The Wire with Caeden

Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand is calling on the New Zealand Government to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10 to at least 14 years old. This is one of the many changes needed to improve Aotearoa New Zealand’s youth justice system.

Lisa Woods, Campaigns Director for Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand, mentions, "When a child does something seriously wrong, it is often because they have been seriously let down by society. What we then risk is using the criminal justice system to respond to issues caused by, for example, trauma and a lack of health and mental health support. This means that instead of solving problems caused by a lack of resources and services, our current laws are funnelling children into a system that can trap them for the rest of their lives. This does irrevocable damage to the child, their whānau, and to the rest of society."

Joe spoke to Lisa Woods on the matter

The MBIE has granted $1.1 million in funding to University of Canterbury researchers to develop a hyper-realistic virtual therapy avatar to help high-functioning people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to better recognise emotions and reduce ‘social blindness’.

University of Canterbury Engineering researchers Distinguished Professor Geoff Chase and Lecturer Dr Lui Holder-Pearson have been awarded $1.1 million in funding through a partnership between MBIE and Soul Machines, an AI company in Auckland.

Their project, titled ‘AI-driven Two-Way, Feedback Controlled Emotional Recognition Training for Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder’ combines three key elements:                

Hyper-realistic and responsive avatars from Soul Machines Digital DNA Studio able to show detailed emotions           

Computer vision to read subject emotional state, reaction rates in integrated tasks, stress levels (via heartrate, etc.), focus, and attention, incorporating critical subject feedback

Programmed standard, accepted therapeutic methods (behind the avatar) to respond to measured subject behaviour/actions

These technologies enable a virtualised true two-way therapeutic session, where current emotion recognition software has no subject feedback (is only one-way).

Trishil spoke to Professor Geoff Chase about his research and it’s potential.

Yesterday the Human Rights Commission launched an expansion of their Conversion Practices Support Services.

The pre-existing programme now includes a proces where victims of conversion therapy cna work with the HRC to recieve a formal apology or financial support.

To learn more, Liam spoke to the programmes manager, Andre Afamasaga about the changes and what they mean.

A linguistic study has found an origin of Austronesian language expansion across the Indo-Pacific region.

Researchers have found the indigenous people called the Amis [ah-miss] people from Eastern Taiwan are a close relative of Malayo-Polynesian people in the Austronesian language family.

David spoke to Victoria University lecturer Victoria Chen about the findings.