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Speaker 1: Ja and Amanda jam Nation.

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Speaker 2: Look, there's so much going on in the science world

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Speaker 2: right now, the takeover of AI, climate change, the real

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Speaker 2: possibility of aliens in our midst Do we have any questions? Well,

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Speaker 2: it's National Science Week and we have astrophysicist, self confessed

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Speaker 2: space nerd, former bachelor Dr Matt Agnu here to answer

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Speaker 2: all these very pressing questions.

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Speaker 1: Hello, Matt, good morning.

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Speaker 3: Good to talk to you again.

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Speaker 1: Mate, it's been a while.

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Speaker 2: It has been a while. Nice to chat with you.

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Speaker 2: Let's start with these alien life forms. We saw the

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Speaker 2: Senate inquiry into this. There now seems to be actual

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Speaker 2: evidence that the government has hidden that there are alien

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Speaker 2: life forms.

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Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. So, firstly, there's no actual evidence.

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Speaker 1: All that's happened in this hearing is someone saying they've

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Speaker 1: either seen something or actually, more commonly, he said that

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Speaker 1: he's interviewed other people who say they've seen something. So

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Speaker 1: there's still several layers removed from anything that's remotely considered evidence.

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Speaker 1: And there's a famous saying by Carl Sagan who said

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Speaker 1: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and there is not extraordinary evidence.

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Speaker 1: There's no evidence, So it still is very much in

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Speaker 1: the realm of you know, I've seen this this kind

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Speaker 1: of My uncle works at Nintendo Energy. But yeah, there's

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Speaker 1: still very little, very little to say or suggest that

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Speaker 1: there is any alien life form.

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Speaker 3: Do you believe in alien life forms? Matt? Do you

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Speaker 3: believe they're out there?

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Speaker 1: I do. I do. I think it would be humorous

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Speaker 1: to think that we're the only life in the universe.

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Speaker 1: The numbers are just absolutely staggering. So the likelihood that

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Speaker 1: we're the only life is pardon the pun, astronomically small.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, I think that the difference whether it's it's

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Speaker 1: just microbial or bacterial or really simplistic life or really

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Speaker 1: intelligent advance civilized life, I think that's the difference, And

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Speaker 1: the latter I think is much less likely, or if

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Speaker 1: it is likely, it is very difficult for the distances

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Speaker 1: to be traveled between not just stars but galaxies, and

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Speaker 1: so we may not ever encounter them.

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Speaker 3: One thing I wanted to ask you about was AI.

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Speaker 4: Everyone's talking about AI and my wife is this belief

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Speaker 4: that AI is going to kill us all.

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Speaker 3: But then on the weekend I was joining to this

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Speaker 3: young fellow. He works for a council and he had

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Speaker 3: a raging hangover.

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Speaker 4: I had to do a presentation, so he used chat

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Speaker 4: GPT and just put it in there for his presentation,

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Speaker 4: and they gave him a standing ovation.

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Speaker 2: But there's more to AI than just chat GPT. Should

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Speaker 2: we be scared, Matt?

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Speaker 1: I think we just want to be considered. I think AI,

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Speaker 1: like any technology, can tremendously enrich our lives and certainly

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Speaker 1: save us a lot of additional In the past, it's

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Speaker 1: been physical labor. Here it can be mental labor, and

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Speaker 1: so it can be really beneficial to us. But there's

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Speaker 1: I guess two things to consider. One is we want

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Speaker 1: to make sure that it augments us rather than replaces us.

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Speaker 1: I think complete replacement obviously opens a real Pandora's box

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Speaker 1: of it existential crises. But the other thing is that

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Speaker 1: AI is susceptible to the same biases that we have

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Speaker 1: in society. And this has been seen where because the

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Speaker 1: training data we feed these algorithms is based on our

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Speaker 1: own society, there's evidence or there's been instances where certain

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Speaker 1: algorithms have been sexist or racist because they've inherited data

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Speaker 1: that has something wrong, some bias, some disproportionate representation of things,

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Speaker 1: and so we end up with these algrhithms that are

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Speaker 1: racist or sexist, or or biggoted it in some other way.

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Speaker 1: And so it can be really great, it can be

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Speaker 1: really beneficial to our lives, but we do need to

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Speaker 1: be careful and we do need to be measured with

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Speaker 1: those kinds of things.

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Speaker 4: And particularly as we head towards a referendum with the

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Speaker 4: yes no vote. And we had the Prime Minister on

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Speaker 4: earlier in the week and he was talking about how

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Speaker 4: the algorithms are affecting that.

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Speaker 2: And I'd seen indigenous face on my socials saying no,

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Speaker 2: and I thought, I wonder what's behind that, And apparently

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Speaker 2: there's a whole stack of AI generated Indigenous faces saying no.

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Speaker 4: That's it.

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Speaker 1: There's a real kind of seeing is not necessarily believing

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Speaker 1: at the moment because the artificial intelligence ability to it's

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Speaker 1: referred to as deep faking, where it can take your

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Speaker 1: face or it can create a new face and can

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Speaker 1: make it say things, and it can mimic both the

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Speaker 1: visual of the face talking but also the audio of

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Speaker 1: the face speaking. So there is problems where misinformation can

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Speaker 1: be generated so rapidly and so accurately to mimic real

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Speaker 1: life that it does raise an issue with misinformation. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean this is an outcome of science, but also

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Speaker 1: highlights why science and a scientific literate population is so important.

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Speaker 3: This is why science is great.

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Speaker 4: Do your research or leave it up to Matt Agnew

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Speaker 4: to do the research.

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Speaker 2: To go into a beauty contest is misinformation?

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Speaker 3: Miss Sash?

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I like it. I like it.

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Speaker 4: There should be some conditions applying here, Matt. It's always

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Speaker 4: great to talk to you. To get involved in National

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Speaker 4: Science Week heads to scienceweek dot net dot Are you

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Speaker 4: talked about Agnew?

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Speaker 3: Thank you for joining us.

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Speaker 1: No, thank you. It's always a pleasure.