Dprof Genevieve Bell

As you climbed the rickety stairs of an old woolshed at Sydney harbor in 1944, you could hear rows of men and women in uniforms and headsets tapping away vigorously at small machines, under the careful watch of their young female trainers. Presiding over the cacophony was a tiny woman, known to everyone as "Mrs Mac," one of Australia's wartime legends. A smart girl from a poor mining town, Violet McKenzie became an electrical engineer, a pioneer of radio, and a businesswoman. As the clouds of war gathered in the 1930s, she trained young women in Morse code, foreseeing that their services would soon be needed. She was instrumental in getting Australian women into the armed forces. Mrs Mac was adored by the thousands of young women and men she trained, and she came to be respected by the defense forces and the public too for her vision and contribution to the war effort. David Dufty brings her story to life in this heartwarming and captivating biography.

Who is designing AI? A select, narrow group. How is their world view shaping our future? Artificial intelligence can be all too human: quick to judge, capable of error, vulnerable to bias. It's made by humans, after all. Humans make decisions about the laws and standards, the tools, the ethics in this new world. Who benefits. Who gets hurt. Made by Humans explores our role and responsibilities in automation. Roaming from Australia to the UK and the US, elite data expert Ellen Broad talks to world leaders in AI about what we need to do next. It is a personal, thought-provoking examination of humans as data and humans as the designers of systems that are meant to help us.