheless come a long way in a short period of time, with exciting new applications that effectively mimic human capabilities already in use.

Why do A/NZ enterprises still suck at AI?

We’re coming up to almost two years since the first episode of The CIO Show, which was a two part series discussing how Australian organisations were progressing with artificial intelligence. The scorecard was less than glowing, with much lower confidence and greater fear than most other developed economies. Fear arising both from perceptions of AI as something super complex and other worldly, and from the rising chorus of voices concerned that the ‘machines were coming’ and jobs, life as we know it was under threat, all amid a seeming torrent of ethical and legal challenges – real and imagined. On the other end of the spectrum, many organisations still viewed AI as some sort of panacea, increasing pressure on tech leaders to deploy solutions that had it written on the tin, with inevitable disappointing results. Lack of consultation and buy from the c-suite and wider workforce was among many other problems cited as impeding the progress of AI across Australian enterprises. So where are we now? Joining us to try and answer this far-from simple question is Michael Ciavarella, former CIO with Swimming Australia and now CTO with online fashion retailer, A&S Labels, Professor Michael Blumenstein, Deputy Dean research and innovation with the University of Technology, and Louise Francis, ANZ country manager and research director with IDC.