BTN Newsbreak 12/08/2025
A new report has found that schools should be using more AI in their classrooms to ease the work load on teachers. Yep, according to a new report by the Productivity Commission, AI could help free teachers from admin work and give them more time with their students. They're recommending that teachers use AI to create lesson plans, mark homework and give real-time feedback on assessments. The idea is to help lighten their workload, boost student outcomes and reduce the gap between new and experienced teachers. Right now, each state and territory has a different approach when it comes to AI, some outright banning it in schools, while others have already begun developing AI tools for teachers to use. The report also wants the federal government to create a national platform of materials for teachers and support them in learning how to use AI tools effectively.
WASHINGTON POLICE
US President Donald Trump has announced his government is taking control of the local police force in Washington DC. He's expected to deploy at least 800 National Guard troops to the US capital, saying it's a necessary move to stop crime and move homeless people out of the city. But while it's in the president's power to do this for 30 days, if he believes there's an emergency, the announcement has sparked protests by people who believe this is an unnecessary overuse of power, pointing to the fact that crime rates in Washington DC are actually the lowest they've been in 30 years.
MUSIC KIDS
Now to central Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, where students have been making music to preserve local language through song. What you're listening to is Lok Lok Mah Burarr. It's a Dreamtime story about why goannas have patterns on their backs and lizards don't. It's one of many songs that have come out of the Bulman School in central Arnhem Land, where students have been recording songs using the two languages of the area, Dalabon and Rembarrnga. Many of the songs are creation stories about animals, like Malnganarra, which tells of how bats take shelter inside the rainbow serpent, or Strongbala Wei, which is about the responsibility of caring for country. And at his years National Indigenous Media Awards, the school added another trophy to it collection after nabbing the Community Clip of the Year for their song Crocodile Style
CAPTAIN AUSTRALIA
First up, to a man dressed up as a superhero who's running a big lap around Australia. Captain Australia is raising money for children's cancer research, and has so far raised more than a hundred thousand bucks.
EIFFEL TOWER MAN
Now to France, where this grandpa is building a replica of the Eiffel tower in his yard. Its taken him and his grandson 8 years to get to this point. And later this month, a big crane will help them lift the final pieces into place. The replica is one tenth the size of the original, and will stand at about 30 meters tall.
BEE SNIFFING DOG
And finally, to a sniffer dog in the US. Maple is her name, and she used to work for the local police force, but now she's being trained to detect certain honey bee diseases. But they don't make bee suits for dogs, so she had to get one specially made for her.
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News.com.au
2 hours ago
- News.com.au
Secret Woolies feature solves common supermarket problem
A little-known feature in the Woolworths app is quietly transforming the weekly grocery shop for those who have discovered it. For anyone who's ever wandered the aisles searching for a niche cooking ingredient or mustered the courage to ask a store assistant where the pickles are, the supermarket's 'Product Finder' feature is the tool you've always wished existed. It's understood to have launched in October last year and is now available in 300 Woolworths stores across New South Wales. It allows shoppers to locate items instantly, without needing to rely on the laminated aisle directories. How it works By switching the app into 'in-store' mode and setting your local Woolworths as your preferred store, you'll then see the Product Finder tile on the home screen. Customers can then either type or speak the name of the item they're looking for. The app will then display the product, along with related items, and tell you exactly which aisle it's in. If you're happy to share your phone's location, there's an even more advanced option. The app can show you a detailed map of the store and function like GPS, guiding you straight to the product you're after. It even integrates with Olive, the supermarket's AI voice assistant, so shoppers can verbally ask where to find something without touching their screen. Woolworths say it's a tool built for convenience A Woolworths spokesperson told that, 'Over one million Woolworths customers now rely on the Woolworths app as an essential part of their shopping routine as they use it to manage their shop both online and in our aisles. 'Once users have set their preferred store in the app, customers can access their local store floor plan to easily navigate and find their favourite products more quickly and conveniently,' they said. Shoppers respond Reactions from shoppers have been mixed. Some say they'll stick to asking a store employee for help or referring to the printed directories at the end of the aisles. However, others have praised the feature as a 'game-changer' that'll 'help cut down time and mental effort' while shopping. 'There's nothing worse than pacing up and down the aisles looking for something specific, only to realise it's back in the first aisle I looked in,' one person told 'I sometimes use the laminated cards, but they don't have everything on them and only show the basics, so this will be great,' another said. A third shopper added: 'I would definitely use it in a store I am not familiar with. How handy'. And a busy mum-of-three said it would be 'perfect for those moments when you're rushing into a store for a specific item – something you don't usually cook with or a new product'. Given that Woolworths stocks an average of 20,000 products in each store, this new feature is sure to become popular.
The Age
3 hours ago
- The Age
Friend or foe? The AI bloodletting has begun in Australia
Telstra boss Vicki Brady, though less vocal on the company's AI developments at this week's results, was similarly forthright at its recent strategy day. 'We see lots of potential across those areas … customer engagement, how we operate and manage our network, how we develop software and manage our IT environment, how it supports back of office for us where you tend to have manual processes.' While it sounds like a great opportunity for Australian business, it sounds rather alarming when viewed from the vantage of their employees. After all, both are relatively low-growth businesses investing heavily in AI. Will this investment pay off by boosting worker productivity, or by replacing them? 'CBA publicly preaches productivity and innovation while quietly eroding local jobs. This hypocrisy cannot go unchallenged,' Finance Sector Union national secretary Julia Angrisano said after the bank's record $10 billion profit this week. The Australian Council of Trade Unions has demanded that employers guarantee workers' job security before introducing artificial intelligence to protect against jobs carnage. Local academics used research by the International Labour Organisation to translate its findings on AI job losses to Australia. They came up with a startling forecast of Australia's AI future in 2050: 32 per cent of current jobs in Australia could be done by AI. 'But that doesn't mean 32 per cent of people will lose their jobs overnight,' Victoria University academics Janine Dixon and James Lennox said in a report posted to The Conversation last week. 'It will take time for AI capabilities to be installed, giving people time to train for alternative careers. Much of the impact is likely to be years away.' This timeframe gives AI a lot of time to move beyond relatively low-level tasks, like replacing basic call centre work, to replacing white-collar jobs – like the software developers who make it. Loading So what does Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes think the impact will be of the AI transformation on the company he built alongside Farquhar? It is in a frenzy of AI upgrades of its own products and surely looking at the productivity benefits. Cannon-Brookes sees a bright future despite AI's coding adeptness. It appears that the famously prescient 2011 claim by US billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen that 'software is eating the world' still holds. 'Do I think there will be far less developers in the world five years from now? No, I don't think so,' Cannon-Brookes told investors on the company's earnings conference call last week. 'And yes, we're still hiring lots of engineers and developers with the growth of the business.' Cannon-Brookes' argument is simple: the world will need far more software and AI means it will be cheaper and easier to extend its development beyond corporate tech teams to the actual business itself. 'Whether they're in finance or HR or marketing, there's going to be a lot more people creating software,' he says. Mind you, Atlassian has a lot riding on this version of the future. Its business is literally built on managing the workflows and projects for this sort of development. The Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes fortunes will rapidly dwindle if this development can be done by an AI bot instead of teams of employees. But even AI's transformation of low-level customer work – like call centres – is not necessarily seen as a bad thing for local jobs. It could represent a boon for our country, says KPMG's chief digital officer John Munnelly. 'A lot of the stuff that AI is improving is the tasks we used to offshore, like call centre work,' he says. 'There's a really great opportunity for the Australian economy with AI' KPMG's chief digital officer John Munnelly The productivity dividend that Farquhar mentioned could actually make a lot more of this work viable here. 'There's a really great opportunity for the Australian economy with AI,' Munnelly says. Loading But the interesting stuff is already happening further up the wage chain – like KPMG's new AI tax tool that allows its executives to vastly accelerate the delivery of first-draft advice to clients. 'What used to take us two weeks to go and prepare – if a client's in the middle of a deal – now we can literally get it out the door in a day,' Munnelly says. It was left to KPMG chief executive Andrew Yates to address the conundrum this poses. What will this KPMG employee do with the nine days that would have previously been spent on this work? 'I think our current hypothesis is that what we do will change. But AI and the technology we've got will generate so much more data that our work will change from collating that data to really assessing, analysing, presenting, interpreting much more data than is currently available,' he says. 'There will be a real need for that insight and technical understanding of all the data that's produced.' As for the analysts trying to make sense of the AI talk which is starting to creep into earnings season speeches and rising costs, there is a more prosaic question. 'Companies have been keen to point out their investments in AI, but when will we see it translate to the bottom line?' asked UBS strategist Richard Schellback. Even Comyn, who packed more than a dozen AI references into his introduction to the bank's full-year results, came up with a cautious answer. He foresees a more effective workforce, producing higher quality work with both revenue and cost out opportunities. But he does not expect this to come easily. 'You can imagine that there are some much more efficient ways of delivering some of the things we currently do. But I do think that's going to take some time, like some years to work through some of the accuracy and quality that's required.'
Sydney Morning Herald
3 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Friend or foe? The AI bloodletting has begun in Australia
Telstra boss Vicki Brady, though less vocal on the company's AI developments at this week's results, was similarly forthright at its recent strategy day. 'We see lots of potential across those areas … customer engagement, how we operate and manage our network, how we develop software and manage our IT environment, how it supports back of office for us where you tend to have manual processes.' While it sounds like a great opportunity for Australian business, it sounds rather alarming when viewed from the vantage of their employees. After all, both are relatively low-growth businesses investing heavily in AI. Will this investment pay off by boosting worker productivity, or by replacing them? 'CBA publicly preaches productivity and innovation while quietly eroding local jobs. This hypocrisy cannot go unchallenged,' Finance Sector Union national secretary Julia Angrisano said after the bank's record $10 billion profit this week. The Australian Council of Trade Unions has demanded that employers guarantee workers' job security before introducing artificial intelligence to protect against jobs carnage. Local academics used research by the International Labour Organisation to translate its findings on AI job losses to Australia. They came up with a startling forecast of Australia's AI future in 2050: 32 per cent of current jobs in Australia could be done by AI. 'But that doesn't mean 32 per cent of people will lose their jobs overnight,' Victoria University academics Janine Dixon and James Lennox said in a report posted to The Conversation last week. 'It will take time for AI capabilities to be installed, giving people time to train for alternative careers. Much of the impact is likely to be years away.' This timeframe gives AI a lot of time to move beyond relatively low-level tasks, like replacing basic call centre work, to replacing white-collar jobs – like the software developers who make it. Loading So what does Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes think the impact will be of the AI transformation on the company he built alongside Farquhar? It is in a frenzy of AI upgrades of its own products and surely looking at the productivity benefits. Cannon-Brookes sees a bright future despite AI's coding adeptness. It appears that the famously prescient 2011 claim by US billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen that 'software is eating the world' still holds. 'Do I think there will be far less developers in the world five years from now? No, I don't think so,' Cannon-Brookes told investors on the company's earnings conference call last week. 'And yes, we're still hiring lots of engineers and developers with the growth of the business.' Cannon-Brookes' argument is simple: the world will need far more software and AI means it will be cheaper and easier to extend its development beyond corporate tech teams to the actual business itself. 'Whether they're in finance or HR or marketing, there's going to be a lot more people creating software,' he says. Mind you, Atlassian has a lot riding on this version of the future. Its business is literally built on managing the workflows and projects for this sort of development. The Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes fortunes will rapidly dwindle if this development can be done by an AI bot instead of teams of employees. But even AI's transformation of low-level customer work – like call centres – is not necessarily seen as a bad thing for local jobs. It could represent a boon for our country, says KPMG's chief digital officer John Munnelly. 'A lot of the stuff that AI is improving is the tasks we used to offshore, like call centre work,' he says. 'There's a really great opportunity for the Australian economy with AI' KPMG's chief digital officer John Munnelly The productivity dividend that Farquhar mentioned could actually make a lot more of this work viable here. 'There's a really great opportunity for the Australian economy with AI,' Munnelly says. Loading But the interesting stuff is already happening further up the wage chain – like KPMG's new AI tax tool that allows its executives to vastly accelerate the delivery of first-draft advice to clients. 'What used to take us two weeks to go and prepare – if a client's in the middle of a deal – now we can literally get it out the door in a day,' Munnelly says. It was left to KPMG chief executive Andrew Yates to address the conundrum this poses. What will this KPMG employee do with the nine days that would have previously been spent on this work? 'I think our current hypothesis is that what we do will change. But AI and the technology we've got will generate so much more data that our work will change from collating that data to really assessing, analysing, presenting, interpreting much more data than is currently available,' he says. 'There will be a real need for that insight and technical understanding of all the data that's produced.' As for the analysts trying to make sense of the AI talk which is starting to creep into earnings season speeches and rising costs, there is a more prosaic question. 'Companies have been keen to point out their investments in AI, but when will we see it translate to the bottom line?' asked UBS strategist Richard Schellback. Even Comyn, who packed more than a dozen AI references into his introduction to the bank's full-year results, came up with a cautious answer. He foresees a more effective workforce, producing higher quality work with both revenue and cost out opportunities. But he does not expect this to come easily. 'You can imagine that there are some much more efficient ways of delivering some of the things we currently do. But I do think that's going to take some time, like some years to work through some of the accuracy and quality that's required.'
