Peter Lee

And they can really help ensure that you're using best practice.

It can also help in commercial arrangements as well, because if you can say you're certified against a standard, then your customer often gets quite a bit of satisfaction from that.

And then you've got places like Europe who have a specific act, the EU AI Act that's been developing, is in effect but there's aspects of it that are coming into effect over the next couple of years.

And then we have jurisdictions like the UK and Australia that so far have decided not to bring in a specific piece of legislation to deal specifically with AI.

And instead, they are relying on existing laws and sector-specific developments and guidance notes and the like.

I mean, I think the main risk is confusion and an inability for businesses, investors, members of the ecosystem to know what they should and shouldn't be doing with AI.

And that's always the perennial problem with a patchwork of laws.

And usually the only winners are the lawyers.

Yeah.

because you know we then have to advise on a really complicated structure and so i think you know i would advocate for this in the uk i think more clarity around the law in this space is always going to be welcome i mean i think the uk and australia both benefit in many ways from being a common law jurisdiction yeah

So in time, we may well see legislation, court cases, and judges can help shape the law and give us some more clarity.

But the problem with that is that this sector, this space is moving so quickly.

I'm not sure that's going to happen fast enough.

So I think particularly for the types of global clients that I do a lot of work with,

one of their biggest problems is trying to understand how they can harmonize their approach to AI globally.

That's difficult on lots of levels, but the appetite of a specific country or region that they're operating in to the law, to protection of people's privacy and various other areas can be pretty problematic for them to try and work out what their strategy ought to be.

and how to harmonize that.

So I think for Australia, it's potentially quite a challenging decision they've made not to implement a specific AI law just for that very reason of competitiveness.

I'd like to think that it won't put off investors, global companies coming to Australia.

In fact, in some ways, with some clarity and some sector guidance, it might make your country more attractive in some ways.