This Month
No more rip-offs: AI turns everyone into an expert negotiator
When everyone has a genius in their pocket, they will be less vulnerable to mis-selling – benefiting them and improving overall economic efficiency.
October
It took 6 seconds for Musk to say the magic word. It didn’t work
The Tesla chief executive has a message for shareholders: give me my money and my shares, or I won’t build your robot army. It’s a bold way to play his AI bet.
Tesla’s record quarterly revenue tops forecasts
However, profit per share in the third quarter landed at US50¢, which was below analysts’ estimates of US55¢.
Amazon plans to replace more than half a million jobs with robots
Interviews and a cache of internal strategy documents reveal that the e-commerce giant’s executives think it is on the cusp of its next big workplace shift.
OpenAI’s latest ‘breakthrough’ is a sobering reality check
The company’s leading scientists claimed GPT-5 had solved a famous set of math problems. Turned out it had basically “Googled” the answers.
Echoes of lithium boom as the ASX’s rare earth stocks rocket
Fund managers are betting a rally in critical minerals producers is only getting started, despite having lifted some stocks more than 200 per cent this year.
September
A 25-year-old Melburnian now has a $100m robot helper start-up
Female founders are still struggling to receive funding, but Grace Brown’s robotics start-up Andromeda just banked a $23 million series A funding round.
August
The AI era is HR’s time to shine. But they’re not invited
Australia’s top bosses think their people chiefs are not up to managing the artificial intelligence transition, and that’s a big problem.
Robots could unleash big gains in the care economy, says PC
In its final report before next week’s roundtable, the Productivity Commission also urged the government to create uniform rules on AI in the care sector.
In China, robots are no longer just tools, they are the new workforce
Millions of cyborgs and a strategic grip on the critical metals that power them is how Beijing plans to maintain its global manufacturing edge.
June
The aspect of AI that means Australia could miss out
More than three in four robotics patents in the past 20 years are from China. How do we make the most of that?
The robot farm that allows producers to ‘play god’
Stacked Farm’s vertical farming initiative has won the Financial Review Sustainability Leaders agriculture and environment category, as well as being the overall winner for innovation.
Why it’s so hard to make a reliable self-driving car
The promised rollout of fully autonomous vehicles remains largely unfulfilled, with every advance seemingly matched by a serious setback.
We’ve seen the future, and it’s wearing Birkenstocks
Roborock’s Saros Z70 marks the beginning of the era where robots follow us around the house and pick up after us.
May
Why it pays to use AI on the sly at work
Research shows staff are likely to be downgraded for owning up to using AI, highlighting the need for office guidelines to encourage workers to use it openly.
‘Black Mirror’ showed us a future. Some of it is here now.
The long-running tech drama always felt as if it took place in a dystopian near future. How much of that future has come to pass?
April
China has an army of robots on its side in the tariff war
Enormous investments in factory equipment and artificial intelligence are giving Beijing an edge in car manufacturing and other industries.
China’s first robot marathon runners trip, emit smoke, fall apart
In the world’s first half-marathon for androids, just four out of 21 robotic runners completed the race in Beijing’s southern tech hub of E-Town.
Just right for your holiday home: the robovac that gives some stick
Eufy’s E20 may not be as good at cleaning as other robots, but at least it gives you the tools to finish the job.
March
Fancy a robot to clean your windows? This one will give it a shot
It’s early days in the advent of window-cleaning robots, and they don’t do a terrific job. But Ecovacs’ Winbot W2 Pro Omni doesn’t do a bad job, either.