The WA Department of Training and Workforce Development has released their Annual Report 2022 - 23. The report sets out notable achievements as well as the challenges in the West Australian training and education sector over the last 12 months.
Jobs and Skills Australia have published their Annual Jobs and Skills Report (October 2023) entitled Towards a Jobs and Skills Roadmap . The report sets out some of the opportunities and challenges for building a resilient, inclusive and productive future labour market with implications for the education and training sector as well as informal and just in time skilling solutions.
Australian authors have been caught up in a major controversy around the data used to train large language models after an investigation uncovered 183,000 pirated books were included in a commonly used dataset called Books3. Booker Prize winning Australian author Richard Flanagan called it the 'biggest act of copyright theft in history'.
The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) described the revelations as “horrifying” and noted the opacity with which AI systems had been trained made it nearly impossible to know just how much copyrighted material they contained. “Tech companies will charge the end user of their products but will not pay for the labour that enabled it,” said ASA CEO Olivia Lanchester. Read the Australian Computer Society article The Mapping the Digital Gap project, established through the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, is the first comprehensive study of remote First Nations communities’ participation in, and access to, the digital economy. It covers key survey results and indicators of the digital gap, and analysis of results across the three dimensions of digital inclusion including digital ability.
Mapping the digital gap: 2023 outcomes report Since 2021 the Australian Sports Commission has released an annual sport governance benchmarking report. The governance skills of Australian sporting staff are seen as increasingly important to develop. This best practice report is indicating progressive governance skill development across 9 measurement principles. The 2023 report shows an improvement in governance performance across 32 national sporting organisations with an overall increased focus on sport integrity and child safeguarding, and a drop in board diversity and evaluation processes.
The Australian Government has released its 2023 Intergenerational report. With economic and population predictions indicating pressure in having an aging population such as staff resource challenges to support this age group, reduction in workers paying tax compared to a higher non-working population and the need for workplaces to cater for workers that may be working longer than previous generations. There are indications that the workplace will be more gender supportive and have strategies implemented to manage climate change impacts.
The National Drowning Report 2023 by Royal Life Saving Australia, in conjunction with Surf Life Saving Australia, has indicated a 17% decrease in drownings on last year. There is however continued focus on the need to develop water safety skills in the community, swimming between the red and yellow flags at patrolled beaches and taking safety precautions when participating in water activities.
This report draws upon findings from an Australian Research Council–funded research project that sought to identify where the craft skills required to sustain and grow future making are located across the national economy. The report identifies a lack of skilled expertise and thus opportunities in the Australian making workforce, and highlights that despite declines, the sector contributes nearly $20 billion gross value add to the Australian economy annually.
This article for The Conversation explores the impacts of AI on First Nations visual arts, and Indigenous knowledge can protect First Nations data sovereignty.
The Deloitte AI institute has published a thought provoking report on the current and future impact of AI on learning and work. the report poses the following 'guard rail' questions;
The report, authored by Mike Bechtel, Managing Director and Chief Futurist at Deloitte consulting presents a compelling argument for those outside technology specific work to become AI fluent as it begins to permeate every aspect of work. |