Waverley Council Update

Mayor's Message

Make Music Day, 21 June

Celebrate Make Music Day on 21 June at Bondi Pavilion and nearby locations with a free jazz concert, artist talk and outdoor performances. Enjoy a Classic Hits concert with jazz singer Greg Poppleton at the Bondi Pavilion High Tide Room and a free artist talk with f amed Kenyan singersongwriter Lisa Oduor-Noah and local artist Miriam Lieberman in the Pavilion theatre We are also holding an additional event that evening Music Night @ the Pav with Oduor-Noah and Lieberman in concert at the Pavilion following their talk See the Pavilion and Council's websites for more.

Bondi Festival returns

Bondi Festival returns to Bondi Pavilion and surrounds from Friday 30 June— Sunday 16 July 2023 with world-class theatre, comedy, cabaret and interactive experiences. This 17-day, allinclusive festival transforms our home by the sea into an eclectic, intimate and welcoming arts precinct with family-friendly shows and grown-ups' options. Visitors can also enjoy the our famous iceskating rink and the Bondi Vista Ferris Wheel. To book, visit bondifestival.com.au

School holiday program

Waverley Council’s winter school holiday program 3—16 July is all about kids having fun and learning new skills along the way. We offer everything from sports and dance at Margaret Whitlam Recreation Centre and workshops at Waverley Library to family experiences at Bondi Pavilion, the heart of community, culture and events in Waverley. Highlights of the Pavilion’s winter program include Bondi Festival events Ants, Werewolves, Marang, Pavilion Paw Parade, Pottery Studio workshops and more. For more information or to book, visit the What’s On page on Waverley Council’s website

NAIDOC Week, 2 9 July

Waverley Council invites you to celebrate NAIDOC Week (2-9 July) at Marang (Sand Dunes), a deadly celebration of local First Nations knowledge and culture on Saturday 1 July at Bondi Pavilion. Marang delivers an incredible day of workshops, performances and stalls to kick off Bondi Festival 2023 in the Pav’s Garu [northern] courtyard. The event pays respect to the Country on which the Bondi Pavilion now stands, traditionally a place of sand dunes. Following a Welcome to Country from local Elder, Uncle Lloyd Walker, and performance a from the incredible Jannawi Dance Clan, book in for several free workshops over the day – including special shell-art and weaving workshops with local knowledge holders from the Gujaga Foundation, and bush tucker talks and food demonstrations from the

Ph: 9083 8000 | waverley.nsw.gov.au

Stay in touch: waverley.nsw.gov.au/subscribe horticulture team at Bush to Bow. Gather in the Garu courtyard to enjoy music from local First Nations artists, check out the variety of First Nations market stalls, and enjoy a meal from Wilka Thalta, the Plate events food truck. This year’s NAIDOC Week theme For Our Elders is an opportunity for the Waverley community to acknowledge the important role and prominent place that our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders hold in our communities and families. For more, visit bondifestival.com.au. To learn about the upcoming Voice to Parliament Referendum, and the Waverley says Yes eduction campaign, visit the Uluru Statement From the Heart page on our website.

Birrell Street Renewal

Construction is underway on our Birrell Street streetscape improvement project between Newland Street, Bondi Junction and Bronte Road, Bondi. Highlights of the project include 22 new parking spaces, improved bike routes, new road surface, landscaped intersection treatments and improved stormwater drainage. Works are expected to be completed late July and will be staged to minimise disruption. Funding for the project was received from the NSW Government’s Regional Roads Program. See our website for details.

Paula Masselos Mayor of Waverley

Hey Siri, Bake Me a Cake...

Words Jeremy Ireland Photo Margaret Fulton

Over the years, I’ve made my son quite a few birthday cakes from the The Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book. One year he chose the ‘swimming pool’, a classic. We decided to customise it using Tim Tams for the pool’s fence rather than the recommended biscuits. So, off to Coles I went. Within an hour, I started receiving adds on Facebook for Tim Tams, and I must admit, this kind of freaked me out; how did Facebook know I’d bought them? I’d never received Arnotts adds before and, more importantly, the microphone in my Facebook settings was off.

Intrigued, I did some research and discovered how social media uses algorithms. It didn’t quite answer the question as to how they knew I’d bought Tim Tams, but it did shed some light on how a computer program can start to ‘profile’ a person and tailor what you see on social media. The idea of profiling has been around well before the internet, but this incident did open my eyes to the dangers that can lurk in the bowels of these giant social media tech companies when they start to ‘profile’ the user and funnel a particular type of content onto the consumer.

An algorithm is basically a set of rules to be followed in a calculation or problem-solving operation. Doing a puzzle, putting on the washing or even following a birthday cake recipe are all types algorithms, but more commonly they are seen to be associated with some form of computer platform. As computing processing power goes up, so does the ability of an algorithm to handle more data. Fast forward to today and there is genuine concern surrounding how these algorithms have produced products such as ChatGPT and the like.

ChatGPT is basically a machine simulating human intelligence; it’s predictive text on steroids. In other words, it’s a form of artificial intelligence, or AI.

AI’s a hot topic at the moment, but again, the concept is not new - machines have been replacing human labour since the industrial revolution. It’s more the ‘intelligence’ side of AI that’s creating the biggest fuss. When we think AI we might be forgiven for thinking of the terminator, or the matrix, where the AI is something of an evil physical force taking over the world and needs to be shut down. But what happens when AI starts to infiltrate language, i.e. how we communicate or get understanding through text and images? Worse still, what happens when we start to form a relationship with a ‘bot’ because we’re lonely, or we get advice from one because we’re not sure what to do? It’s happening now, and the catch is the more we interact with these ‘language-based’ platforms the faster they learn and work out what to say (or not say) to us. The algorithms they use teach themselves and the more we interact the faster they learn. The adjective ‘expediential’ gets bandied around when describing AI, and for good reason; algorithms in language-based social media can be practical and convenient despite having overtones of being improper or immoral, leading to unintended consequences like creating bias, compromising choice, opportunity, creativity and perhaps even democracy.

The likes of Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind , Tristan Harris from The A.I. Dilemma and tech guru Elon Musk are all very concerned, not so much about the advance of AI technology, but more about the speed of this self-learning technology in an unregulated arena that can have devastating consequences. AI doesn’t need consciousness or feelings, only the ability to manipulate our feelings through fake imtantcy via language in order to influence our views on things.

Personally, I’m not concerned about self-driving Ubers, bumping into Robocop or even the possibility that a humanoid might one day be checking my prostate; the sky is not falling in just yet, and there are plenty of useful applications for AI. What is far more dangerous, however, is the potential psychological harm it can do in influencing how we think, feel and ultimately behave due to its ability to communicate with us. Oh, and I’m pretty sure an AI robot won’t have as much fun and fill a birthday cake with as much love as I did! “I’ll be back...”

Jeremy Ireland is a local psychotherapist. Have you got a question? You can get in touch with Jeremy by calling 0400 420 042.

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