Tech Talk with Alex Zaharov-Reutt’s special guest today is RMIT Research Fellow, Dr Nataliya Ilyushina.

Dr Natalia Ilyushina is a prominent researcher in the field of economics, with a particular focus on the digital economy, AI, and automated decision-making, holding a PhD in economics and a double degree in accounting and commerce. Details of what we spoke about below, but here’s our radio interview in full!

Radio 2CC‘s Breakfast Host, Stephen Cenatiempo, was this week’s Canberra Weekender host, and together we enjoyed an in-depth and entertaining discussion of the cutting edge questions about AI.

Stephen and Alex spoke with Dr Ilyushina for 10 minutes, with Stephen kicking off with a genuine concern over whether AI was scary and dangerous, and whether it was dumbing down the community, or not.

We discussed whether AI was a copilot, like a junior co-worker or colleague that needed a lot of direction, but which would learn over time and help you to remove the drudgery of repetitive tasks, which would be of great help to many people -without removing their much needed originality.

We then spoke about the Australian Productivity Commission releasing three reports finding that artificial intelligence could significantly boost Australia’s productivity, and the risk of no regulation, over-regulation and giving businesses certainly.

Next we touched on Friday’s news that Financial Services Minister, Stephen Jones, was suggesting changes to the government’s proposed AI legislation to “address potential harms to consumers”, and whether this was anything concrete or just an announcement of further action still to come – as can sometimes be the case with government annoucements.

Given the talk that AI will take people’s jobs, Dr Ilyushina shared her strong views on whether this was really happening, or not, with Stephen noting people in the radio industry were using AI to write ads and do other work, without any kind of sparkling results… so what’s the reality?

In the midst of a really great discussion, we also learned which tools Nataliya uses and why, and discovered that the best place to find out more about Dr Nataliya’s work is at her LinkedIn Page.

So, please listen to the interview above to learn a great deal more!