Your say: week beginning February 9

Every day, we publish a selection of your emails in our newsletter. We’d love to hear from you, you can email us at yoursay@theconversation.edu.au.

Monday February 9

AI terror

“The article on the AI afterlife was great, and another potential issue sprung to mind. What if the person being ‘preserved’ held extreme views, and encouraged loved ones to carry out violent acts? What if they were unbelievably selfish, and encouraged the bereaved to kill themselves and join them in the afterlife? What if a malicious actor injects code that gets the bot to subtly encourage other criminal behaviour, or turns the bot into a highly personalised phishing scam that ends with the bereaved transferring large sums of money into a scammer’s bank account, or something else? The possibilities are endless and terrifying.”

Charlotte Somers

Decisions we make

“Hopefully, the rest of Australia will not follow New South Wales in ditching the good character reference before court sentencing. The reference is the last legal recognition that humans are not perfect; there are absolutely no bad or good persons walking the Earth, only people committing bad or good acts, for whatever reasons.”

Ang Ung

Thinning forests

“Regarding the article on mountain ash forests, isn’t it amazing that forests managed to survive for millennia before humans came along to help them?”

Peter Tuft

Tuesday February 10

Housing isn’t an investment strategy

“The idea of cutting the capital gains tax to rebalance the housing market is old news. The Greens have been warning of the effects of the capital gains handout and negative gearing on housing affordability for decades. The question is not so much will the government be prepared to treat housing as a human right, so much as, will the media inform the public of who they can vote for that has always seen housing as a right, not an investment portfolio.”

Dr Simon Cooper

A wake-up call on climate

“The release of the National Climate Risk Assessment and the totally lukewarm reception the Prime Minister received at the Pacific Islands Forum should be a wake-up call for all MPs in Canberra. The Parliament of Australia has a responsibility to protect Australians and our Pacific Island neighbours from the consequences of a rapidly warming planet. Ignoring science and resorting to ‘greenwashing’ to obfuscate the lack of action to actually do something about climate change, shows a total lack of a responsibility to act in the best long-term interests of the nation.”

Tim Cornwell

Some feedback

“I am pleased to see the Your Say section occurring in The Conversation. Journalism is only helpful if it is willing to reveal its own shortcomings, errors, or the other side to a story. It’s difficult to cover all angles in a short information piece, so perhaps some topics could be developed further after sensible and unbiased feedback is given? Writers and publishers have a responsibility here. Thanks to those readers who are providing thoughtful and meaningful responses.”

Val Adamson, SA