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Mixtape is a new Australian-made video game set in the 90s featuring burned CDs, shopping trolley rides and feelings of adolescent freedom. Nostalgia for that era is trending, so what is it about those years that makes us feel so fond? And are we remembering it correctly?
Plus, AI is making the internet sound like one not-quite-real person. What are the new indicators of AI writing, and is a 'human in the loop' still enough to keep it all in check?
Finally, Polymarket. It's been blacklisted by Australian regulators, but companies in the United States are treating it like serious financial infrastructure.
GUESTS:
Mark Serrels – Editorial Director at Choice and co-founder of Continue Magazine.
Phoebe Toups-Dougas – Associate Professor of Human-Centred Computing in the Exertion Games Lab at Monash University, AKA Trans Gamer Professor.
NB: Phoebe mentioned a book. It's called Disabling Intelligences: Legacies of Eugenics and How We Are Wrong About AI.
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This episode was produced on the lands of the Burramattagal people.
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Get in touch:
We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]
Find all the episodes of Download This Show on the ABC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts.

Book publishers including Hachette and Macmillan have filed a lawsuit in New York against Mark Zuckerberg and Meta. They're trying to stop AI companies from allegedly illegally copying millions of books and articles from piracy sites to train their models. How likely is it that the case will succeed?
Locally, there's a NSW inquiry into data centres. Can a state government actually force some of the world's most powerful companies to clean up their act?
And hard drive shortages driven by AI is making archiving the internet more expensive.
If you want to learn more about whether Australia has the energy and water to power the Australian AI data centre boom, we covered it on an earlier Download This Show episode.
GUESTS:
Meg Coffey – founder of State of Social.
Leigh Stark – the editor of Pickr.com.au.
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This episode was produced on the lands of the Burramattagal people.
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Get in touch:
We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]
Find all the episodes of Download This Show on the ABC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts.

xAI's Elon Musk and Open AI’s Sam Altman were once on the same team, united by the belief that artificial intelligence was too important to be left to profit motives. Now, Musk is accusing Open AI of betraying its original charitable mission. How genuine are his motivations?
Plus, Microsoft Xbox chief Phil Spencer has retired. Who will replace him, and how will it change how we game?
GUEST: 
Alice Clarke – freelance tech and games journalist, co-author of Press Any Button on Substack.
David Braue – technology journalist at Information Age. 
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This episode was produced on the lands of the Burramattagal people.
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Get in touch:
We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]
Find all the episodes of Download This Show on the ABC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts.

Imagine an AI model built on everything you know, how you communicate, how you reason, how you write, trained to act and respond like you so thoroughly that it can attend meetings, answer questions, and handle tasks on your behalf while you do something else entirely. This reality isn't as far away as you might think. Mark Zuckerberg is already making one.
Plus, Apple has a new CEO. What does the handover mean for the future of Apple?
And, Meta has installed tracking software to harvest their employee's computer activity to train AI. What protections do workers have against it?
GUESTS:
Georgia Dixon -- Managing Editor at Whistleout Singapore.
Chris Berg -- Professor of Economics at RMIT.
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This episode was produced on the lands of the Burramattagal people.
------------
Get in touch:
We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]
Find all the episodes of Download This Show on the ABC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts.

Anthropic claims its latest AI model, Claude Mythos, is “too dangerous” to release given its exceptional cyber hacking capabilities. Is it all a PR stunt, or is this a genuine threat? 
Plus, the FBI extracted messages from the secure messaging app Signal after exploiting a loophole involving iPhone notification databases. So how secure is Signal? And how might the loophole be closed? 
Meanwhile, several major global news sites are blocking the Wayback Machine, an initiative of the Internet Archive. What threat does it pose to these sites? And what will it cost us to lose this information preservation? 
GUESTS:
Justin Hendry -- technology and business reporter and editor of Innovation Aus. 
Fergus Halliday -- technology & gaming journalist at reviews.org Australia
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This episode was produced on the lands of the Burramattagal people.
------------
Get in touch:
We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]
Find all the episodes of Download This Show on the ABC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts.