Measuring the Machine
Australia’s National AI Plan is a solid start. There’s strength in the focus on opportunity, capability, and skills. We absolutely should be aiming high. But opportunity can’t be the whole story.If we want AI that’s safe, sovereign, and built for Continue Reading …
During my PhD, I spent years trying to articulate that relational quality. The result was a framework I call The Prompted Universe. It treats generative AI not as a container of stored meaning but as a probabilistic landscape where meaning is enacted through interaction. Continue Reading …
How to use GenAI responsibly: not as a ghostwriter, but as an Epistemic Partner Rebecca L. Johnson, The University of Sydney 8th July 2025 Using Generative AI (GenAI) as a work partner is no longer some distant horizon, it is Continue Reading …
A bizarre White House tariff formula may have come straight from ChatGPT. What does this mean for AI safety and democratic accountability? Penguins, Tariffs, and a Data-Driven Mystery On 3rd April 2025—Trump’s so called “Liberation Day”—the penguins of Heard Island Continue Reading …
What does this mean for users and democracy? On May 22, 2024, OpenAI announced a significant partnership with NewsCorp. There are significant risks here to consider. We have also seen the launch of Google’s Gemini-powered search; how does this relate Continue Reading …
Eleanor Campbell, Federal Political Reporter from the Canberra Press Gallery, quoted me several times in a piece featured in News.Com.Au “. . . With Australia heading into its own national vote by May 2025, the likelihood of deep fake content Continue Reading …
SCIMEX comments made on 6th Nov 2023. The full quote is here: SCIMEX Australia ‘at the back of the pack’ in regulating AI, experts warn The Guardian, Josh Taylor, 7th Nov 2023 (and other various outlets across the UK). Australia lags Continue Reading …
Using GPT4-Turbo to summarise AI governance docs and generate advice to the Australian government. Continue Reading …
Today, the Australian Science Media Centre released some short remarks from Australian AI experts on the Bletchley Declaration last week. Including a short remark from yours truly (though I’m not quite yet a Dr as the webpage indicates – a Continue Reading …
Course: “Leading in a Post Crisis World” Series: Research Connections I was delighted to be invited to give a lecture to postgraduate students undertaking a relatively new business leadership course. The course providers (including Craig Gilliver and Adrian Harms) have Continue Reading …
This sneak peek of some of my doctoral work simply explains the conceptual ideas beyond one of the chapters of my PhD thesis. The work looks at how bias can be embedded in evaluations of generative AI systems. I gave Continue Reading …
While AI Constitutions aren’t the ultimate solution for the GenAI value alignment problem, they make another valuable contribution to our evolving AI ethics toolkits. Nevertheless, as with all AI Ethics methods, we need to be mindful that there is no Continue Reading …
In June 2023, I was honoured to be included on one of the expert panels consulting to Australia’s Commissioner for eSafety on the topic of Generative AI (GenAI). In addition to a virtual panel, I was able to provide the Continue Reading …
I was invited to speak on a great panel on 14th July 2023 as part of a symposium run by the ADM+S Centre. The moderator was the wonderful Prof Flora Salim! The topic was “Modelling the Complex World with Generative Continue Reading …
19th July 2023 On the 19th July I convened a follow-up to the April ChatLLM23 conference. ChatRegs was a thinktank of invited experts that workshopped the questions in the Australian Government Feedback portal (closes today) on the future of AI Continue Reading …
Originally posted on Linkedin July 2023 I was reading about early cave painting yesterday with thoughts trundling along the path of “history and philosophy of tech”. Specifically, I was thinking about ancient cave painting and ho it relates to GenAI Continue Reading …
This is what it said (copied exactly the way it came out). “Language models, like other AI systems, cannot have sentience because they lack several key attributes that characterize sentient beings, such as consciousness, feelings, and self-awareness. Here, I’ll explain Continue Reading …
Originally posted on Linkedin June 2023 in response to a post by Martin Ciupa. Predictive processing is the idea that our brains are constantly predicting what is about to happen around us, and using that to construct models of reality. Continue Reading …
Originally from a Linkedin post as well as some of my comments on Andrew Ng’s post. I am not an x-risker. I am a generative AI ethicist that talks about grounded things like centralisation of power, normative biases in evaluation Continue Reading …
I originally posted this article on Medium. Reflections from a Generative AI Ethicist at The University of Sydney.Two reports released on 1st June 2023 signal the Australian government is prepared to take AI risks seriously, but it needs to respond Continue Reading …