Rain Barrel Labs

🔥 Grants for social innovation and high-growth tech ventures! 💡 Aussie Innovators—this is your moment! From scaling up to solving social challenges, here are 7 more fantastic grants to help fuel your journey: Optus Future Makers Program 🌱 Up to $300,000 in funding and mentorship for tech startups solving social challenges. A perfect match for your mission! Google.org Impact Challenge Australia 🌍 Up to $1 million in grants for nonprofits and social enterprises using tech to solve complex social issues! Macquarie Group Foundation Social Innovation Award 🌟 An annual award of $100,000 for outstanding social innovations. Open to both for-profit and non-profit organisations. AMP’s Tomorrow Fund 🌠 Grants ranging from $5,000 to $100,000 for individuals with innovative ideas. Tech and innovation are welcome! Advance Queensland Ignite+ 🚀 Tailored support for high-growth potential businesses. Open until February 11, 2025. 👉 At Hello World AI, we specialise in helping startups like yours develop your technology and secure the funding you need to scale and succeed. Reach out for expert support! #TechGrants #SocialInnovation #Startups #Queensland #AI #Entrepreneurs #FemaleFounders #BusinessGrowth #HelloWorldAI

Queensland is Australia's most disaster-prone state, and with this knowledge comes a commitment from the Queensland Government to having strong plans and clear guidance to help Queenslanders prepare. As Tropical Cyclone Alfred is expected to move towards the coast in the coming days, Queenslanders are reminded to stay informed and prepare: 🔦 find guidance on getting prepared for cyclones and storm surges at www.getready.qld.gov.au 🌧️ subscribe to weather updates from the Bureau of Meteorology weather app http://www.bom.gov.au/ 💡 know your closest sandbag collection locations for flood prone areas https://lnkd.in/gePejkbD 📲 download the Emergency+ App at www.emergencyplus.com.au. This mobile phone app pinpoints the caller’s location with GPS coordinates to provide to Triple Zero call-takers during an emergency. #BeHere4Qld #TCAlfred #DisasterSupport #BeTheDifference

"This is the first International AI Safety Report. Following an interim publication in May 2024, a diverse group of 96 Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts contributed to this first full report, including an international Expert Advisory Panel nominated by 30 countries, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the European Union (EU), and the United Nations (UN). The report aims to provide scientific information that will support informed policymaking. It does not recommend specific policies. ● The report is the work of independent experts. Led by the Chair, the independent experts writing this report collectively had full discretion over its content. ● While this report is concerned with AI risks and AI safety, AI also offers many potential benefits for people, businesses, and society. There are many types of AI, each with different benefits and risks. Most of the time, in most applications, AI helps individuals and organisations be more effective. But people around the world will only be able to fully enjoy AI’s many potential benefits safely if its risks are appropriately managed. This report focuses on identifying these risks and evaluating methods for mitigating them. It does not aim to comprehensively assess all possible societal impacts of AI, including its many potential benefits. ● The focus of the report is general-purpose AI. The report restricts its focus to a type of AI that has advanced particularly rapidly in recent years, and whose associated risks have been less studied and understood: general-purpose AI, or AI that can perform a wide variety of tasks. The analysis in this report focuses on the most advanced general-purpose AI systems at the time of writing, as well as future systems that might be even more capable. ● The report summarises the scientific evidence on three core questions: What can general-purpose AI do? What are risks associated with general-purpose AI? And what mitigation techniques are there against these risks? ● The stakes are high. We, the experts contributing to this report, continue to disagree on several questions, minor and major, around general-purpose AI capabilities, risks, and risk mitigations. But we consider this report essential for improving our collective understanding of this technology and its potential risks. We hope that the report will help the international community to move towards greater consensus about general-purpose AI and mitigate its risks more effectively, so that people can safely experience its many potential benefits. The stakes are high. We look forward to continuing this effort." Great work from Yoshua Bengio and a large team of experts. Also, I am very proud and motivated to see the MIT AI Risk Repository being cited in such an important paper.

We are grappling with understanding the societal impact of technological innovation. As generative AI usage grows, it appears to be rapidly supplanting the World Wide Web's traditional role as a marketing and publishing platform. This shift raises concerns about the diminishing monetary value of original content creation in favor of freely generated, derivative content. You can read more about this point here: https://lnkd.in/gHf_JPqf More troubling is how this AI-generated content often perpetuates and amplifies the hallucinations, misrepresentations, and biases inherent in both the underlying technology platforms and the AI models themselves. Recent research suggests that reliance on generative AI may actually impede the development of essential critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gbfpdzsK These trends prompt crucial questions about the future of education and how we should approach technology platforms for information gathering and knowledge sharing. Especially in a time where the biggest tech platforms are deciding to move forward without accountability to facts and fact-checking. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/g2HrkRm5 #AIEthics #Education #DigitalLiteracy