The most important tech stories of 2024, and also my favorite ones
Today, we’re looking at a few themes that will influence the online and offline worlds in 2025
What will Australian media look like in 2025? Messy and imperfect but with glimmers of hope
Amid the rise of AI and the dominance of news ‘influencers’ comes a minor miracle – a government media policy addressing the crisis in journalism
UK data regulator criticises Google for ‘irresponsible’ ad tracking change
ICO says allowing advertisers to track digital ‘fingerprints’ will undermine consumers’ control over information
Will the future of transportation be robotaxis – or your own self-driving car?
GM is shutting down its robotaxi business, Tesla is creating one of its own – what does the future hold for self-driving?
UK proposes letting tech firms use copyrighted work to train AI
Consultation suggests opt-out scheme for creatives who don’t want their work used by Google, OpenAI and others
Social media platforms have work to do to comply with Online Safety Act, says Ofcom
Regulator publishes codes of practice and warns that largest sites are not following many of its measures
Meta, TikTok and Google will be forced to pay for Australian news. What does it mean for you?
The Albanese government has unveiled a charge to incentivise digital platforms to pay publishers. Here’s what you need to know
AI-fuelled cloud storage boom threatens Irish climate targets, report warns
Friends of the Earth calls on government to rein in growth of big tech centres for fear they could increase fossil fuel use
From Julian Assange to that demure meme, here’s what Australians searched on Google in 2024
While the US election topped our Googling this year, Raygun and the CrowdStrike outage were also high on the trends list
Google unveils ‘mindboggling’ quantum computing chip
Chip takes minutes to complete tasks that would otherwise take 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years
Celebrity scam ads still targeting Australians despite tech giants’ crackdowns
Scammers developing sophisticated new methods will always find loopholes to access lucrative markets, experts say
Google DeepMind predicts weather more accurately than leading system
AI program GenCast performed better than ENS forecast at predicting day-to-day weather and paths of hurricanes and cyclones
‘It feels like a startup energy’: Google’s UK boss on the advent of AI
While the tech giant wrestles with an US antitrust case, its managing director in London is pushing hard on the commercial possibilities of artificial intelligence
When will Democrats finally realize that big tech is not an ally?
Tech titans, and big business in general, are not reliable partners against Trumpism. Progressives need to accept this
Amazon, Google and Meta are ‘pillaging culture, data and creativity’ to train AI, Australian inquiry finds
Among the report’s 13 recommendations is the call for the introduction of standalone AI legislation and protections for creative workers