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We’re signing off for 2023 with a relaxed re-cap of the year.
We reflect on the big conversation topics of the year (AI and privacy reform), what surprised us, what disappointed us and what we’re looking forward to in 2024.
Thanks to everyone who listened, appeared as a guest, or otherwise supported us. Have a safe break and see you again on January 16.
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Transcript
This is an automatically generated transcript. We make our best efforts to check that it is an accurate reflection of the episode, but it may contain some errors and unedited content.
Arj
Hi Jordan.
Jordan
Hey Arj, how you doing?
Arj
Well, this is a very different start to our podcast.
Jordan
We’re trying something new. We’re wrapping up the year. We’re reflecting. We’re talking about the podcast, which is a bit meta. But yeah, a bit of a different episode for the last one of the season.
Arj
Yeah, like without all the fanfare.
So I want anyone listening to imagine you and me. sitting back on kind of lounge chairs, you know, drinking hand with you, the listener, one foot very much into the holiday camp, you know.
Jordan
Exactly. White wine in the sun, ready for the end of the year and just debriefing, reflecting, reflecting on the year that was.
Arj
Yeah. Well, it’s been a big year, I think. That’s my reflection. It’s been huge. I feel tired, but fulfilled.
Like it’s, it’s, there’s been a lot going on, a lot to talk about. Obviously the work that we do has been a lot going on in the worlds of privacy, cybersecurity, AI, which people who follow the pod will know, but just generally it’s been like, I feel like it’s been building up for a couple of years and this year was sort of, it all came together as well.
Jordan
It has, yeah. And all come together is something that kind of resonates with me. Cause a lot of the things we’ve been talking about and dealing with this year kind of started right at the end of last year, right?
We had a handful of massive data breaches, Optus, Medibank, Latitude Financial, that have kind of shaped the privacy and cybersecurity landscape a lot this year. We’ve had the whole AI chatbot freak out that’s really shaped a lot of the discussion, policy discussion in tech this year as well. Both of those were kind of latter half of last year that they kicked off, but really we’ve been talking about dealing with the flow on from those all year.
Arj
The AI one was the big kind of explosion for me. Like it kind of dominated everything. But it was surprising in a way to me, but not surprising that it actually held up steam, like it held its steam throughout the year. Like, you know, we, in the year before that, we’ve gotten used to talking about like tech fanfare and hype and things like crypto and web 3.0 that just faded away, but AI kind of held the course for the whole year.
And in a weird way, I feel like in a constructive way, I actually think it went places that were useful and where we are is somewhere useful.
Jordan
Yeah. I think we had, so we did 11 episodes on AI over the course of the year. I went back and counted.
Arj
11 out of, so 45 in total. Basically a quarter. Yeah.
Jordan
Yeah. So about a quarter of our episodes were about AI. And I think one of the things we had observed over the course of the year is just that I feel like we’re getting better as a society, as a kind of set of policy people as well at thinking about these new technologies.
Like the discussion went straight to what are the impacts? What are the second order risks? What are the harms, who are the winners, who are the losers, how does this affect power relationships, how does this affect monopolies and competition and all of that? We went quite quickly from chatbots to some pretty sophisticated conversations about how are we going to deal with these problems from a regulatory or an organisational point of view.
I think it was two weeks ago now. We’re talking about, you know, the US executive order, EU AI Act, international agreements, like actually getting to grips with AI risks has moved quite quickly, which has been surprising and gratifying, I think.
Arj
Yeah, like I feel like the wow factor around like, oh, there’s a chatbot, there’s a thing that’s sentient talking to me, that kind of vision of what AI was as a capability like that, it felt like we got better at Being really granular in defining the different kinds of AI, there’s the chatbots, there’s the like large language models that, you know, write articles or whatever. And then, you know, and like, there was a better conversation happening, even within businesses, you kind of see them talking about like which actual version of AI and what’s it for, but then, yeah, like you said, to immediately front end it with the safety conversation was, was good.
It was interesting to me, like one of the reflections I had was like how many times I saw references to social media and like, you know, we don’t want to do what happened last time with social media. You know, it was five or six years before we thought about regulating and now it’s too late and you know, these harms are so embedded in society. And so that, that was interesting. And yeah, I think that was reflected in like every government around the world, including ours kind of thinking about, you know, how do we, what should we do to regulate?
Jordan
Yeah, for sure. I think we’ve got a little way to go still about just understanding the technology and frankly, how useful it is. One of the things that people said a year ago or so about ChatGPT are, you know, there’s this hallucination problem, but we’ll solve that. And that in particular is like, we’re a year down the track and there is no apparent solution in sight. These things still make stuff up.
Arj
But I do have a positive story for you around hallucination. 2023 word of the year for Cambridge dictionary. Hallucination. They added to the definition of hallucination to talk about the fact that it includes AI just making stuff up. I don’t know if that’s, I mean, it’s clearly not solving the problem, but at least defining it, literally defining it in the dictionary.
That’s something.
Jordan
Yeah, and I’ll stay off my high horse. I’ll not go into a rant about personifying and anthropomorphizing these things. It’s not a hallucination. Anyway, let’s not get into that. So yeah, AI, great thing this year. It’s been dominated our discussions, dominated public discussion about tech risk. Do we have any predictions on that?
My spicy prediction, I don’t know if this is true, but my gut sense is that I think a lot of the hype is going to wear off and a lot of the kind of enthusiasm for some of these chatbot tools, we’re going to become more and more aware of their limitations and the tech promises that happen, they’re like, oh, don’t worry, version two will fix the hallucinations, version two will fix that, or this, the other will emerge to be kind of not true and we’ll get a much better sense of what they are actually used for, that kind of trough of disillusionment, right?
The hype’s going to wear off and we’re going to get a more clear-eyed view of what they are and aren’t useful for. And while they are a remarkable technology, blowing apart the Turing test, convincing engagement with a computer is a remarkable technology. It isn’t a solution to everything. They still can’t drive cars. They still can’t give effective, reliable advice. They still can’t, you know, and there’s no pathway to that in the near future. And I think people are going to kind of start recognize that the hype is going to wear off and we’re going to have a bit more of a mature conversation about what they’re actually good for. It’s already starting, I think.
Arj
Yeah, I don’t have a prediction, but maybe two observations is that one is, um, We’ve obviously talked about the kind of legislative regulatory landscape and the you know, EU AI Act just went through the trial log or whatever it’s called through the parliament, the EU parliament, but behind the scenes within companies, just the development and maturing of AI governance as a field and a profession. We haven’t necessarily talked about that a lot, but there’s been a lot of energy going into that and a lot of definition into like that profession. And I said, I think that’s going to do a lot for just kind of cooling the temperature and just making it a more of a practical, like how do we use these technologies? How do we dehype it and make it safe?
And then the other, I think the other thing just to put it in context is like, it was everywhere this year. Like AI was everywhere. Sam Altman was everywhere and he still fell short on winning time person of the year to Taylor Swift. So you put it in context, you know, the, the world order is still it should be.
Jordan
I love that. I love that. Sometimes it’s easy to lose track. We focus on tech, news and policy and stuff. You’ve got to remember that we’re operating in our little bubble and Taylor is still queen.
Arj
Taylor is still reigning supreme.
Jordan
Yep. The other real theme that has been on my mind all year is privacy act reform. For me, that’s in a little bit in the disappointed kind of column that there has been, we’ve got slow progress. We had the attorney general’s department finally completing their report in the first half of the year, and we had a government response to that report, which we’ve talked about on the podge. I think that was our most listened to episode this year, actually, on the Privacy Act review.
So it’s there, it’s creeping along, but a lot of the proposals are just accepted in principle. And
Honestly, I have only a marginally better idea now what regulation is going to look like than I did at the start of the year, despite all of that development and discussion and government positions. It’s still not totally clear if all of the key details, if they’re actually going to get legislated.
And so that’s a bit of a frustration, if I’m honest. We’re trying to plan with clients. I’m trying to understand what future privacy in Australia and yeah, not a lot of progress there.
Arj
Yeah, I’m like you, I’m still unsure what to think of this. And for some reason, when I was thinking about it, I was thinking about this like analogy of a pie that I heard this year, someone asked a question like, which is the best part of the pie? Is it the crust or the filling? I don’t know if you’ve heard this before, but it’s like, it’s a contentious question because like the crust is like the most interesting, crispy, flaky, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, yeah, people like the crust, but then the filling is actually the most nutritious, uh, part and it’s the bit that fills you up. And so, you know, there’s this debate over which is actually better.
And I feel like the government response was like, we all got very excited because it’s finally like at that ministerial level government response saying, you know, we’re responding to all of the many, many cycles of reviews. And here’s our response. And we, we obviously had that episode, which had the most listens this year because it was juicy. It was like the government saying, you know, here we are, but does it actually fill me up?
You know, like, is that the best part? Because we need, we need the legislation. We need commitments to see things. And I don’t know if it’s the pessimist in me, but, um, yeah, I’m not sitting particularly well with it at the moment because, you know, there are some caveats on the scope of change that phrasing agreed in principle. What does that mean?
And then, you know, there’s that political context that is very important, which is, you know, like this government, this labor government is the only government in a long time that has actually signaled it will do anything, but it’s kind of struggling along and you know, there’s, you know, post kind of voice referendum and it costs a living and polls and all of that. It’s got to marshal up the resources and the political will from somewhere.
And I just, I was just also reflecting on like, I feel like since the government made its response I’ve seen at least three or four like urgent calls for the government to act on reform. And it’s really weird to see that. Like, it’s like, that’s, you know, if we were holding up, you know, the responses, finally it’s here, but then we’ve seen like open letters, academics, researchers, advocates, um, I was just reading the human rights commission has written a piece calling for, you know, the urgency of reform. And I’m like, why at the end of the year where we had this response, are we like, does it feel like we’re still sort of unsure and uncertain.
So I don’t know, I’m going to say it’s the pessimist in me. And you know, the commitment to legislate something in 2024 will materialise and will be, will be happy, but, um, geez, it’s hard not to sort of be a pessimist.
Jordan
It’s a weird situation that you’re describing, right? That like, we’ve got a government report that says we should make these reforms. We’ve got a government that in principle agrees with those reforms. And yet most of the pro-privacy advocates are sitting here feeling the need to continue to agitate because they’re concerned that this stuff will get dropped by the wayside.
One thing I’ve really enjoyed about this year is watching some of that great advocacy actually, that like there’s been some really excellent work that we’ve talked about that, you know, human, I mean, it’s not really advocacy, but Human Technology Institute at UTS has done some great work about facial recognition and AI governance that we’ve talked about on the podcast. Digital Rights Watch has done some great work around real estate agents and the need for privacy reform. Their Choice has done some great stuff about facial recognition in stores and in stadiums. It’s gotten some incredible traction.
A lot of that work has really gotten really great mainstream traction that’s been really great to see really important privacy issues kind of getting out in front of mainstream audiences. So that’s been, that’s my kind of attempt at a positive spin on the, you know, slightly gloomy situation that you just described.
Arj
No, I actually look, as you say that, I think, I think that’s great because one of the, we had a conversation earlier in the year about Max Shrems, we had an episode about the impact he’s had. And one of the thoughts I had on the back of that conversation was, you advocacy and for driving change, you know, in kind of in terms of data protection regulation in the EU.
And, you know, and there’s rulings named after him that have led to, you know, improvements in the data protection regulatory landscape. And you know, wondering like, where is the max trims of Australia? What does the advocacy community look like? And you’re right, that that community has kind of become clear and started to particularly have a voice this year. So yeah, yeah, I like that.
Jordan
Yeah, I think that community’s really been coming into its own in Australia and getting a lot more traction. So I’m excited to see what next year holds there.
Arj
What does next year hold? What are you looking to?
Jordan
I’m looking forward to more podcasts, honestly. We’ve covered, like in prepping for this, I went through, I’m pivoting your question to something retrospective, sorry. But just going through the episodes we did this year.
Like the range of topics that we’ve gone through has been really fun from web scraping cars, social license, digital identity, creepy test, budget analyses, maxrams, GDPR, all of this diverse range of topics. So it’s just been fun kind of picking them apart with you. And related to that more recently, we have been getting some of our other colleagues while you were on leave. So like Tessa and Brett on new voices into this conversation has been really exciting. So I think for, what am I looking forward to? I’m looking forward to more of that. I’m looking forward to getting some of those activists’ voices that we’re talking about on the pod. I’m looking forward to broadening our conversation about the Australian tech policy landscape and learning more, exploring more issues.
Arj
Yeah. It remains terrifying to have to commit to living out your imposter syndrome for one hour or for 20 minutes every week. Um, that, that will never go away, but it is fun to kind of, you know, learn and break down these issues in real time with you and yeah, I agree with you. Like it’s nice to, it’s been nice to kind of have some of those additional voices come onto the podcast.
Like it’s one of those interesting things. I think data protection, privacy, cyber security. Increasing governance, like people come at them from different places. You know, like we, it’s quite a diverse field of advocates from kind of, you know, you come from a rights background, an activist background, a legal background, a technology background, a comms background, and like everyone’s got a different take on it. And so it’s really interesting when that kind of rubs against each other. So yeah, I’m interested to do more of that.
And I think in a similar vein, like one of the key things I’m looking forward to seeing more of is like this sort of theme of kind of convergence that you mentioned at the top playing out. And I’m interested to see what happens in 24, like Angeline Falk, the commissioner, the OAIC, sorry, the Australian information and privacy commissioner talked about, you know, one of her kind of speeches late in the year, talked about privacy being at the heart of this sort of cyber strategy that the government has to be, you know, the most secure nation and trying to really reemphasize that they’re connected.
And we’re seeing that in the AI space, like a lot of this AI governance stuff is building off privacy. So, and then there’s kind of like digital identity now making moves and we’re seeing legislation being passed and it’s trying to pull in kind of objectives and security and privacy. So it feels like, like you said at the start, like there’s a bit of that coming together, so I’d like to see how that kind of continues to evolve next year as well.
Jordan
Yeah. Convergence is a great one.
And you didn’t say, I mean, Angeline Falk. Australian Privacy and Information Commissioner and friend of the podcast, I think is important there.
Arj
That’s why I was stumbling over it because I knew it was such a long title, just trying to get it out and then I was just stumbling all over it.
Jordan
It is a long title. I mean, that was just before we wrapped, that was a real, just reflecting on having her on the podcast and some of the other guests, honestly, that you’ve interviewed, that Jonathan’s interviewed, has been pretty wild as well. This little project that we started coming out of lockdowns, like chatting to each other has kind of grown into something where you know the Australian Privacy Commission is interested in sitting down and having a chat. So yeah, crazy days.
Arj
So yeah, let’s march on to 2024.
Jordan
But before we go, we’ve got a couple asks.
Arj
Couple asks. I mean, we don’t normally do this and that’s probably our own failing because I think you’ve got to be good at talking up what you do. But we would like to do a bit of a plug and a promo, say if you do enjoy listening, it would be really meaningful to us if you could recommend it to a friend or if you find us on LinkedIn or send us a message to say you listen, we’re always happy to hear that people are interested, that they’re listening and you know, yeah, as I said, if you can share it with a friend.
Jordan
Apparently five star reviews are good too. I have no idea how any of that works, but you know, review us on your podcast app of choice.
Arj
Yep, yep. And the other one is there’ll be a link in the show notes to a survey if you’d like to share your thoughts about the podcast and ideas for what you’d like us to talk about next year. There’ll be a survey that allows you to…
Jordan
Or just to say hi, you know, say hi to…
Arj
Or just say hi. Yeah, well, it’s true. I mean, it’s always nice to know who’s listening. Yeah.
Jordan
And then on that, we’re going to be taking a break after this episode. So this is getting published while on the 19th.
And then we’re going to be off until the 16th of Jan, will be the next app. So we’re taking a bit of a summer break and we hope you do too. And have a good one and talk to you next year.
Arj
I’ll talk to you next year. Have a great break. Thank you for a fun year of chatting
Jordan
For the 1000 odd minutes of podcast we’ve done together this year. Yeah. Wild. That’s one. All right. Have a good one.
Arj
See you next year.
Jordan
See ya.
Arj
Bye.
