While the rest of us have been dreaming of the promise of AI to cure diseases, and fretting about the threat of robots overtaking humanity, a growing number of people have started literally worshipping AI.
At online churches, and in front of an AI deity, people around the world are asking this technology for advice, seeking guidance to life’s most difficult problems.

Today, international and political editor Peter Hartcher discusses what could happen if such worshipping becomes mainstream, and why the leaders of one of the world’s most powerful AI companies tried to enlist the Pope to take AI consciousness seriously.

Further reading:

• Plenty of people believe that AI can be God. Just not the Pope

The Morning Edition brings you the story behind the story with the best journalists in Australia. Join host Samantha Selinger-Morris, from the newsrooms of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, weekdays from 5am.

If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, rate, review and subscribe on Apple, Spotify,

Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Australians woke up on a Sunday morning in 2018 to extraordinary vision plastered across their television screens and mobile phones: Cameron Bancroft, the opening batsman on the Australian men’s cricket team, caught on camera using a piece of sandpaper to tamper with the ball during a Test match in Cape Town. It was one of the most brazen acts of cheating ever broadcast.

This week, the Australian team returns to South Africa for their first Test series in the country since that scandal, which remains one of Australian sport's darkest moments.

Today, senior sports reporter Chris Barrett and chief cricket writer Daniel Brettig, recording from South Africa, on the so-called “arms race” of ball tampering that proceeded the 2018 Test, and how South Africans might respond when the captain from the 2018 team walks out onto the ground on Friday.

Further reading:

• ‘Just be careful, they’re on you’: Inside cricket’s greatest scandal
• The Sandpaper series was radioactive from the start. Then a USB stick was delivered to my room

The Morning Edition brings you the story behind the story with the best journalists in Australia. Join host Samantha Selinger-Morris, from the newsrooms of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, weekdays from 5am.

If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, rate, review and subscribe on Apple, Spotify,

Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s been big news from the UK overnight, with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, launching legal action against police over his arrest in relation to the Epstein files.

Not since the 1649 trial of King Charles I has a British royal mounted a legal challenge of this magnitude, according to the UK Telegraph, which broke the bombshell story.

Today’s guest is culture editor-at-large and our local royal expert, Michael Idato. 

Further reading:

• Andrew takes police to court over Epstein files arrest
  
  
  

The Morning Edition brings you the story behind the story with the best journalists in Australia. Join host Samantha Selinger-Morris, from the newsrooms of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, weekdays from 5am.

If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, rate, review and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or whichever platform you find your podcasts.

Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

According to new analysis, screen time could damage children more than being born into poverty. The findings from the University of Calgary say higher doses of screen exposure are associated with lower overall academic achievement, poorer language development and emotional and peer problems.

So what’s it actually like to be a 17-year-old on social media? What material are you fed – and how quickly?

Crime and justice reporter Amber Schultz found out after she created new accounts posing first as a teenage boy, and then as a girl.

Today, Schultz talks about her descent into the algorithm and what surprised her.

Further reading:

• Posing as a 17-year-old girl online, I expected body image content. I got gender division
• I posed as a 17-year-old boy on social media. It took 13 minutes to be shown the manosphere

The Morning Edition brings you the story behind the story with the best journalists in Australia. Join host Samantha Selinger-Morris, from the newsrooms of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, weekdays from 5am.

If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, rate, review and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or whichever platform you find your podcasts.

Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Anthony Albanese is back from the United Nations in New York to a slump in his approval rating and more economic pain.

On Tuesday, the Reserve Bank raised interest rates to a 15-year-high due to continued inflation pressure. So what's driving inflation? How much is government spending contributing to this issue?

Also this week, the Greens elected a new leader. NSW senator David Shoebridge is far more confrontational than former leader Larissa Waters and comes from the party's hard-left faction.

His election may signal a shift in strategy from the party, which wants to replicate the success of left-wing figures such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Chief political correspondent Paul Sakkal hosts today's conversation with senior economics correspondent Matt Wade and federal political correspondent Natassia Chrysanthos.

Further reading

• To avoid another rate rise, things might have to get worse
• The Greens need to let the sunshine in or risk stagnation 

Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When the competing leaders of the world's two biggest economies gather for a summit, there's usually a lot to tussle over – military build-up, trade, critical minerals or AI. But that's not what happened when Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met last week.

Today, international and political editor Peter Hartcher discusses the moments that could signal a startling break with decades of American policy.

Background reading: 

• How Trump’s grovelling emboldens China and imperils the Asia Pacific

The Morning Edition brings you the story behind the story with the best journalists in Australia. Join host Samantha Selinger-Morris, from the newsrooms of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, weekdays from 5am.

If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, rate, review and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or whichever platform you find your podcasts.

Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you live in a certain part of Australia, you have probably noticed them – big moths flying around, clinging to glass doors and gathering around lights in massive numbers.

But for all the freak-outs across the east coast, naturalists are rejoicing.

Today, national environment and climate editor Nick O’Malley talks about the return of the bogong moth after a near-total population collapse, and why they’re so important for our landscape.

Background reading: 

• After a catastrophic decline bogong moths are back, and naturalists are celebrating 

The Morning Edition brings you the story behind the story with the best journalists in Australia. Join host Samantha Selinger-Morris, from the newsrooms of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, weekdays from 5am.

If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, rate, review and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or whichever platform you find your podcasts.

Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Interest rate hikes are stressing Australian mortgage holders across the country.

But are higher rates the only way to get inflation down? Or are there alternatives to the Reserve Bank’s go-to, blunt-force measure?

Today, senior economics writer Matt Wade, on the potential – and challenges – of four alternatives to help keep inflation in check, newly floated by an Australian think tank.

The Morning Edition brings you the story behind the story with the best journalists in Australia. Join host Samantha Selinger-Morris, from the newsrooms of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, weekdays from 5am.

If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, rate, review and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or whichever platform you find your podcasts.

Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The past five decades have witnessed immigration on a scale the globe has never seen before, and countries around the world are convulsing with anti-immigration sentiment. Australia might be an island, but it's no different.

This is a dangerous moment, investigative journalist Eryk Bagshaw argues. Immigration has become a scapegoat because successive governments have lost control of policy levers, and infrastructure has failed to keep up. At the same time, whole swaths of the economy are dependent on temporary migrants.

Bagshaw visited migrant communities both old and new to work out what has gone wrong and what Australia must get right.

Further reading

• ‘You can’t put everything on immigration’: The suburbs at breaking point 
• The moment Australia’s immigration program went off the rails

Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today we’re going international to talk about Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s trip to New York for the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.

It’s been an eventful few days for the PM who has, among other things, spoken about Australia’s attempts to crack down on social media, met with US President Donald Trump and given a speech in which he declared the world order in place since World War II "no longer fit for purpose”.

But all of that was nearly forgotten when Albanese stood up in what was very early on Thursday morning our time to announce an OpenAI agent infiltrated a Medicare website in June, accessing public and private files.

Joining guest host Stephanie Peatling in Canberra today is chief political correspondent Paul Sakkal and, live from New York where he is travelling with the prime minister, national correspondent Rob Harris.

Further reading

• Rogue agent or human error? What OpenAI’s Medicare breach means for you

Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has launched a taskforce to investigate how AI apparently went rogue hacked into a portal belonging to one of Australia’s major healthcare systems.

Albanese revealed on Thursday that an OpenAI agent infiltrated Medicare.

It is believed to be the first known case of AI hacking into a government system.

Today, technology editor David Swan explains how this breach occurred and how worried we should be.

Further reading

• Rogue agent or human error? What OpenAI’s Medicare breach means for you

Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.