From the trickery of the chess-playing Mechanical Turk to the mimicry of ChatGPT, machines have been fooling us for centuries – but now more than ever before, it feels easy to believe in their sentience. 

To launch Griffith Review 80: Creation Stories, Toby Walsh, Chief Scientist at UNSW.ai, talks to Antony Funnell about what our increasingly complex interactions with AI mean for the future of humanity. In celebration of Griffith Review’s eightieth edition and twentieth anniversary, Creation Stories travels through time and space to explore the many tales of who we are and where we might be headed.

About the panel

Toby Walsh is Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales and Data61, and adjunct professor at QUT. He was named by the media as one of the ‘rock stars’ of Australia’s digital revolution. Professor Walsh is a strong advocate for limits to ensure AI is used to improve our lives. He has been a leading voice in the discussion about autonomous weapons (aka ‘killer robots’), speaking at the UN in New York and Geneva on the topic. He is a Fellow of the Australia Academy of Science and recipient of the NSW Premier’s Prize for Excellence in Engineering and ICT. He appears regularly on TV and radio, and has authored three books: Machines Behaving Badly: The Morality of AI, 2062: The World That AI Made and It’s Alive!: Artificial Intelligence from the Logic Piano to Killer Robots.

Antony Funnell is a Walkley Award-winning journalist, broadcaster and author. He presents the weekly podcast/radio program Future Tense on ABC Radio National. Antony is co-author of the satirical novel So Far, So Good. His non-fiction work The Future and Related Nonsense was published by HarperCollins. He has contributed to numerous publications including Griffith Review, Australian House & Garden and the anthology Best Australian Science Writing.