On my weekly Tech Talk with Alex show on Radio 2CC, during the Canberra Weekender on Saturday mornings, hosted by Tatjana Clancy, our special guest was RMIT Research fellow and AI entrepreneur, Dr Nataliya Ilyushina, with AI naturally as our big focus.

AI is everywhere these days! Tomorrow as I type, after few days after the Saturday 11 May interview with Dr Nataliya Ilyushina, OpenAI will be launching something special and new with its revolutionary ChatGPT app, and Google will be holding its nearly week-long Google I/O 2024 developer conference, which itself will be filled to the brim with AI.

But last week, there was plenty of AI news too, with Apple's new iPad Pro and M4 chips launched, primed for AI right now but with plenty more AI goodness to come during Apple's WWDC 2024 conference from June 10 to June 14, 2024.

We also saw the Rabbit R1 and Humane Pin handheld and wearable AI hardware arrive to terrible reviews, delivering, at least in the initial iterations, before the usual software updates come along to deliver massive improvements.

There's also the genuine fear that AI is sucking up human jobs and stifling human creativity, as well as plagiarising people's work, but is this a true worry?

Dr Nataliya Ilyushina is also one of the speakers at the upcoming July 22-23 Technology In Government event https://www.terrapinn.com/conference/..., billed as Australia's most important event for Government ICT, and she gave a sneak peek of her talk on AI in business.

And after the interview with Dr Ilyushina above, we also looked at the state of ringtones in Australia, with surprising results looking at how Boomers, Gen Y and Gen Z use - or don't use - mobile phone ringtones!

Here are the details from Vodafone on ringtones in Australia, also spoken about in the interview above!

Is your ringtone really loud so you can hear it, with the old fashioned ring ring sound, or do you set your phone to mute, and mainly communicate via messaging or even voice or video calls over the Internet using your favourite messaging app, like Whatsapp?

While the Crazy Frog ringtone thankfully died out in the mid 2000s, Vodafone has shared some interesting stats on how different generations use ringtones, or even use them at all!

Have you ever been serenaded by “peaceful” sounds of every.single.notification. on your mum’s phone which (despite being right next to them) is set at the loudest possible volume? Well, it turns out you are not alone!

New research commissioned by Vodafone shows a huge difference between the generations with 96% of Baby Boomers using ringtones compared to 72% of Gen Z and 68% of Gen Y.

According to new data by Vodafone:

Generation Boomer rings true as older Aussies are more likely to max the volume: Over a third of Boomers (34%) revealed they always have their phone on max volume while only 5% have it switched to silent all the time.

Younger generations do not need a ringtone: Almost half of Gen Z (46%) and Gen Y (45%) say they do not need a ringtone because they spend so much time on their phone, in comparison to just 7% of Baby Boomers.

Millennials and Zers go mute when it comes to calls: 36% of Gen Z and 35% of Gen Y confess they usually have their devices switched to silent, admitting they do so to avoid calls! More than 2 in 5 (42%) Gen Z say no one calls anymore and that they communicate through messages, social media, and voice notes. While two thirds (66%) of Gen Z consider phone calls important, the majority (84%) consider text messages a more important way to communicate.

It turns out purchasing ringtones is not a thing of the past: Despite over half of Gen Y (58%) saying that they used to enjoy buying and changing ringtones back in the day, some are still choosing to change up their tones (55%). Three quarters of Aussies (75%) use default Apple/Android tones, while 76% of Gen-Y stick to the built-in options. However, 24% of Gen Y download or purchase popular songs, TV/Movies, or custom ringtones with 21% saying they have purchased a ringtone in the last 12 months.

These are some ringtones and sounds that will continue to exist until the end of time: No, Crazy Frog won’t be ding ding dinging its way back into the charts anytime soon, and though it might be one of the most popular (39%) and annoying (49%) ringtones of all time, it's no shock the original and simply unforgettable Nokia Ringtone (that lives “rent free” in our head), was voted most popular alongside the default iPhone Marimba Ringtone and just like the hum of the pesky flies, Mosquito Ringtone the most annoying (71%).

Star Wars Day or May the 4th was last weekend, with 1 in 2 Gen X and Baby Boomers reporting the Star Wars Ringtone was their most popular ringtone of all time, while only 2 in 5 Gen Z and Gen Y claimed the same.