Australians are among the most anxious in the world about artificial intelligence (AI).

This anxiety is driven by fears AI is used to spread misinformation and scam people, anxiety over job losses, and the fact AI companies are training their models on others’ expertise and creative works without compensation.

AI companies have used pirated books and articles, and routinely send bots across the web to systematically scrape content for their models to learn from. That content may come from social media platforms such as Reddit, university repositories of academic work, and authoritative publications like news outlets.

In the past, online scraping was subject to a kind of detente. Although scraping may sometimes have been technically illegal, it was needed to make the internet work. For instance, without scraping there would be no Google. Website owners were OK with scraping because it made their content more available, according with the vision of the “open web”.

Under these conditions, scraping was managed through principles such as respect, recognition, and reciprocity. In the context of AI, those are now faltering.

A new online landscape

Many news outlets are now blocking web scrapers. Creators are choosing not to use certain platforms or are posting less.

Barriers are being put in place across the open web. When only some can afford to pay to access news and information, then democracy, scientific innovation and creative communities are all harmed.

Exceptions to copyright infringement, such as fair dealing for research or study, were legislated long before generative AI became publicly available. These exceptions are no longer fit for purpose in an AI age.

The Australian government has ruled out a new copyright exception for text and data mining. This signals a commitment to supporting Australia’s creative industries, but leaves great uncertainty about how creative content can be managed legally and at scale now that AI companies are crawling the web.

In response, the international nonprofit Creative Commons has proposed a new voluntary framework: CC Signals.

Creative Commons licences allow creators to share content and specify how it can be used. All licences require credit to acknowledge the source, but various additional restrictions can be applied. Creators can ask others not to modify their work, or not to use it for commercial purposes. For example, The Conversation’s articles are available for reuse under a CC BY-ND licence, which means they must be credited to the source and must not be remixed, transformed, or built upon.

How would CC Signals work?

The proposed CC Signals framework lets creators decide if or how they want their material to be used by machines. It aims to strike a balance between responsible AI use and not stifling innovation, and is based on the principles of consent, compensation, and credit.

Simplistically, CC Signals work by allowing a “declaring party” – such as a news website – to attach machine-readable instructions to a body of content. These instructions specify what combinations of machine uses are permitted, and under what conditions.

CC Signals are standardised, and both humans and machines can understand them.

This proposal arrives at a moment that closely mirrors the early days of the web, when norms around automated access (crawling and scraping) were still being worked out in practice rather than law.

A useful historical parallel is robots.txt, a simple file web hosts use to signal which parts of a site can be accessed by the bots that crawl the web and look for content. It was never enforceable, but it became widely adopted because it provided a clear, standardised way to communicate expectations between content hosts and developers.

CC Signals could operate in much the same spirit. But, as with any system, it has potential benefits as well as drawbacks.

The pros

The framework provides more nuance and flexibility than the current scrape/don’t scrape environment we’re in. It offers creators more control over the use of their content.

It also has the potential to affect how much high-quality content is available for scraping. Without access to high-quality data, AI’s biases are exacerbated and make the technology less useful.

The framework might also benefit smaller players who don’t have the bargaining power to negotiate with big tech companies but who, nonetheless, desire remuneration, credit, or visibility for their work.

The cons

The greatest challenge with CC Signals is likely to be a practical one – how to calculate, and then enforce, the monetary or in-kind support required by some of the signals.

This is also a major sticking point with content industry proposals for collective licensing schemes for AI. Calculating and distributing licence fees for the thousands, if not millions, of internet works that are accessed by generative AI systems around the world is a logistical nightmare.

Creative Commons has said it plans to produce best-practice guides for how to make contributions and give credit under the CC Signals. But this work is still in progress.

Where to from here?

Creative Commons asserts that the CC Signals framework is not so much a legal tool as an attempt to define “manners for machines”. Manners is a good way to look at this.

The legal and practical hurdles to implementing effective copyright management for AI systems are huge. But we should be open to new ideas and frameworks that foreground respect and recognition for creators without shutting down important technological developments.

CC Signals is an imperfect framework, but it is a start. Hopefully there are more to come.

T.J. Thomson, Associate Professor of Visual Communication & Digital Media, RMIT University; Daniel Angus, Professor of Digital Communication, Director of QUT Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology; Jake Goldenfein, Associate Professor, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne, and Kylie Pappalardo, Associate Professor, School of Law, Queensland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Mediterranean diet – rich in olive oil, fish, vegetables and legumes – has long been linked to better heart health. Growing evidence suggests it may also help support brain health as we age, with a brain-focused variation of the diet drawing increasing scientific attention.

It is called the Mind diet. The name stands for Mediterranean-Dash Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay – though what matters more than the acronym is what it actually involves: plenty of green vegetables, beans, whole grains, nuts, berries, poultry and fish, with olive oil as the main cooking fat, and limited amounts of red meat, butter, cheese, fried food and sweets. It combines the most brain-friendly elements of two well-studied eating patterns: the traditional Mediterranean diet and the Dash diet, which was originally developed to lower blood pressure.

A recent analysis from the long-running Framingham heart study examined the diets of adults aged 60 and over and assessed how these dietary patterns were associated with brain scan data collected later in the study. Those who followed the Mind diet most closely tended to have more grey matter – the tissue associated with memory and decision-making – and showed less overall loss of brain volume over time.

Both findings point in the same direction: that this way of eating may help keep the brain in better shape as we get older.

This is not the first study to suggest a link between diet and dementia risk. An earlier analysis combining 12 observational studies found an overall reduction in dementia risk of between 15 and 22% among people who followed Mediterranean-style diets, with the Mind diet showing the strongest effect of the three patterns studied. That is a meaningful difference, even if it cannot be taken as proof that diet alone is responsible.

Within the Framingham study, berries and poultry stood out as particularly beneficial for grey matter. This fits with what other research has suggested. Blueberries, for instance, have been the subject of several small trials, with one recent study finding improvements in memory even in people already showing early signs of memory problems.

Since red and processed meat have been linked to higher dementia risk in other studies, replacing them with chicken may be part of why poultry appears beneficial.

Some of the findings were less straightforward. Fried food, as expected, was associated with worse outcomes. But whole grains, generally considered one of the healthier staples, produced a surprisingly weak result.

The reasons are unclear, though large amounts of bread and pasta – even wholegrain varieties – may raise blood sugar enough to offset some of the benefits. The evidence on whole grains and brain health remains mixed, and this is one area where more research is needed.

It is also worth noting who, in the Framingham study, was most likely to follow the Mind diet. They tended to be women, non-smokers, well-educated, and less likely to be overweight or to have diabetes, high blood pressure or heart disease. All of these factors are independently associated with better brain health, which makes it genuinely difficult to untangle how much of the benefit comes from the diet itself, and how much from the broader lifestyle it tends to accompany.

What the science can and can’t tell us

This is the central challenge facing all research in this area. Most of the studies are observational, meaning they track what people eat and what happens to them over time, rather than randomly assigning people to follow a particular diet and measuring the results.

Observational studies can show associations, but they cannot prove cause and effect. Self-reported diet data is also unreliable at the best of times – and particularly so among people whose memory is already beginning to fail.

The few trials that have actually put the Mind diet to the test have produced mixed results. One small three-month study found no improvement in memory or thinking skills, though participants did report better mood and quality of life.

Another trial found improvements in both brain scans and mental performance, but the participants were obese middle-aged women who also lost weight during the study, making it hard to know how much the diet itself contributed. Three months is also a short window in which to expect measurable changes in brain structure, and longer trials may yet tell a different story.

None of this means the Mind diet is not worth following. The broader evidence – across multiple studies and populations – consistently points in the same direction, and there is little downside to eating more vegetables, berries, fish and olive oil.

But diet is only one piece of a much larger picture. Not smoking, staying active, keeping blood pressure and blood sugar under control, and maintaining social connections all appear to matter at least as much when it comes to keeping the brain healthy in later life.

The Mind diet is not a cure for dementia, and it would be misleading to present it as one. What the evidence does suggest is that the food choices we make over decades – not just in later life, but across adulthood – may quietly shape the health of our brains in ways that only become visible much later. That is not a guarantee, but it is a reasonable basis for eating well.

Eef Hogervorst, Professor of Biological Psychology, Loughborough University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Every few months, someone in the superannuation industry declares that Australians now “need” around A$1 million to retire comfortably. It’s a big, scary number.

But consumer advocates say most people can retire with far less.

Independent estimates suggest something closer to $322,000 is enough for many retirees who own their own home. So who’s right – and what assumptions drive these wildly different targets?

It’s easy to put off thinking about superannuation when retirement is years away. In this five-part series, we ask top experts to explain how to sort your super in a few simple steps, avoid greenwashing, and set goals for retirement.

What the two key benchmarks say

Two key organisations publish retirement benchmarks in Australia, and they paint very different pictures.

The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA), the lobby group for the super industry, publishes two lifestyle options in its 2026 Retirement Standard. This was recently updated to reflect a higher cost of living:

Modest retirement: Covers the basics – a budget car, basic private health insurance, one domestic holiday a year. This costs around $35,503 a year for a single homeowner, and the age pension (the regular government payment available to eligible retirees aged 67+) covers most of it. You’d only need around $110,000 in super.

Comfortable retirement: Includes top-level private health insurance, a newer car, regular dining out, and overseas travel. ASFA puts this at around $54,240 a year for a single homeowner, requiring roughly $630,000 in super. For couples, it’s about $77,375 a year, needing around $730,000.

These are significant sums – but well below $1 million.

Then there’s Super Consumers Australia, an independent consumer group that recommends a substantially lower amount.

Rather than imagining a lifestyle, the consumer group uses actual Australian Bureau of Statistics data on what retirees really spend. Its headline finding: a typical single retiree spending at the middle level out of three options needs just $322,000 in super.

Remember, retirees don’t have work-related expenses and they also enjoy a range of discounts on things such as council rates, electricity and medicines, which can really add up.

Part of the difference is the industry body, ASFA, has an interest in encouraging people to contribute more to their super. Its “comfortable” standard is higher than most Australians’ standard of living while working.

Why the numbers differ

The gap comes down to what each benchmark is measuring.

ASFA describes an aspirational lifestyle. Super Consumers describes what real retirees actually spend.

The age pension does a lot of the heavy lifting either way. At Super Consumers’ medium spending level, about 67% of retirement income comes from the age pension, and the remainder from your super balance.

But here’s a crucial new factor: the age pension isn’t keeping up with what retirees actually spend money on.

While the pension is indexed to inflation, retirees’ major expenses – insurance, rates, utilities, health care and food – have been rising faster than general consumer prices.

That means retirees who rely heavily on the pension are seeing more financial pressure than the headline inflation numbers suggest.

There’s a housing catch

Here’s the crucial fine print: every one of these benchmarks assumes you own your home outright when you retire.

That assumption is becoming shaky. Research shows the share of Australians aged 55–64 still carrying mortgage debt has tripled since 1990, and the average debt for that age group now exceeds $230,000. More than one in three Millennials expect to retire with a mortgage still running.

The ASFA budgets are built on the assumption of full home ownership. That means they do not include rent, mortgage repayments or major housing costs.

If you’re renting or carrying a mortgage into retirement, the required super balance can rise dramatically. ASFA estimates renters need $340,000–385,000 for a modest lifestyle – more than a homeowner needs for a comfortable one.

Super Consumers Australia presents a similar gap, estimating that a renter requires about $659,000 in superannuation, compared with only $322,000 for a homeowner.

With more people retiring with mortgage debt today than previous generations, both key benchmarks may underestimate housing-related stress for future retirees.

The gender gap in retirement

Retirement targets are often discussed as if everyone starts from the same position. They don’t.

Australian women retire with about 25% less super than men. The gender pay gap (currently around 21%) compounds over a working life into a much larger retirement savings gap. Women also live longer on average, meaning their money needs to stretch further.

The government began paying super on parental leave in July 2025 – a meaningful step forward. But the gap remains significant.

What this means for you

There’s no single right number. But ask yourself these questions before chasing any benchmark:

• will you own your home outright?
• do you want to travel or are you a homebody?
• are you planning for one income or two?

The gap between ASFA comfortable and Super Consumers medium is $8,497 a year in spending – but nearly $308,000 in required super. That difference is almost entirely lifestyle choice.

For a personalised estimate, the free MoneySmart Retirement Planner is a good starting point, or call the government’s free Financial Information Service on 132 300.

The $1 million figure isn’t evidence-based for most Australians. But the lower benchmarks all carry the same caveat: they assume you’re a homeowner. As more people retire with debt or as renters, even those more modest numbers may understate what you actually need.

Disclaimer: This article provides general information only and is not intended as financial advice.

Angel Zhong, Professor of Finance, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.