Following Andrews’ Belt and Road attemptLike many other Victorians I’m sure, I am somewhat sceptical and apprehensive seeing our premier meet with China Communist Party officials while our backyard is in need of urgent financial watering among numerous other things.Unfortunately, I have lost complete trust in our current government and fear that in an effort to improve Victoria’s balance sheet ahead of an election, Jacinta Allan may be tempted by a China Belt and Road initiative as her predecessor Daniel Andrews tried. Fool me twice, I’m the fool!To me, this proves beyond doubt that this incompetent government will go to extreme lengths to ensure its hold on power and its big taxpayer-funded remunerations.It has now become even more urgent to show this government the front door.Surely, the next election is the Liberals to lose.Steve Naumovski, Southbank
Shifting goal posts around our watersIt doesn’t seem that long ago when Penny Wong was spending a lot of time flying around trying to lure our Pacific neighbours away from Chinese interests in favour of Australia.Today, various Victorian political elites have seemingly been wooing China interests to invest in Australia. Should we now expect to see our Pacific neighbours intervene to keep Chinese investors out of Australia? I’m confused about the goals of our foreign policy.Stephen Farrelly, Donvale
Selecting schoolsRe: “Car, two trains and a bus: Schoolgirl’s gruelling 15-hour weekly commute to class”. (15/9).The growing suburbs of Melbourne have a number of issues with lack of infrastructure provision, but it beggars belief that in an article on schooling, not one mention was made of the dozens of schools that the government has opened over the decade, including six in Melbourne’s west alone to open in 2026.If you want to send your child to a selective or private school, of course you can expect a longer commute. The taxpayer shouldn’t pay for gold-plated educational choices, especially given the wealth of quality, new public schools opening in Melbourne’s west.Alison Newman, Wollert
Don’t believe the hypeRoss Gittins’ article on AI (“AI: Much ado about something that one day may be important”, 17/9) brings a refreshing breath of reality to this much hyped topic. In reality, AI is just a very fast computer programmed to recognise patterns in huge amounts of data and help us identify key information and conclusions. This ability can certainly be applied to many good and bad uses, but its limitations need to be clearly understood.The first is the quality of the data it is fed and follows that old maxim – rubbish in gives rubbish out. The second limitation was highlighted by the Nobel Prize winning mathematician Roger Penrose in his book The Emperor’s New Mind.To compare even a super-fast computer with the human mind is farcical. We lack the fundamentally important insights into physics without which we will never fully comprehend the human mind.Just ask ChatGPT how it feels and it will tell you it does not feel, it just calculates.Tony Priestley, Fitzroy
Known unknownsAI is a very useful tool but to rely on it for decision-making would appear to leave people legally exposed because any decisions it makes are based on known knowledge at the exclusion of the unknown and so are based on generalisations and averages, and therefore a flawed argument.So those who abrogate or delegate their responsibility to AI must be held accountable for its decisions before we have more robo-debt and similar fiascos.Emma Borghesi, Rye
