Artificial intelligence offers a daunting challenge for government: a potent mix of high expectations, big budgets, a competitive international “AI arms race”, and elevated public fears. Some governments, such as China, France and Canada, are determined that their countries be leaders in AI; others have been slower to make public policy statements but may be watching to see where their country might best fit in a field that is moving quickly
Traditionally, genetic tests have been firmly placed within a clinical context — clinicians order tests to gather information to help or confirm diagnosis of a condition in a person who is showing symptoms, to predict whether a person with a family history will develop a late-onset condition when the test results can be accurately interpreted (e.g. Huntington disease), or to identify carriers of recessive conditions in a family (e.g. cystic fibrosis)
Decisions that affect our lives in both trivial and important ways are increasingly being made by algorithms. These algorithms, especially those derived using artificial intelligence (AI), are often inscrutable — at least, they are for now. If we want to hold people and organisations to account for their decisions, and if they want people to have trust in their decisions, we will need to be able to explain why a decision was made. How will we achieve explainable decision making?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is impacting society in varied ways as researchers and practitioners are using it to gain new insights into different problems and to open up new business opportunities. Its use has expanded from industry and manufacturing, to areas of sustainability such as land, water, biodiversity, urban transportation, waste, energy supply and housing. AI has revolutionised and will continue to shape the way experts find solutions to problems in these areas
Mathematics is an absolutely critical part of our future — and we can maximise its impact for the public and private good over the next 11 years if we take the opportunity now
This chapter is about wellbeing in the Anthropocene. ‘The Anthropocene’ is the name given to the new chronological period the Earth is said to now be in as a result of human modifications, representing its exit from the Holocene (the past, relatively stable 10–12 millenia)
It is difficult to think of an area of our lives that is not touched by the earth sciences — whether it relates to the energy used to fuel our vehicles and homes or the natural disasters that dominate the evening news, to the dependence of our daily lives on weather forecasting or the precious metals used in electronic devices — to name a few
On 24 January 1946, the very first resolution of the UN General Assembly called for the ‘elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons’. More than 71 years later, in Conference Room 1 at the United Nations in New York at 10:47 on 7 July 2017, governments voted 122 to 1 to adopt the text of a historic Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (UN General Assembly, 2017). A room filled for weeks with formal procedure, composed diplomats and committed campaigners erupted with applause, joy, tears and embraces
Australian industries need the flexibility, insight and foresight that comes from thinking creatively, asking critical questions, forming and testing hypotheses and reasoning quantitatively — and engineers have the technical knowledge and the problem- solving skills to respond to constant change
We are living in the future. No, seriously ... we are, it is true! What was once mere ideas introduced to us through the minds of science-fiction writers has now materialised in the world around us