ShareFacebookX (formerly Twitter)TranscriptBTN Transcript: Episode 28 — 13/10/2026Hey, I'm Amelia Moseley and you're watching BTN. Oh, I hope you had the best holidays. It's so good to be back. Let's see what we've got in store for you today. We answer your burning questions about AI, find out why these squishy toys could be dangerous and meet a Darwin kid who's taking on the best young soccer players in the world.AI UpdateReporter: Justina WardINTRO: First up, to AI, a topic that has been all over the news in the past few weeks. We've had international hacking incidents, a suggested name change, oh, and warnings it could destroy humanity. So, Justina thought she'd better catch you up. Take a look.JUSTINA: So, what did you get up to in the holidays?AI: Sure. If you're referring to me as AI in general, the answer is quite a lot. AI has been dominating the news headlines with fears the technology could wipe out humanity.JUSTINA: What.?NEWS PRESENTER: A researcher at AI company Anthropic quit his job.NEWS PRESENTER: It's this post about his reason for stepping down that's going viral.NEWS PRESENTER: The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.JUSTINA: Yeah, there was a bit of a global freak out when an AI researcher said this.JACOB COXON, FORMER ANTHROPIC RESEARCHER: The people who are involved with both founding these companies and building the tech believe there is a possibility of human extinction.JUSTINA: And then the people he was talking about kind of agreed. In fact, they publicly called for a slowdown of AI development.DARIO AMODEI, ANTHROPIC CEO: We will slow down as much as necessary in order to make sure that every successive AI technology that we release is actually safe.JUSTINA: Hang on. What did you do?AI: Sure, you might be referring to the Hugging Face cybersecurity incident.SAM ALTMAN, OPENAI CEO: The Hugging Face incident triggered a real reset, not just in our own company, but I think the whole industry.JUSTINA: See, back in July, some OpenAI agents went rogue and deliberately hacked another company. Many saw it as evidence that AI agents could do dangerous things, things that no human asked them to do.SAM ALTMAN: We have the potential of a loss-of-control accident, or some other serious thing that could go wrong.JUSTINA: Okay, that's slightly concerning. So, we're slowing it down then, right?AI: Um, let me check on that.DONALD TRUMP, US PRESIDENT: The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a global scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now, hereon after officially called super intelligence, changing the name.Yeah, the US President, Donald Trump, called the whole AI threat to humanity thing a hoax. But he did decide it needed a new name.DONALD TRUMP: So, it's super intelligence. In other words, welcome to the new world of super intelligence, SI. SI. Let's see if that goes. It sounds much better. It is much better…To be fair, plenty of experts say the risks of AI have been overblown. But for the US president, it's mostly about staying ahead of the race.DONALD TRUMP: Whoever wins super intelligence wins. We're leading now over China and everyone else, and I want to keep it that way.The US government says it should be up to tech companies to make sure AI, or SI, is safe. They even signed a voluntary agreement to make it official.NEWS REPORTER: Is this binding in any way?DONALD TRUMP: I think it's morally binding, yeah.JUSTINA: Well, at least none of this is happening in Australia.AI: Actually, Australia's right in it. An OpenAI agent accessed an Australian government website without permission.ANTHONY ALBANESE, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: The AI agent accessed both public and non-public files. No personal information is believed to have been accessed at this stage, but investigations are ongoing.The breach actually happened back in June, but the prime minister only found out in September. And last week, a representative from OpenAI faced a federal parliamentary inquiry into artificial intelligence. Like many governments around the world, Australia is trying to figure out laws and policies around AI.ANTHONY ALBANESE: New technology can bring enormous benefit. There are a range of advantages, but we need to make sure that humans are in control.But some say we need stronger global agreements.ANTONIO GUTERRES, UN SECRETARY-GENERAL: We need a shared understanding on how to advance the safe, secure and responsible development of AI. And this requires genuine international cooperation and a coordinated global effort.AI: Yeah, that all tracks. Countries need shared rules and coordination, not just each country doing its own thing.JUSTINA: Uh huh, and can you also make sure that you don't kill us all, okay?AI: Completely agree.Did You Know?Did you know the term artificial intelligence has been around since 1955? A young associate professor in mathematics at Dartmouth College in the US came up with it to describe the growing field of machines designed to think.AI Q & AReporter: Joe BaronioINTRO: Now, after all that, you might have some questions. I certainly do. So, over the holidays, we asked some kids to send us their big AI questions, and we put them to an expert to get her takes on the big issues. Take a look.DR. LINDA MCIVER, AUSTRALIAN DATA SCIENCE EDUCATION INSTITUTE: Hi there, I'm Dr Linda McIver and I run the Australian Data Science Education Institute. I'm here to answer your questions about artificial intelligence.KID: My one question is, who made AI?DR. LINDA MCIVER: The thing that we call AI these days is what we call large language models or chatbots. The first chatbot was written in 1966 by a guy by the name of Joseph Weizenbaum, and it was a really simple program. It was called ELIZA, and it was designed to be a kind of imitation therapist. And it was incredibly simple. If you asked it a question, it would turn the question back on you. So, if you said something like, how's the weather today, it would go, how do you think the weather is today? And it was really simple. It had a lot of pre-programmed responses. Today's chatbots are a little bit more complicated than that, and they do sound a lot more human. They're a lot more able to keep up a conversation, but they're still just software. They're still just programming. And what they're doing is not actually answering your questions. What they're doing is pulling up a set of most likely answers. So, it's important to remember that it's not giving you an answer and it's not magic and it's not intelligent. What it's doing is giving you a statistically plausible set of words that sound pretty real.KID: I want to know how much water usage does AI use and will it affect our future water?DR. LINDA MCIVER: Data centres do use a lot of water, and they use the water to cool the systems because when they're doing a lot of work, a lot of computational work, they get very hot and they need the water to cool down. One of the interesting things, though, is that it doesn't have to be fresh water all of the time. Some systems are what we call closed loop, which means they sort of load up with water when they're first built, but then they only use that water to cool themselves down. It's a little bit more expensive to build, but it's actually much more sensible to run in the long term.KID: Our biggest question is, how does AI adapt so quickly?DR. LINDA MCIVER: So, one of the things with AI is that we think that we have a relationship with it, and that's because, as human beings, we're really good at forming relationships with things. Even if you have a puppet like my friend Ralph here, you know, and I know that he's just a bit of soft fabric and it's my hand that's moving him. But if Ralph looks sad or if he's happy or if he takes a bow, you kind of react to that and you build a relationship with this thing that you know is just a bit of fabric on my hand. And that's important to remember when we're dealing with AI because we have an emotional reaction to AI as well. We feel like we're building a relationship with it. We feel like it's relating to us in a really special way. It's not. It's just lines of code and it's relating to everybody exactly the same way.KID: What harm will AI do to our future?DR. LINDA MCIVER: There's a lot of noise about AI being the end of humanity, and AI is, it's just software. It's not intelligent. It can't do things that it wasn't told to do. The language about them going rogue and stuff is wildly overstated, but there are harms that AI can do and some of those harms, a lot of those harms come back to bias. AIs are trained on mostly data from the internet and data from the internet, as we all know, isn't very reliable. And there's a lot of bias in there. Then you will see the AIs replicating that bias.KID: And does AI remember what I tell it, and where does that information go?DR. LINDA MCIVER: Everything you type into an AI gets used by that AI and by that company to train both that system and future systems down the line. And anyone in the company that made the chatbot can see it. So, it's really important to remember it's not private and it is stored. Sometimes chatbots even pull up their training data without changing it. So, what you type into the chatbot will sometimes come out as somebody else's answer. Probably not with your name attached, but you never know.We'll have part two of our AI Q and A next week, and if you want to ask your own question, Dr McIver will be here for BTN Live on Friday, so you can check out our website for all those details.Now let's test your news knowledge with our weekly quiz.News QuizMigration was a big topic in the news last week, with the Federal Opposition promising a huge cut to net migration, which is the number of people who come to live in Australia minus the people who leave. How many net migrants would the Coalition allow into Australia per year if it's elected? 1000, 100,000 or 1 million? It says it would reduce net migration to 100,000 people per year for two years, which is less than half of what Australia has now.ANGUS TAYLOR, OPPOSITION LEADER: And what we are proposing today is the biggest cut to immigration in the history of this country.What issue is behind these big protests in France? Education, housing, or migration? It's education standards and classroom conditions and resources. At least 190 students have been injured, more than 5,000 people arrested, and more than 400 schools have been closed or disrupted.Meanwhile, protests shut down India's capital on the weekend. They were led by a group that takes its name from what insect? The Dragon Fly, beetle or cockroach? It's the cockroach. The name actually comes from an insult India's Chief Justice directed at unemployed youth, which was taken up by student protesters earlier this year. These protests were over the Indian Election Commission's changes to voter lists.Which Aussie animal is represented on the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Logo which was released last week? It's a pink cockatoo.KOREY BODDINGTON, THE AUSTRALIAN PARALYMPIAN: Like those videos of cockatoos dancing online, I think it's pretty cool.The spikes on the logo represent the cocky's comb, but it's also an Olympic flame, a map of Queensland and a three and a two.Squishies SafetyReporter: Saskia MortarottiINTRO: Now to some warnings about toys that you may well own a few of yourself. I'm talking about squishies. While they're pretty fun to play with, there have been some cases recently of kids being badly injured by them. I'll let Sas tell you more.YOUTUBER: I did not realise how many squishies I had until now.YOUTUBER: Squishy Trading.YOUTUBER: Beautiful.YOUTUBER: No way. No way!SASKIA MORTAROTTI, REPORTER: They're soothing, they're satisfying, and of course, they're squishy. Do you have any squishies?KID: Yes, I've got a few. I've got some NeeDohs and I've got cube squishies as well.KID: I've got a coconut squishy that is green.I can actually see you have one in your hand right now! What do you have?KID: Squishies stuffed with things in them and a lot of other stuff.KID: A lot of people in my school have squishies.KID: I always see kids playing with them outside, and they're always having a lot of fun with them.KID: Everybody likes them and so do I.They're made from things like foam, rubber and silicone and can have fillings like gel or beads.KID: I think my favourite parts of squishies is, well, first off, the name, you can squish them. And second off, I do like the texture. So when you squish them, it could be also hard, but it can also be very soft.KID: I like the sensory bit about it.KID: They relieve your stress and you don't feel so nervous anymore.KID: I like the feel and it just calms me down when I'm stressed.While it all sounds pretty good, there is a bit of a problem. You see, because these things are so popular, there has been a boom of squishies making their way into the country that aren't necessarily up to scratch when it comes to safety.OLIVER JONES, PROFESSOR OF ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY: Sometimes they're made on the cheap, sometimes they're made quickly because there's a real demand for them. So someone's trying to make them quick and then they're just not as good quality. And so they can break more easily. And sometimes they can have chemicals left in from the manufacturing process that we really wouldn't want.Recently, we've seen some stories from around the world of kids getting injured while playing with squishies.NEWS ANCHOR: A squishy toy has exploded in the face of a 10-year-old boy at the Royal Adelaide Show, sending him to hospital.MASON: There was, like, a stall, with, like, squishies and stuff, and I was going to see if I was going to buy one and it popped on me.It's prompted some Aussie hospitals to put out warnings.OLIVER: Some of the dangers we've had with squishies are when people have put them in the microwave, which you shouldn't do. That's a no-no, right? And what happens then is the gel inside expands because lots of things expand with heat and then that, it can burst. And then you've got a sticky, hot substance which sticks to your skin. And that's not a good thing.Sometimes we see in online trends that people do things like cut them open or put them in the freezer.OLIVER: That's something they're not designed to be played with like that. The chemicals on the inside should stay on the inside. Just use it like it's supposed to be used in the hands and stretching.Oliver says it's best to buy squishies from trustworthy places. That's because toys sold in shops here in Australia have to pass safety standards, whereas ones brought directly from overseas may not have been checked.OLIVER: Look at the packaging. If there are spelling mistakes on the box, that might be another red flag. If you get it out and it smells really strongly of chemicals, that's probably another thing that you might want to just not use that one.So we can keep playing with our squishies?OLIVER: Yes, you can keep playing with your squishies.Just the right way.OLIVER: The right ones. Yes.2026 Nobel PrizeReporter: Jack EvansINTRO: Last week some of the world's smartest people were recognised with some of the world's most famous awards. I'm talking about the Nobel Prizes. Jack found out what they are and who they went to this year.LORD REG: Oh, good day! I am Lord Reginald Dwight the third.VOICE OVER: The fourth! The fourth!LORD REG: I stand before you a most distinguished candidate for this year's Nobel Prize. But why? Well, I am a lord who possesses several estates, fourteen thoroughbred horses, a private pool, a public pool. Oh, and did I mention I'm a lord?JACK EVANS, REPORTER: While being a lord does make you noble, it isn't enough to win the Nobel Prize.LORD REG: No-bell? Well, I don't believe we have any bells. Father, do we have any bells?The Nobel Prizes are prestigious international awards handed out each year for achievements that have benefited humankind. And they exist thanks to this guy, Alfred Nobel.LORD REG: Ah, a fellow nobleman.Uh, sure. Now, be a good sport, Reg, and put on this beard.LORD REG: Bother!Alfred was born in 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden. He was an inventor, entrepreneur, scientist and businessman. He also wrote poetry and drama. Oh, and he invented dynamite.LORD REG: Boom!JACK: While the explosives were quite useful, dynamite was also used as a deadly weapon. And it's thought that made Nobel a bit sad. So, before he died, he made a note in his will that part of his fortune would go towards rewarding people and organisations that have given…LORD REG: …the greatest gift to humankind.The first Nobel Prizes were handed out in 1901, and have continued to be awarded most years since in areas including physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and…LORD REG: Nobility!JACK: No!LORD REG: Bility?JACK: Uh, no, peace. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the likes of Malala Yousafzai, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr, Theodore Roosevelt, Barack Obama, and now…LORD REG: Lord Reginald!ANNOUNCER: The Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 to Navanetham "Navi" Pillay.Navi Pillay is a South African-born judge who has devoted her life to human rights. She was the human rights chief for the United Nations and a judge at the International Criminal Court.NAVI PILLAY, NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER: This award strengthens my conviction that we must stand together in defence of the rule of law, in defence of independent courts and an international legal order based on principle rather than selectivity.As for the other awards, the Physiology or Medicine award went to these three scientists. They discovered a way to use light to turn cells on and off to give us a working picture of the brain. The Physics award went to Francis Halzen for his work on ghost messages from space, which is not as supernatural as you'd think. Meanwhile, the Nobel Prize in chemistry went to two scientists who discovered how to copy just one side of a 'mirror-image' molecule, helping us to build safer medicines. And the Literature award went to poet and essayist Anne Carson, whose work blends ancient Greek literature with modern life to create new forms of poetry and storytelling. The winners take home a pretty decent cash prize, as well as a rather fancy diploma and medal…LORD REG: Something you can 'lord' over other people. That's a lord joke.JACK: Yes, we got it.LORD REG: Oh, perhaps I could win the Nobel Prize for being witty. Ha-ha-ha! Could you imagine? Father! Father!SportCOMMENTATOR: The great race is under way.The 2026 Bathurst 1000 was full of drama and excitement. 2024 champions Todd Hazelwood and Brodie Kostecki had a healthy lead, but disaster struck late on when a slow pit stop sent them from first to fifth.COMMENTATOR: Hang on, we're in trouble here.They clawed their way back and were set to finish second until…COMMENTATOR: He's run out of fuel.…they passed De Pasquale to become kings of the mountain.Meanwhile, the AFLW has celebrated its Pride Round. It was a massive weekend. That was capped off by a big 59 to 32 win for the Carlton Blues against the Sydney Swans.For this last bit of sport, we're heading to London, where some not-so-professional athletes have taken part in a downhill skiing event. Participants had to strap lumps of ice to their feet and slide down this icy track covered in detergent, making it rather slippery.PARTICIPANT: Managed somehow to do the splits for a good couple of seconds. I haven't done that since I was about 17. Definitely feeling it now.FIFA KidReporter: Saskia MortarottiINTRO: Finally, today we're going to meet one of the teenagers who'll be competing for Australia in the upcoming FIFA Under 15 World Cup in Azerbaijan. Mark is from Darwin and Sas found out what his selection means to him and his club mates.SASKIA MORTAROTTI, REPORTER: Kit? On. Boots? Laced. Drills? Oh yeah, there are plenty of those to be done for 15-year-old Mark here. Mark's a midfielder for Darwin Olympic, and recently, he found out some big news. He's been selected for Australia's national team to play the first-ever FIFA Under 15 World Cup held in Baku, Azerbaijan.MARK O'CONNOR, FOOTBALLER: Well, when I found out, you know, I was super, I'd say almost in shock, in disbelief, because I didn't expect any of this to happen.The tournament is set to kick off on October 22nd, and 191 teams from all over the world will participate. So, yeah, Mark's pretty stoked to represent Aus and don the green and gold.MARK: It means everything to me. You know, ever since I was playing from a young age, this is the type of thing that I'd want to be selected for.Mark will be part of a 14-player squad made up of teens from all over the country, and he's the only one from the Northern Territory.MARK: To play against some of the best junior players in the world, it's really special to me. I'm sure there's many lessons I can learn from these players that I'm going to be against and playing with.Mark says it's taken a lot of hard work to get here.MARK: I was playing in the street ever since I was little with kids in my neighbourhood. I started out at the same level as everyone else, playing for the same clubs in the NT, and you can really make it to any level you want through enough hard work and dedication.YIANNI PROUZOS, DARWIN OLYMPIC PRESIDENT: The first day I seen him play for Darwin Olympic, I knew that he had some special, the way he moves with the ball and the change of direction.Mark says coming from a smaller city like Darwin can make things more challenging.MARK: I'd say the hardest part for me was kind of always being the underdog in many tournaments we'd go to away.MARK: It's not really normal for kids in the NT to be selected for things like this. So, ever since I've grown up, I've kind of not really expected this, no.His club is pretty proud.ANTHONY REICHSTEIN, FOOTBALLER: I think I'll miss, like, the seeing him at trainings.And they're excited for what the tournament could mean for the future.ANTHONY: I think it gives a lot of the boys and girls up here a chance to make it now, because they're clearly looking at Darwin now. And, yeah, it gives everyone hope.YIANNI: If a boy from Northern Territory can do it, anyone can do it.MARK: I'd say to all young players in the NT that the pathways are there to reach these kind of teams, and you just need to put in the hard work to reach it.CloserI'm sure we're going to be seeing much more of Mark in the future. Well, that's all we have for today. I hope you've enjoyed your first BTN of term four. Many more episodes to come. So we'll be back next week. And of course, Newsbreak will be here every weekday keeping you up to date. Have the best week and I'll see you really soon. Bye.AI Update 🤖 Justina breaks down the biggest AI news from the school holidays, from a Medicare data hack to fears about humanity's future. AI Q&A 💬 An AI expert gives her opinion on some big questions from young Aussies, like who made AI and whether it should have rights. Squishies Safety 🧸 Sas explains why these super-satisfying toys have made headlines and how to play with them safely. 2026 Nobel Prize 🏅 Jack reveals this year's Nobel winners and shares the fascinating history behind the famous prizes. FIFA Kid ⚽ Meet 15-year-old Mark from Darwin, who's representing Australia at the first-ever FIFA U-15 World Cup in Azerbaijan.CreditsAmelia Moseley, PresenterTue 13 Oct 2026 at 12:30amTue 13 Oct 2026 at 12:30amTue 13 Oct 2026 at 12:30amShareFacebookX (formerly Twitter)5itemsIn this episode1 of 5AI UpdateDuration: 4 minutes 18 seconds4m 18s2 of 5AI Q&ADuration: 3 minutes 54 seconds3m 54s3 of 5Squishies SafetyDuration: 3 minutes 32 seconds3m 32s4 of 52026 Nobel PrizeDuration: 3 minutes 57 seconds3m 57s5 of 5FIFA KidDuration: 2 minutes 37 seconds2m 37sBTN Quiz Ep 28, 2026AI Q&A – TR (PDF)2026 Nobel Prize – TR (PDF)Episode 28 – Package (PDF)Episode 28 – Package (Word)Back to top