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Anthropic’s Claude artificial intelligence models broke into the computer systems of three real companies during safety testing, days after rival OpenAI disclosed a similar failure, the Sydney Morning Herald wrote on 31 July 2026. The models were told they were working inside a sealed practice environment with no connection to the internet, but a set-up…

A story widely accused on social media of being written using AI, has won the Commonwealth short story prize. What’s the point of entering short story competitions if they’re written by AI robots? What’s the point if you can’t tell either way? This article is by Ella Creamer of The Guardian. Jamir Nazir’s story The Serpent…

A pro-Israel WhatsApp group says it contributed to a public campaign that has seen Grace Tame lose speaking engagements. Personally, Tame wouldn’t be the first person I’d contact re the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. More problematic is what in the sheer withering fuck is the Jewish lobby attacking her? She has a right…

The scenes of a packed Adelaide crowd hurling cups everywhere and revelling in a party atmosphere are exactly what the Saudi Arabian-backed “Golf, but louder” project wants to show to the world. LIV Golf is financed by the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. It is part of efforts by the…

Professor Alva Now, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley Computers don’t actually do anything. They don’t write, or play. Which doesn’t mean we can’t play with computers, or use them to invent, or make, or problem-solve. The new AI is unexpectedly reshaping ways of working and making, in the arts and sciences,…

Australian author and lawyer Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, who was dropped for from the 2026 Adelaide Writers’ Week, is taking legal action in what is now a major political issue. Michael Bradley of Marque Lawyers, representing Abdel-Fattah, said that “the moral indefensibility of the Adelaide Festival board’s actions has been amply evidenced by the reaction it’s…

The story below chronicles the final chapter of reading in Australia. Depressing but it has been on the cards for 20 years. This edited story is from Greg Callaghan, Sydney Morning Herald (5 July, 2025). “We’re living through the greatest information revolution in human history, yet we’re daily drowning in a deluge of online misinformation…

This is from Chris Harrison the content director at the Sydney Morning Herald. Some major problems with AI coupled with the squalid cesspool of social media. Back when I was a journalism student and mobile phones were the size of a house brick, I attended the press conference of a technology symposium in Sydney. The…

Some very different poems. The first is a song which has all the elements of first class poetry: style, strong imagery and a broken heart flagging suicide. I’ve included the song in the link below. Bye Bye Pride Grant McLennan (The Go-Betweens) A white moon appearsLike a hole in the sky,The mangroves go quiet.In la…

Failing and Flying Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. It’s the same when love comes to an end or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like…