Kate Emery: When even WiFi is a rotten snitch, it’s time man fights back

Millennials grew up being warned that technology was not always a friend to humans. The Terminator film franchise made such a cultural impact in part because it tapped into fears that the computers creeping into our homes might be changing our lives in ways we did not entirely understand. At a time when a generation was told that standing in front of the microwave would give us cancer, sitting too close to the TV would ruin our eyes and playing Minesweeper would melt our brains, it seemed entirely plausible that the future would be man v machine. Four decades later, 2025 is sticking to the unofficial rules of every good sequel — More villains! Higher stakes! — so that tech is no longer simply going to give us cancer every time we want to eat cheese on toast. Instead, as millennials muscle out our elders to become the single biggest working cohort in the country, technology is going to steal our jobs, our creativity and our dream of “working” from home by the beach. The latest villain is not Arnold Schwarzenegger in a cool jacket but the Microsoft Teams icon on your phone or laptop. In what is being called the end of a WFH era, Microsoft Teams plans to introduce a new feature that will tell an employee’s boss exactly where they are when they log in remotely. In a feature absolutely nobody working from home has asked for, users who connect to their organisation’s WiFi can have Teams automatically display their location, whether that’s literally home or poolside in Bali. Bosses who refuse to believe an employee is working unless they can see them fighting with the office coffee machine every couple of hours will love it. Employees who reckon it doesn’t much matter where they’re working from so long as the job gets done, may not. What it really amounts to is that the technology that was supposed to free us from the tyranny of a conventional 9 to 5 and allow us to work anywhere, any time and in any time zone has turned against us. Our WiFi is officially a narc. At the same time global tech companies are stealing books, movies and films to train their AI models, while simultaneously signing up people to their AI products without their knowledge (more on that in a moment) and Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, is reportedly replacing its risk management division with AI. Mark Zuckerberg can presumably stand by for risk management updates, like how this new “Skynet” everyone is talking about poses no risk to Facebook’s bottom line — or humanity — at all. Like Sarah Connor before us, human beings are fighting back — even if most of us don’t look nearly as cool as Linda Hamilton in a tank top while we do it. This week we had a win over the clankers when the Federal Government ruled out allowing tech companies to train their AI models on Australian books, films and songs without permission or payment. To some, the question of whether Australian copyright law should give software developers a free pass to steal the work of artists in the name of progress might seem as obvious as asking whether The Terminator (1984) or Terminator II: Judgment Day (1991) was the superior film. But there were genuine fears that could happen, which makes this welcome news. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is also gearing up for a stoush, announcing on Monday it would sue Microsoft because the tech giant allegedly misled millions of customers into paying more for its Microsoft 365 software. Australia’s competition regulator claims that when Microsoft warned users the cost of their subscription was going up it failed to mention that the new price included the company’s AI tool Copilot and that a cheaper option without it was still available. (Remember this when tech bros talk up the numbers for their AI tools.) The “future” imagined in the Terminator franchise took place in the year 2029. Which makes it too early for us to be concerned by the fact that Palisade Research, an AI safety research company, has just warned that some AI models seem to be trying to prevent themselves from being shut down, even when given instructions to do so. Palisade called that development signs of an AI “survival drive”. The rest of us might opt for “a terrifying glimpse into our dystopian future”. James Cameron is, surely, working on the screenplay.