2026-11-05
Recent public discourse has focussed on the benefits and threat of artificial intelligence (AI), immigration, and the ongoing dilemmas around climate change and energy. This has prompted the following articles to appear in October Green Issue.
We include an article reminding us that AI is just inanimate software and that blame for its “criminal” behaviour should be attributed to the humans responsible for its programming. With a second article proposing how humans can be held accountable for damage caused by runaway AI.
Much of the discussion around immigration boils down to residual racism in Australia, although there is a growing realization that clamping down on migrants would have negative economic outcomes.
As global warming keeps rolling on, soon to be topped up by a strong El Niño, there are increasing concerns about how to keep cool. We include an article with tips on how to do this focussing on the urban setting of Perth metro. The rapid adoption of household solar panels and now batteries in WA is now offering betters ways of reconciling climate with energy demand, but this is an evolving process still in search of optimal pathways. We include an article suggesting a better way to align feed-in-tariffs (FiTs) for household batteries with energy demand.
Our state MLCs have been particularly prolific in their activities over the previous two months and we include reports from Sophie McNeill, Tim Clifford and Jess Beckerling.
Header Photo: A symbolic representation of AI, generated using DALL-E 3, with the prompt: "draw an icon, white background, of a human brain made out of printed circuit board". Source: DALL-E 3; Author: JPxG. This file is in the public domain because it is the work of a computer algorithm or artificial intelligence and does not contain sufficient human authorship to support a copyright claim.