Cartoonist Mark Knight pits his Terminator AI cyborg against Albo

Artificial intelligence* (AI) is here and it is changing our lives.

The internet was the great disrupter*, an industrial revolution that completely altered how we live, work and relax.

AI is the child of that technological leap - and it’s growing up pretty fast!

We are all using some form of AI, even if we don’t think we are, if we use a computer, go online, or even Google something.

Open AI’s Chat GPT, Google’s Gemini, Meta and Microsoft are all in the game. NVIDIA, the AI hardware producer of graphics* processing units (GPUs), has sent the US share market soaring as investors seek to jump on the runaway freight train.

As we know with the internet, parts of it have been great and parts of it have been not so great.

Regulation* may be in order to control this unwieldy* beast and protect the public from harm. The Australian Government and Prime Minister Albanese have in the last week set out to establish ground rules for the big tech companies wanting to operate their AI models in Australia and use our data, art, journalism, music - just about anything we create - to train their AI programs.

They want to vacuum up all our stuff, free of charge, and feed it into their AI.

“Hang on a minute …?” I hear you say.

So Albo and his government are saying we need to establish laws and a set of rules. We need to control this beast. Time for a cartoon on this most gripping topic, I thought.

I love science fiction and this AI thing reminded me a lot of a groundbreaking movie from 1984 called The Terminator.

Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as an AI Terminator cyborg* unit sent from the future in 2029 back to 1984 to assassinate* a woman who will give birth to a boy who grows up to lead the resistance of mankind against the “rise of the machines” that dominate the Earth.

Skynet is an AI that has enslaved* its human creators in the future. Sound familiar? A little too familiar.

So I thought I would draw a cartoon with the famous and near unstoppable T-800 cyborg unit from the movie symbolising the unchecked rise of artificial intelligence in our times. Who doesn’t love to draw a T-800 anyway?! On the robot, I added in some of the concerns we have with AI: the job losses as AI takes over things normally done by workers; the copyright* issues as AI steals intellectual property* to build its database*; and one of the biggest concerns: the rise of the giant, resource-hungry data centres* that store all this information.

Thousands of megawatts of electricity to power them, millions of mega litres of water to cool the massive hard drives, and more land than an entire suburb to situate these data centres on. So you can see why Albo has a fight on his hands against this T-800 unit.

I sketched the Terminator bursting through the door of the PM’s soon-to-be-created Government Office of AI. So much for knocking …

And there stands our PM, fists raised, ready for the fight of his life.

He says bravely, “I’ve got this”, with a little gulp and a bead of sweat on his brow, I imagine. The cartoon is open-ended, because the fight has just begun.

You and your class might like to discuss where all this may go. Maybe your teacher could type a request for a possible solution into ChatGPT?

POLL

GLOSSARY

artificial intelligence: the use or study of computer systems or machines that have some of the qualities that the human brain has, such as the ability to interpret and produce language

disrupter: a person or thing that prevents something, especially a system, process, or event, from continuing as usual or as expected

graphics: information displayed in the form of diagrams, graphs, pictures and symbols

regulation: the act of controlling something

unwieldy: something that is difficult to handle, move or manage because of its size, weight, shape, or complexity

cyborg: a creature that is part human and part machine

assassinate: to murder a prominent, famous, or politically important person in a planned, sudden, or secret attack

enslaved: held involuntarily and forced under threat of violence or death to work without pay for the profit of another

copyright: the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, perform, or sell an original creative work, such as a literary, musical, or artistic piece

intellectual property: creations of the mind like inventions, artistic works, designs and brand names

database: an organised collection of information or data stored electronically in a computer system

data centres: a place where a number of computers that contain large amounts of information can be kept safely

EXTRA READING

Ghost jobs you’ve never heard of

‘Remote controlled cows’ in new artificial intelligence application

‘Architects of AI’ named Time’s Person of the Year for 2025

QUICK QUIZ

1. Which companies are among the key players in the rapid growth of AI?
2. What did PM Albanese set out to establish this past week?
3. What the big tech companies want to take free of charge?
4. Why are AI data centres such a concern?
5. Mark takes inspiration from a classic science fiction film to illustrate the point of his cartoon - what is the film and what’s the basic storyline?

LISTEN TO THIS STORY

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES

1. What’s going on?

What’s going on in this Mark Knight cartoon? Outline the following:

Issue -

Why is it newsworthy?

What’s the humour?

Which side of the issue are they representing?

What do you see that makes you say that?

Time: allow 15 minutes to complete this activity

Curriculum Links: English, Personal and Social, Critical and Creative Thinking

2. Extension 

If you could turn this cartoon into a joke to tell a friend, how would you phrase it? Is it funny? Could they guess the answer?

Time: allow 10 minutes to complete this activity

Curriculum Links: English, Personal and Social, Critical and Creative Thinking

VCOP ACTIVITY

Stretch your sentence

Find a “who” in the cartoon - a person or an animal. Write it down.

Add three adjectives to describe them better.

Now add a verb to your list. What are they doing?

Add an adverb about how they are doing the action.

Using all the words listed, create one descriptive sentence.