How soon will AI become better than us?

October 26, 2024

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 26th October, 2024

Once the preserve of technology geeks, artificial intelligence has gone mainstream resulting in an explosion of digital and virtual capabilities. These range from the helpful personal assistants on our digital devices and the mapping of more than 160,000 new virus species, to troubling “deep fakes” that are impossible to detect with the naked eye.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT has helped democratise AI but raised many questions about the technology’s value and impact. Will it be genuinely transformational and a boon to society as advocates proclaim boosting productivity, creating undreamed of prosperity and liberating us from life’s drudgeries? Or are the naysayers right – that its promise is over-hyped and the risks potentially catastrophic without guardrails and humans in the loop?
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Warnings as Doomsday Clock edges ever closer to midnight

October 1, 2024

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 1st October, 2024

Worried that a nuclear war could pose an existential threat to humankind a group of American researchers, known as the Chicago Atomic Scientists, conceived the idea of a Doomsday Clock in 1947 that would metaphorically measure how close the world is to a global catastrophe.

Many of these scientists had intimate knowledge of the danger of a nuclear war having worked on the development of the Manhattan Project, the top-secret program to make the first atomic bombs during World War II, later popularised in the 2023 film ‘Oppenheimer’.

The clock’s initial setting was 7 minutes to midnight, with midnight representing the moment at which a global catastrophe would occur. In 1991, it was wound back to a reassuring 17 minutes following the signing of the pathbreaking Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the former Soviet Union and the United States when war seemed a distant prospect.
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Bring out the big guns in defence of AUKUS project

August 23, 2024

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 23rd August, 2024

Three years after Scott Morrison announced AUKUS, stunning the nation with its audacity and scope, the passing of two milestones this month served only to raise doubts about the pact’s viability, cost and political longevity as the Biden presidency concludes.

The first milestone was the signing and tabling in federal parliament of a 50-year treaty governing naval nuclear propulsion co-operation central to the ambitious plan to acquire nuclear-powered submarines from the US and Britain. The second was an announcement by the US State Department that Australia, the US and Britain have comparable export control regimes, billed as an important first step in setting the rules of the road for AUKUS implementation.
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Tough on China? Remember Trump only has one true allegiance

August 7, 2024

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 7th August, 2024

The presidential contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris could be the most critical for the US and the world since the 1940 re-election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt decisively altered the outcome of World War 2 in favour of the democracies.

As the polls tighten Harris has a pathway to victory. But the odds still favour Donald Trump despite his crass and counter-productive attacks on Harris’s racial identity. Although his persona is well established – has anyone not heard of the man? – his unique capacity to polarise opinion has blinded many of his critics and admirers to what Trump does, as distinct from what he says.
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Future of war not all drones and AI – Soldiers still matter

May 11, 2024

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 11 May, 2024.

The Gaza conflict is teetering on the brink of a messy and bloody climax. Israel’s decision to seize and bomb the border crossing into the southern city of Rafah, the last redoubt of Hamas, seems like another chapter in the grim annals of war – soldiers slugging it out in grinding, destructive battles that kill thousands of innocent civilians and destroy whole cities.

But a surprising number of decision-makers and military experts believe that wars are being revolutionised by technology, reducing the need for boots on the ground as machines take over in proxy, sanitised contests.
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The Ukraine war is at a crossroads – it’s time Europe stands up

March 19, 2024

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 19 March, 2024.

Europe has underinvested in defence since the end of the ColdWar, free-riding off the US. This is about political will, not capacity.

The war in Ukraine has reached a tipping point. Despite recent tactical gains and successful drone strikes on Russia’s energy infrastructure Kyiv’s prospects look increasingly bleak, not for want of courage or commitment by the undermanned and underarmed Ukrainian armed forces.
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A game of high stakes on the high seas

February 2, 2024

~ Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 2 February, 2024.

Awakened from a long, peace-induced slumber, Western countries are scrambling to address their naval ­deficiencies in the face of China’s unprecedented peacetime naval build-up, Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and the Houthis’ attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.

But they are starting from a long way back.

Australia is no exception. Our navy’s capabilities have deteriorated alarmingly at a time when the need for sea power has never been greater. More on this later.

The Houthis’ targeting of ships that carried nearly 15 per cent of world trade through the Red Sea last year is the latest example of the growing threat to seaborne trade.
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The long fight to disarm Hamas

January 13, 2024

~ Johnathan Spyer. Originally published in The Australian on 13 January, 2024.

‘We’ve been on the mission from the first day. We were mobilised on October 8,” Col. Tal Kuritzky, commander of the Israel Defence Forces’ 5th Infantry Brigade, tells me. “Our task is to make it possible for the residents of the Gaza envelope to return to their homes. We’re creating a safe area along the border to enable their return. And we’ve struck hard at Hamas’s infrastructure.”

We are sitting, a group of journalists and soldiers, in a house in Khirbet Khuzaia, Khan Yunis Governorate, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. It is midday but the house is dark, its electricity long ago cut off. Its prior function seems to have been as a religious centre of some kind. Islamic texts and, improbably, a poster of Palestine Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat are strewn around one of the rooms, amid broken glass.
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‘Axis powers’ a formidable force for evil in 2024

January 9, 2024

~ Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 9 January, 2024.

Looking back on 2023, it’s hard to remember a more volatile year geopolitically. But in worrying echoes of the turbulent 1930s, there are signs that 2024 could be worse as the international order continues to unravel.

On November 1, 1936, Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini gave an impassioned speech to 250,000 fellow Italians. He declared a new friendship with Nazi Germany and a political realignment of the Italian state.

“This Berlin-Rome protocol is not a barrier,” Mussolini said. “It is rather an axis around which all European states animated by a desire for peace may collaborate on troubles.”
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