Albo’s plan to harness the AI boom
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to 7am. The Prime Minister has announced a plan for how Australia approaches AI, with a new office to be created, overseen by him, and new standards expected to be legislated early next year. As part of the plan, new data centres can be fast-tracked, but will have to supply their own power. And while the Prime Minister said that artists should be able to control the use of their work, there are still fears about what will happen when potential investment meets copyright law. Today, Chair of Digital Rights Watch, Lizzie O'Shea, on whether the government can walk the tightrope of the AI boom while protecting and benefiting all Australians. It's Thursday, July 16th.
So, Lizzie, let's start with what's just been announced. The Prime Minister's office will now have direct oversight over AI policy as part of this new office, the Office of Artificial Intelligence.
What is Australia’s new Office of Artificial Intelligence and who will oversee it?
Effective today, I am establishing the Office of AI in my own department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. It will work closely with the Minister for Industry and Innovation, Tim Ayres, and the Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and and the digital economy, Andrew Charlton, to coordinate the design of our new Australian standards and to bring together the work that ministers right across the government are undertaking.
What's your kind of initial understanding of what that's going to mean?
It is a little unclear, but it's good in my mind to see some centralisation around this policy field. And that's because when we talk about AI, often Australians are thinking about a range of different technologies and products. They might be thinking about the productivity tool that they use at work that's got all these supposed benefits. They might be thinking about the chatbot that their kid uses and then their concerns about safety guardrails around that. They might be thinking about how it's used in military tech. Like it's a term that covers a broad range of issues and there's some utility in having the PM step up and say, we're going to be the people that are centrally responsible for it.
And so part of the announcement involves a faster approval process for AI projects, including data centres, which is where all the potential investment is. But there are risks that come with speeding up that approval process, aren't there?
Yeah, absolutely. So this is the other big component of the announcement today, talking about fast tracking of construction of the infrastructure that supports AI technology.
It is not our goal to try and legislate for every possible eventuality or risk. That only creates the risk of Australia missing out on investment altogether. This is about having the flexibility to keep pace with change and get out in front of it.
Now, this is much more controversial for a variety of different reasons. Obviously, data centres need to make use of natural resources, things like power and water, and that will impact our access to this as consumers. So there's potential cost of living issues and the like. There's prioritisation issues associated with that. There's planning issues associated with where they go and the kind of construction that takes place and what those resources are being diverted away from. In the United States, it's been extremely controversial how these data centres have been built and often very quickly. I think it's just today that New York announced, the state of New York announced a moratorium for 12 months on the construction of data centres while they engage in a process of working out how to prioritise, how to make sure community interests are being heard.
So the fast-tracking announcement that does bring in a lot of these issues, I am a bit concerned about because my concern is that that might be fast-tracking some kind of production of infrastructure, but it is also potentially a problem for accountability. Companies like Anthropic have been sniffing around in Australia for a long time now, seeking to build large data centres to train their models on.
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