While there are techniques to address the predictive error associated with overfitting, there are also privacy concerns from being able to learn so much from the data.

All of that data we generate in our day-to-day lives is valuable grist to the mill for the tech companies seeking to train their AI systems.

The edtech sector is growing massively. The problem is that we don’t know very much about how effective many edtech apps or programs are – or if they are effective at all. And some effects may be negative.

Australia faces many of the problems we do at the moment, but is fundamentally a wealthier country, which is why the last few budgets there have seen left and right-leaning governments alike make some big investments in tech and knowledge economy initiatives they hope will lift salaries and high value exports in the longrun.

A report from ultrafast broadband network operator Chrous and the Internet of Things Alliance suggests at least $2.2 billion in net economic benefit could be created in the next decade through the use of networked IoT devices.

With one in four people around the world reporting being lonely, it is no wonder so many are drawn to the promise of a friend programmed to be “always here to listen and talk, always on your side”.