Kate Emery: Forget about Apple, put your money in dumbphones
Zoe Foster-Blake does it.
A Melbourne private school wants its parents to do it.
And, if you have young kids, you probably want to do it too.
The wisdom of withholding smartphones from kids is a conversation that started when Apple's Steve Jobs and his black turtleneck stood onstage and claimed to have reinvented the phone. (Silicon Valley has more hot air than Marble Bar but Jobs was right.)
In 2007 — a simpler time when Microsoft had just released Windows Vista, Serbia's Marija Serifovic had just won Eurovision and Donald Trump's worst crime was assumed to be his cameo in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York — the effect of smartphones on young brains was not known.
Nearly 20 years later, smartphones and kids is a subject so fraught with judgment, fear and guilt that bringing it up with other parents is akin to trying to discuss peace in the Middle East with your supermarket checkout operator. At a certain point, you have to mutter some version of 'it's all very complicated isn't it?' and move onto something less controversial, like footy teams or religion.
If you bought a lot of Apple shares in 2007 you're not reading this: The West Australian doesn't deliver to your private island.
But if journalism was a career that delivered riches, in 2025 I'd be investing mine in dumbphone technology.
Maybe this is why I'm no longer this paper's stockmarket reporter.
But maybe it's also because the trend of withholding smartphones from children is going mainstream, particularly as generation Z — our first digital natives — become parents themselves. (My sincere apologies if that last sentence caused you to spontaneously age like that nazi at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.)
There's a reason tech titans like Zuckerburg, Bill Gates and Jobs — graduates of the same Do As I Say Not As I Do school that is a proud alma mater to so many of Australia's political class — restricted their kids' access to smartphones.
They were the first to figure out a crackpipe might be the safer option.
The rest of us are just catching up.
Last week a Melbourne private school rolled out a new program to convince parents to withhold smartphones until at least Year 7.
More countries are banning smartphones during school hours, as Australian public schools largely already do.
The market for dumbphones — phones without internet access — is tipped by Statista to be worth $16 billion this year.
School bans are helpful but no panacea.
In news to disappoint every mum or dad hoping to outsource their parenting, research suggests school phone bans alone do not correlate with better student mental health or grades. The study's authors suggested kids attending schools with bans may simply make up for lost time.
In other words — and academics are advised to look away as I attempt to condense a 15-page study into one sentence — banning smartphones from schools does bugger all if students are greeted at the school gates by the loving embrace of their iPhone.
That's where parents come in and people like Foster-Blake, arguably best-known to women for her beauty empire and to men for her equally famous husband, Hamish Blake, are being increasingly public about their decision not to give their kids smartphones.
The struggle is real, as I was reminded in a very minor way at a recent birthday party.
Having played party games for hours, my eight-year-old and her friends were flopped in the grass listening to music (courtesy of some parents' phones). When my daughter asked to borrow mine, I was conflicted: the optics bugged me but it seemed harmless.
Then she sealed her fate by adding: 'Everyone else has one!'
With those four words, my personal Rubicon appeared and I saw a glimpse of her tween and teen years: hand over the phone now and she'd surely be on Only Fans by age 14.
'Not today,' I said.
Later, as I mentally awarded myself the 2025 Tough Love Mother of The Year Trophy, I looked across the park at my daughter. Happily ensconced with her mates she had her father's smartphone in one hand and was having, it must be said, a blast.
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Sydney Morning Herald
an hour ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
From ‘delete anxiety' to data breaches: The perils of all those photos on our phones
There's a golden moment in home-tech operations when all is proceeding as the nerdy guy on YouTube said it would. You begin to congratulate yourself on your own digital genius. And so it was recently when I had to migrate all my data from my old Android phone to a new iPhone. I was going it alone, my young relatives having resigned from the family help desk on the grounds of overwork, incredulity and Gen Z exasperation. How hard could it be? I downloaded the necessary app and began. Soon the two phones lay side by side like unwilling transplant patients and the mysterious mating ritual got underway. Reassuring messages appeared. Before too long, it promised a mere 'two minutes remaining'. Then it stayed at that two-minute message. Hour after hour, as if they'd become star-crossed lovers who couldn't bear to part. Twelve hours later, same message. For all its dispassionate digital cool, technology excels in veiled threats. Like Mrs Danvers but with a smiley face stuck on, it pretends to be a neutral servant at our beck and call, while all the while fuelling anxiety and gaslighting us. All those impossible, ambiguous choices that begin in a robotically neutral tone and end with an air of doom. 'You have used 95 per cent of storage. DATA MAY NOT BE SAVED.' 'Are you SURE you want to Force Quit? You may lose changes.' Or this, recently: 'The page or resource you are looking for has expired – IT IS GONE AND WILL NOT BE COMING BACK.' I can't help thinking wistfully of someone like Jane Austen having a little engraving of herself or her sister on a mantelpiece, and that was it for self-representation. Now, still stuck at 'two minutes' after two days, the phone taunted me. 'Yes, you CAN cancel the transfer now,' it suggested silkily, '… BUT YOU MAY LOSE ALL DATA.' In the end, I had to cancel the transfer, even if it felt like pushing the big red nuclear button. It had lied, anyway. I hadn't lost all data. (Only the data I hadn't backed up when it had told me to.) What I hadn't counted on was the possibility of ending up with too much. I found I now had duplicated Google and Apple versions of all my photos on the new phone. I chose one to kill off. A new message, like a hostage note but more neatly typed, popped up: '3453 photos will be permanently deleted. Proceed?' Slaves to the image Why did I feel such dread? Photos have always been precious to us, but I can't help feeling we've become enslaved to them, burdened by them, thanks to smartphones. Like overworked alchemists, always on duty, smartphones toil away to turn the present into a pixelated version we'll come to think of as the past. If we don't have the photos, even the rubbish ones, does our past still exist? Almost everyone has more recorded images of their lives, and the lives of strangers, not to mention dogs, cats and feet, than ever before. Some five billion photos are taken daily, 4 per cent of which are selfies. I can't help thinking wistfully of someone like Jane Austen having a little engraving of herself or her sister on a mantelpiece, and that was it for self-representation. Even in the 1990s, people only kept a few albums. Despite apps like Snapchat, rejoicing in ephemera, we're still stowing away staggering amounts. Back in 2015, the average user had about 630 photos stored on their smartphone, according to GigaOM, a tech analyst firm. Now that number is closer to 2000. According to a UK survey, Millennials have the most, averaging about 2500. A conservative estimate, I'd say. A quick poll among my Millennial relatives reveals one, with a toddler, who admits to 17,500 on hers, and a 34-year-old with 10,000 on his phone and 40,000 on his computer. They can't be all treasured memories, can they? In the US, according to Photutorial, the average citizen takes about 20 photos a day. In Asia and Oceania, it's 15. In Africa, it's eight. In Europe, it's a modest five. T.J. Thomson, a senior lecturer in visual communication at RMIT University, says those numbers tend to reflect, among other things, whether a society champions individualism over collectivism or, to put it another way, feels their acai bowl is worth photographing with a view to sharing. Smartphones are useful and fun, of course, but these cold-eyed Boswells relentlessly recording our lives also foster a kind of existential panic. People talk about suffering 'smartphone storage anxiety' – the fear of running out of storage space and losing photos. There are now terms like 'photo overwhelm', 'delete anxiety', 'photo management anxiety' and 'image overload'. Tech companies happily fan those worries, or possibly invent them, to sell storage plans and curation apps. AI is stepping up to help sort the mess and there are outfits like The Photo Managers, a professional association of personal photo organisers. 'How can I stop feeling depressed after losing six years' worth of photos from my phone?' asked one desperate man on a forum. 'The thought of losing all my memories of the last six years is crippling my day‑to-day activities and motivation.' Everyone on the forum felt it was understandable the man couldn't get on with his real life while his digital life was missing in action. They agreed his memories lay in his phone. No one mentioned possible back-up storage in head, heart or imagination. Loading 'People are using photos to help experience things,' says Thomson. 'The camera is constantly tethered to our hands, so you're always looking through a screen to experience or document reality.' Hence the luminous sea of smartphones at any event, indifferently capturing wedding vows, Easter parades, the Grand Canyon, Taylor Swift, lunch, or a whale breaching. Looking through a screen 'flattens experience', as Thomson puts it, takes us out of the moment, in order to create evidence the moment happened. We'll check it out later, reduced to a manageable rectangle. It's as if the task of memory, of feeling even, has been outsourced to the phone. I try hard not to be one of those people because it's embarrassingly herd-like, not to mention annoying to the person behind you, but FOMO tends to defeat virtue. What if I don't have my own picture of the Mona Lisa? Thomson's research found most images stay stored – almost 94 per cent – and only 6.5 per cent are shared, despite the vast uploads to social media every day. But whichever way you cut it, we have a ridiculous amount. 'It's similar to hoarding … People would rather pay an extra $2 for a little bit more [phone storage] space than do the work.' Andrew J. Campbell, professor of cyberpsychology, University of Sydney I put a radical idea to Andrew J. Campbell, professor of cyberpsychology at the University of Sydney: would it help if people suddenly got a message saying they had to reduce their photos to, say, 100? 'Sheesh, that would hurt a lot of people,' he says, quietly horrified. 'They'd have two responses. First, 'You're asking me to make time to curate at a level I've never decided to' and secondly, 'You're asking me to choose things I don't yet know if I want to get rid of.' So, part of it is a chore and part of it is, 'It means something to me even if I haven't looked at them.' It's similar to hoarding behaviour. Google has statistics on this. People would rather pay an extra $2 for a little bit more space than do the work.' I agree that the weeding task is overwhelming. Enthusiasm wanes after about two minutes. So the images sit gathering digital dust, burning through storage energy, waiting to be selected as a 'precious moment', briefly recalled and forgotten again. There may be conscientious types who go through them regularly and reminisce. I suspect most of us rarely look at their photos because they're so chaotically stored and, dare I say, meaningless. Autumn leaves! A potato that looks like a dolphin! Six of us, backlit, somewhere, with regrettable haircuts. Campbell agrees our first instinct has become to capture the moment, any moment. 'Our brains are wired now to record. This fear of 'did I take enough?' or 'I need to take a photo' is so strongly habituated that people automatically get their phone out when something has happened. I saw a car accident recently, a rear-ender, and immediately both drivers got out with their phones up. Not for a second did anyone think, 'I need to talk to that person, see if they're OK.' It was straight to video – 'I need evidence, I need to get this documented'.' People, especially older generations, are increasingly using their phone in those functional ways, says Thomson. They'll take photos of dumped rubbish, a stabbing, a fire, damage to a rental car or a parcel, receipts, documents like a licence or passport. But the ID stuff concerns experts like Campbell. He's 'a bit thingy' about not putting data like that in the cloud. If he has to take a photo of ID for a visa, for example, he switches off the cloud, puts in a hard drive, takes the photo and then deletes it. (I would, too, if I knew how.) Loading 'I work in cyber-security as well,' he says, 'and we're very worried about the amount of visual data captured and held by host companies, and how it may be used for marketing purposes or to manipulate you. All that visual data is kept and analysed now by AI. How do we know it remains ours? Many tech companies have access to our photos, of course, because they're on their servers. They say they won't reproduce a photo outright, but it's not clear how these massive data sets are protected from data mining and breaches. There are anecdotal reports online of people's photos being leaked and used in advertising campaigns. 'We're also seeing a mash-up used as information to feed data models. For example, last year a Human Rights Watch report warned photos of Australian children have been used without consent to train AI models that generate images.' Yet here we are, snapping away and storing every day, blissfully unaware of what we've revealed. As Campbell says, 'People often forget they've dumped all that data on a server they don't own.' So, what to do when that chilling message flashed up on my phone, along the lines of: '3453 photos will be permanently deleted. Proceed with your crazy death wish?' I pressed yes. I felt sick. Then, a day later, I felt lighter, released, as if Marie Kondo had dropped by. Of course, they weren't permanently deleted. Like a salesman who hopes to clinch the deal on a second visit, the phone told me I still had 30 days before they would be gone forever. I got a message offering a storage plan.
The Age
an hour ago
- The Age
From ‘delete anxiety' to data breaches: The perils of all those photos on our phones
There's a golden moment in home-tech operations when all is proceeding as the nerdy guy on YouTube said it would. You begin to congratulate yourself on your own digital genius. And so it was recently when I had to migrate all my data from my old Android phone to a new iPhone. I was going it alone, my young relatives having resigned from the family help desk on the grounds of overwork, incredulity and Gen Z exasperation. How hard could it be? I downloaded the necessary app and began. Soon the two phones lay side by side like unwilling transplant patients and the mysterious mating ritual got underway. Reassuring messages appeared. Before too long, it promised a mere 'two minutes remaining'. Then it stayed at that two-minute message. Hour after hour, as if they'd become star-crossed lovers who couldn't bear to part. Twelve hours later, same message. For all its dispassionate digital cool, technology excels in veiled threats. Like Mrs Danvers but with a smiley face stuck on, it pretends to be a neutral servant at our beck and call, while all the while fuelling anxiety and gaslighting us. All those impossible, ambiguous choices that begin in a robotically neutral tone and end with an air of doom. 'You have used 95 per cent of storage. DATA MAY NOT BE SAVED.' 'Are you SURE you want to Force Quit? You may lose changes.' Or this, recently: 'The page or resource you are looking for has expired – IT IS GONE AND WILL NOT BE COMING BACK.' I can't help thinking wistfully of someone like Jane Austen having a little engraving of herself or her sister on a mantelpiece, and that was it for self-representation. Now, still stuck at 'two minutes' after two days, the phone taunted me. 'Yes, you CAN cancel the transfer now,' it suggested silkily, '… BUT YOU MAY LOSE ALL DATA.' In the end, I had to cancel the transfer, even if it felt like pushing the big red nuclear button. It had lied, anyway. I hadn't lost all data. (Only the data I hadn't backed up when it had told me to.) What I hadn't counted on was the possibility of ending up with too much. I found I now had duplicated Google and Apple versions of all my photos on the new phone. I chose one to kill off. A new message, like a hostage note but more neatly typed, popped up: '3453 photos will be permanently deleted. Proceed?' Slaves to the image Why did I feel such dread? Photos have always been precious to us, but I can't help feeling we've become enslaved to them, burdened by them, thanks to smartphones. Like overworked alchemists, always on duty, smartphones toil away to turn the present into a pixelated version we'll come to think of as the past. If we don't have the photos, even the rubbish ones, does our past still exist? Almost everyone has more recorded images of their lives, and the lives of strangers, not to mention dogs, cats and feet, than ever before. Some five billion photos are taken daily, 4 per cent of which are selfies. I can't help thinking wistfully of someone like Jane Austen having a little engraving of herself or her sister on a mantelpiece, and that was it for self-representation. Even in the 1990s, people only kept a few albums. Despite apps like Snapchat, rejoicing in ephemera, we're still stowing away staggering amounts. Back in 2015, the average user had about 630 photos stored on their smartphone, according to GigaOM, a tech analyst firm. Now that number is closer to 2000. According to a UK survey, Millennials have the most, averaging about 2500. A conservative estimate, I'd say. A quick poll among my Millennial relatives reveals one, with a toddler, who admits to 17,500 on hers, and a 34-year-old with 10,000 on his phone and 40,000 on his computer. They can't be all treasured memories, can they? In the US, according to Photutorial, the average citizen takes about 20 photos a day. In Asia and Oceania, it's 15. In Africa, it's eight. In Europe, it's a modest five. T.J. Thomson, a senior lecturer in visual communication at RMIT University, says those numbers tend to reflect, among other things, whether a society champions individualism over collectivism or, to put it another way, feels their acai bowl is worth photographing with a view to sharing. Smartphones are useful and fun, of course, but these cold-eyed Boswells relentlessly recording our lives also foster a kind of existential panic. People talk about suffering 'smartphone storage anxiety' – the fear of running out of storage space and losing photos. There are now terms like 'photo overwhelm', 'delete anxiety', 'photo management anxiety' and 'image overload'. Tech companies happily fan those worries, or possibly invent them, to sell storage plans and curation apps. AI is stepping up to help sort the mess and there are outfits like The Photo Managers, a professional association of personal photo organisers. 'How can I stop feeling depressed after losing six years' worth of photos from my phone?' asked one desperate man on a forum. 'The thought of losing all my memories of the last six years is crippling my day‑to-day activities and motivation.' Everyone on the forum felt it was understandable the man couldn't get on with his real life while his digital life was missing in action. They agreed his memories lay in his phone. No one mentioned possible back-up storage in head, heart or imagination. Loading 'People are using photos to help experience things,' says Thomson. 'The camera is constantly tethered to our hands, so you're always looking through a screen to experience or document reality.' Hence the luminous sea of smartphones at any event, indifferently capturing wedding vows, Easter parades, the Grand Canyon, Taylor Swift, lunch, or a whale breaching. Looking through a screen 'flattens experience', as Thomson puts it, takes us out of the moment, in order to create evidence the moment happened. We'll check it out later, reduced to a manageable rectangle. It's as if the task of memory, of feeling even, has been outsourced to the phone. I try hard not to be one of those people because it's embarrassingly herd-like, not to mention annoying to the person behind you, but FOMO tends to defeat virtue. What if I don't have my own picture of the Mona Lisa? Thomson's research found most images stay stored – almost 94 per cent – and only 6.5 per cent are shared, despite the vast uploads to social media every day. But whichever way you cut it, we have a ridiculous amount. 'It's similar to hoarding … People would rather pay an extra $2 for a little bit more [phone storage] space than do the work.' Andrew J. Campbell, professor of cyberpsychology, University of Sydney I put a radical idea to Andrew J. Campbell, professor of cyberpsychology at the University of Sydney: would it help if people suddenly got a message saying they had to reduce their photos to, say, 100? 'Sheesh, that would hurt a lot of people,' he says, quietly horrified. 'They'd have two responses. First, 'You're asking me to make time to curate at a level I've never decided to' and secondly, 'You're asking me to choose things I don't yet know if I want to get rid of.' So, part of it is a chore and part of it is, 'It means something to me even if I haven't looked at them.' It's similar to hoarding behaviour. Google has statistics on this. People would rather pay an extra $2 for a little bit more space than do the work.' I agree that the weeding task is overwhelming. Enthusiasm wanes after about two minutes. So the images sit gathering digital dust, burning through storage energy, waiting to be selected as a 'precious moment', briefly recalled and forgotten again. There may be conscientious types who go through them regularly and reminisce. I suspect most of us rarely look at their photos because they're so chaotically stored and, dare I say, meaningless. Autumn leaves! A potato that looks like a dolphin! Six of us, backlit, somewhere, with regrettable haircuts. Campbell agrees our first instinct has become to capture the moment, any moment. 'Our brains are wired now to record. This fear of 'did I take enough?' or 'I need to take a photo' is so strongly habituated that people automatically get their phone out when something has happened. I saw a car accident recently, a rear-ender, and immediately both drivers got out with their phones up. Not for a second did anyone think, 'I need to talk to that person, see if they're OK.' It was straight to video – 'I need evidence, I need to get this documented'.' People, especially older generations, are increasingly using their phone in those functional ways, says Thomson. They'll take photos of dumped rubbish, a stabbing, a fire, damage to a rental car or a parcel, receipts, documents like a licence or passport. But the ID stuff concerns experts like Campbell. He's 'a bit thingy' about not putting data like that in the cloud. If he has to take a photo of ID for a visa, for example, he switches off the cloud, puts in a hard drive, takes the photo and then deletes it. (I would, too, if I knew how.) Loading 'I work in cyber-security as well,' he says, 'and we're very worried about the amount of visual data captured and held by host companies, and how it may be used for marketing purposes or to manipulate you. All that visual data is kept and analysed now by AI. How do we know it remains ours? Many tech companies have access to our photos, of course, because they're on their servers. They say they won't reproduce a photo outright, but it's not clear how these massive data sets are protected from data mining and breaches. There are anecdotal reports online of people's photos being leaked and used in advertising campaigns. 'We're also seeing a mash-up used as information to feed data models. For example, last year a Human Rights Watch report warned photos of Australian children have been used without consent to train AI models that generate images.' Yet here we are, snapping away and storing every day, blissfully unaware of what we've revealed. As Campbell says, 'People often forget they've dumped all that data on a server they don't own.' So, what to do when that chilling message flashed up on my phone, along the lines of: '3453 photos will be permanently deleted. Proceed with your crazy death wish?' I pressed yes. I felt sick. Then, a day later, I felt lighter, released, as if Marie Kondo had dropped by. Of course, they weren't permanently deleted. Like a salesman who hopes to clinch the deal on a second visit, the phone told me I still had 30 days before they would be gone forever. I got a message offering a storage plan.
The Advertiser
8 hours ago
- The Advertiser
AI training pilot to upskill more than 30,000 teachers
More than 30,000 teachers could be trained in the use of artificial intelligence technology as part of a year-long trial spearheaded by US tech giant Microsoft and Australia's Future Skills Organisation. The firms will announce the pilot program in Canberra on Wednesday in collaboration with 13 industry and education partners, and in a move designed to promote wider adoption of AI technology. The plan to boost Australia's AI use comes a day after the Productivity Commission recommended schools deploy the technology for both teachers and students, and after it named AI adoption as one of its priorities for the year. Artificial intelligence technology is also expected to be a major focus at the federal government's Economic Reform Roundtable next week. The Future Skills Organisation's pilot program, called Skills Accelerator AI, is designed to reach more than 30,000 vocational education and training staff, as well as the students they teach. Equipping educators with AI tools and teaching them how to use them would be vital to boosting productivity and creating new industries, Future Skills Organisation chief executive Patrick Kidd said. "We did some research across the finance, tech and business sectors and found that more than 60 per cent of people are using AI but less than 30 per cent have been trained in it," he told AAP. "(AI is) happening, it's here, now we need to make sure that we're starting to put some shape around it so that we're doing it responsibly, safely and effectively." The training program will include access to a wide range of AI tools, he said, as well as mentors and examples of effective AI use from industry partners. Groups involved in the program include TAFE in Queensland and South Australia, the Swinburne University of Technology, the Commonwealth Bank, Business NSW, and the National AI Centre. Targeting teachers in the first phase of the pilot would help to spread AI education widely, Microsoft Asia small and medium enterprise corporate vice-president Rachel Bondi said, and to encourage its responsible use. "(AI is) reshaping every job and we have to make the training available to all roles and all jobs and not just in certain sectors that may have received that type of training before," she said. "We're hoping that this collaboration of everybody coming together is really going to pave a way for a national approach." Federal Skills and Training Minister Andrew Giles said he hoped the partnership would help to create "practical, scalable training" for Australian workers. In a report issued before the government's economic roundtable, the Productivity Commission recommended state and territory governments train teachers in the use of AI technology and that schools use the tools to assist students and teachers. AI technology is expected to be a major focus at the three-day event in Canberra after the Tech Council predicted it could add $115 billion a year to Australia's economy by 2030. More than 30,000 teachers could be trained in the use of artificial intelligence technology as part of a year-long trial spearheaded by US tech giant Microsoft and Australia's Future Skills Organisation. The firms will announce the pilot program in Canberra on Wednesday in collaboration with 13 industry and education partners, and in a move designed to promote wider adoption of AI technology. The plan to boost Australia's AI use comes a day after the Productivity Commission recommended schools deploy the technology for both teachers and students, and after it named AI adoption as one of its priorities for the year. Artificial intelligence technology is also expected to be a major focus at the federal government's Economic Reform Roundtable next week. The Future Skills Organisation's pilot program, called Skills Accelerator AI, is designed to reach more than 30,000 vocational education and training staff, as well as the students they teach. Equipping educators with AI tools and teaching them how to use them would be vital to boosting productivity and creating new industries, Future Skills Organisation chief executive Patrick Kidd said. "We did some research across the finance, tech and business sectors and found that more than 60 per cent of people are using AI but less than 30 per cent have been trained in it," he told AAP. "(AI is) happening, it's here, now we need to make sure that we're starting to put some shape around it so that we're doing it responsibly, safely and effectively." The training program will include access to a wide range of AI tools, he said, as well as mentors and examples of effective AI use from industry partners. Groups involved in the program include TAFE in Queensland and South Australia, the Swinburne University of Technology, the Commonwealth Bank, Business NSW, and the National AI Centre. Targeting teachers in the first phase of the pilot would help to spread AI education widely, Microsoft Asia small and medium enterprise corporate vice-president Rachel Bondi said, and to encourage its responsible use. "(AI is) reshaping every job and we have to make the training available to all roles and all jobs and not just in certain sectors that may have received that type of training before," she said. "We're hoping that this collaboration of everybody coming together is really going to pave a way for a national approach." Federal Skills and Training Minister Andrew Giles said he hoped the partnership would help to create "practical, scalable training" for Australian workers. In a report issued before the government's economic roundtable, the Productivity Commission recommended state and territory governments train teachers in the use of AI technology and that schools use the tools to assist students and teachers. AI technology is expected to be a major focus at the three-day event in Canberra after the Tech Council predicted it could add $115 billion a year to Australia's economy by 2030. More than 30,000 teachers could be trained in the use of artificial intelligence technology as part of a year-long trial spearheaded by US tech giant Microsoft and Australia's Future Skills Organisation. The firms will announce the pilot program in Canberra on Wednesday in collaboration with 13 industry and education partners, and in a move designed to promote wider adoption of AI technology. The plan to boost Australia's AI use comes a day after the Productivity Commission recommended schools deploy the technology for both teachers and students, and after it named AI adoption as one of its priorities for the year. Artificial intelligence technology is also expected to be a major focus at the federal government's Economic Reform Roundtable next week. The Future Skills Organisation's pilot program, called Skills Accelerator AI, is designed to reach more than 30,000 vocational education and training staff, as well as the students they teach. Equipping educators with AI tools and teaching them how to use them would be vital to boosting productivity and creating new industries, Future Skills Organisation chief executive Patrick Kidd said. "We did some research across the finance, tech and business sectors and found that more than 60 per cent of people are using AI but less than 30 per cent have been trained in it," he told AAP. "(AI is) happening, it's here, now we need to make sure that we're starting to put some shape around it so that we're doing it responsibly, safely and effectively." The training program will include access to a wide range of AI tools, he said, as well as mentors and examples of effective AI use from industry partners. Groups involved in the program include TAFE in Queensland and South Australia, the Swinburne University of Technology, the Commonwealth Bank, Business NSW, and the National AI Centre. Targeting teachers in the first phase of the pilot would help to spread AI education widely, Microsoft Asia small and medium enterprise corporate vice-president Rachel Bondi said, and to encourage its responsible use. "(AI is) reshaping every job and we have to make the training available to all roles and all jobs and not just in certain sectors that may have received that type of training before," she said. "We're hoping that this collaboration of everybody coming together is really going to pave a way for a national approach." Federal Skills and Training Minister Andrew Giles said he hoped the partnership would help to create "practical, scalable training" for Australian workers. In a report issued before the government's economic roundtable, the Productivity Commission recommended state and territory governments train teachers in the use of AI technology and that schools use the tools to assist students and teachers. AI technology is expected to be a major focus at the three-day event in Canberra after the Tech Council predicted it could add $115 billion a year to Australia's economy by 2030. More than 30,000 teachers could be trained in the use of artificial intelligence technology as part of a year-long trial spearheaded by US tech giant Microsoft and Australia's Future Skills Organisation. The firms will announce the pilot program in Canberra on Wednesday in collaboration with 13 industry and education partners, and in a move designed to promote wider adoption of AI technology. The plan to boost Australia's AI use comes a day after the Productivity Commission recommended schools deploy the technology for both teachers and students, and after it named AI adoption as one of its priorities for the year. Artificial intelligence technology is also expected to be a major focus at the federal government's Economic Reform Roundtable next week. The Future Skills Organisation's pilot program, called Skills Accelerator AI, is designed to reach more than 30,000 vocational education and training staff, as well as the students they teach. Equipping educators with AI tools and teaching them how to use them would be vital to boosting productivity and creating new industries, Future Skills Organisation chief executive Patrick Kidd said. "We did some research across the finance, tech and business sectors and found that more than 60 per cent of people are using AI but less than 30 per cent have been trained in it," he told AAP. "(AI is) happening, it's here, now we need to make sure that we're starting to put some shape around it so that we're doing it responsibly, safely and effectively." The training program will include access to a wide range of AI tools, he said, as well as mentors and examples of effective AI use from industry partners. Groups involved in the program include TAFE in Queensland and South Australia, the Swinburne University of Technology, the Commonwealth Bank, Business NSW, and the National AI Centre. Targeting teachers in the first phase of the pilot would help to spread AI education widely, Microsoft Asia small and medium enterprise corporate vice-president Rachel Bondi said, and to encourage its responsible use. "(AI is) reshaping every job and we have to make the training available to all roles and all jobs and not just in certain sectors that may have received that type of training before," she said. "We're hoping that this collaboration of everybody coming together is really going to pave a way for a national approach." Federal Skills and Training Minister Andrew Giles said he hoped the partnership would help to create "practical, scalable training" for Australian workers. In a report issued before the government's economic roundtable, the Productivity Commission recommended state and territory governments train teachers in the use of AI technology and that schools use the tools to assist students and teachers. AI technology is expected to be a major focus at the three-day event in Canberra after the Tech Council predicted it could add $115 billion a year to Australia's economy by 2030.
