Armidale City Public School student Hamish McMillan will be in the national spotlight with Australian science legend Dr Karl Kruszelnicki in Sydney later this month.
Twelve year old Hamish was one of hundreds of primary and secondary school students throughout the state who submitted entries in the Young Scientist Awards conducted annually by the Science Teachers’ Association of NSW to be presented on Friday 22 November at UTS.
Next day, Hamish will be one of four specially selected young award winners to take to the stage at Skepticon, the annual national convention hosted by Australian Skeptics Inc.
Dr Karl, who is one of the keynote speakers at Skepticon, will act as MC on stage with Hamish and his three fellow students.
“We are proud to be a major sponsor the Young Scientist Awards,” said Australian Skeptics Inc Executive Officer Tim Mendham.
“For many years, we have supported the Young Scientist Awards Program because it aligns perfectly with Australian Skeptics’ mission to inspire kids to investigate and to question.
“This is the first time Skepticon has involved young people as presenters. It is our way of recognising the scientists of the future and we were thrilled when Dr Karl agreed to do the honours.”
Hamish is thrilled at the prospect of meeting Dr Karl.
“When the email came through the other day, I thought, OMG!”
“I took it straight to Mum and she said exactly the same, OMG!”
The exact details of Hamish’s award are under wraps until the big announcement in Sydney on Friday 22.
The two major categories are Scientific Investigations and Technological Innovations with Grand Awards for Budding Young Scientist, Rural Primary Young Scientist and Primary Young Scientist.
Hamish’s entry was an investigation of how accurately people identify images created by Artificial Intelligence.
He surveyed 464 people in various age groups who were asked to quickly look at 12 real images and 12 images generated by AI.
The results showed only 64 per cent of participants correctly picked the real images yet 72 per cent were able to accurately label those generated by AI.
Hamish said he was grateful to his teacher, Maria Raftery, for her support and encouragement.
“She said my idea was good but told me that science was about more than having a good idea,” he said.
“She told me I would have to do a lot of hard work to develop an abstract, a summary and a conclusion. I also had to do a diary, logging everything involved in the project.
“At school, most of us are on social media which is full of Deep Fake images that have been created by AI.
“Some are easy to spot, especially people with extra fingers and hands or with eyes and faces that are misshapen. But others are not easy to spot, and I wanted to encourage people to question what they see.”
With curiosity being a hallmark of scientific investigation, Hamish says he is dealing calmly with the mystery of not knowing exactly what award he is to receive on November 22.
Hamish will also be giving a brief speech at next week’s Skeptics In the Pub on Tuesday 19 November at the Railway Hotel. The main speaker at this month’s Skeptics is Adam Blakester from Uralla, who will examine how factual and true are human-kind’s contemporary views about our biological selves.
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