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Chapter 1: What are the concerns Australians have about AI development?
Agents have got a level of autonomy that we haven't seen before from technology. How are companies, organisations of any stripe, sort of responsible for what an AI might do?
Yeah, this is a very complicated, complex question. And I think the law in most, in all countries, I don't think is settled on this. I think there's a much more profound threat to all professionals, in fact, all society, which is the impact of this technology on our critical thinking skills. Three years ago or two years ago, top of our recruiting list were computer scientists, data scientists.
Now I'm looking to hire philosophers.
G'day, I'm Andrew Williams and this is part two of our SQUIZ special series on artificial intelligence. Mindaroo Foundation is an Australian philanthropy driven by a commitment to create a future where people and the environment we depend on can thrive. Now they have a focus on AI, particularly how we can find the right balance between protecting people and unlocking its benefits.
And recent research commissioned by Mindaroo found that nearly two-thirds of Australians think the pace of AI development is too fast, and they want to see the government ensure that we're resilient to the risks of AI, that our laws can keep pace with how fast the tech is developing.
So we've spoken to Peter Lee, who has been working at the centre of AI and the law for longer than most of us have probably known what AI is.
He's a partner at the international law firm Simmons & Simmons, and he talks about how we can stay resilient in Australia when it comes to data, how we as workers can try and thrive in the age of AI rather than get left behind, and the ways in which AI can and can't organise your haircut appointment. Here's Peter.
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Chapter 2: How can organizations ensure accountability for AI actions?
Peter, this is your first time in Australia as we speak today, but you're an expert when it comes to resilience and regulation in artificial intelligence. Globally, how do you think the world at this point is kind of keeping up with a very quickly evolving technology?
It's fragile, I'd say. I mean, in some aspects, we are relatively comfortable in terms of some of the underlying infrastructure, although we're heavily dependent on certain countries, notably the US, and particular large private companies within those jurisdictions. for a lot of the infrastructure.
I think one of the big challenges now, the new paradigm that we're facing is agentic AI, which increases the threat area, particularly from a cybersecurity perspective for organizations and companies. And so I would say this is so fast moving. There aren't many people who really deeply understand this space.
So in terms of resilience, what would be your advice to, say, the Australian government, for example, to make sure that they're keeping the country resilient against whatever threats might come from this?
Well, I think the main approach would be to really understand the tech stack that they are operating with, to understand where the fragility in that is and where the reliance on overseas companies are and where your data sovereignty lies.
And then really to try and understand the levers you've got to be able to at least control a bit more of that ecosystem and understand, you know, what if some of that infrastructure becomes unavailable or there's a malicious attack or it goes offline? How are you going to keep your critical services working?
And that's especially important for security services, but also, you know, health services and everything else.
Could you just expand on that term data sovereignty that you mentioned before? What does that mean for anyone that might not have heard it before?
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Chapter 3: What is data sovereignty and why is it important?
What I mean when I think about that is the geographical residency or location of the data that you are responsible for. as a nation, usually that's linked to personal data, which is linked to people's individual rights and the privacy that they can expect. The jurisprudence and the philosophy behind this is that people have an expectation that they will be able to maintain some privacy
and their personal data will be protected. And so sovereignty in that context is about ensuring that your citizens can expect that their personal data is going to be respected and is usually kept within country or at least within countries that would not manipulate that or in any way.
Just before, you mentioned agentic AI, and that's a term that I know I've heard a lot more in the last couple of months. What do we mean when we talk about agentic AI? How does that differ to something like a large language model, generative AI, the kinds of AI that most people would be familiar with at this point?
Yeah, most people are familiar with generative AI and the large language models that sit underneath those generative AI systems, and they're fantastic for generating content. Agentic AI is also built upon large language models with certain scaffolding around it, but agents have the ability to act and perform functions themselves.
And that creates really new opportunities, but it also creates some new risks as well. You need to be concerned about what that agent can do independently and the sorts of oversights you might need to control that.
Talking about agentic AI or an AI agent, can you give an example maybe from your profession of exactly what that can do for people that haven't encountered it before?
Yeah, I can give a real-world example that might help people here. I mean, I think if you were to Google where to get your hair cut. For example, you might get a list of 100 different barbers in your local area.
If you use generative AI to ask where you should get a haircut in Canberra, you might get a more sophisticated answer, and you might then ask it further questions about the style that you wanted.
or how quickly you wanted it done if you ask an agent to sort your haircut out for you then the agent would have the autonomy and the ability to go away and book that appointment probably book your taxi there pay for the haircut as well so it's got the ability to conduct actions on your behalf all you have to do is get in the taxi and get there sit in the chair with the barber
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Chapter 4: What distinguishes agentic AI from traditional AI models?
We need to be a bit careful about anthropomorphizing this technology. But I think people do find it quite useful to think about agents as digital workers sometimes. And so giving that digital worker, the agent, a job description or a resume can really help people understand, especially non-technical people, to understand what that agent can and can't do and what it should or shouldn't be doing.
And that allows you to track its performance a bit like you would with a human worker. And if necessary, you know, fire it.
Yeah, indeed. So you mentioned before that, you know, an AI sort of is often seen as a worker in a company. Now, if a worker does something wrong in your business, you know, they can be fired for it and the company is held, you know, potentially liable for what they've done. How does that work when it's an AI?
How are companies, organisations of any stripe sort of responsible for what an AI might do, particularly an agentic AI in their organisation?
Yeah.
Yeah, this is a very complicated, complex question. And I think the law in most, in all countries, I don't think is settled on this. There's a couple of maybe interesting discussion points here. The first is academic lawyers sometimes call this the many hands problem.
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Chapter 5: How can AI agents impact the way we book services like haircuts?
Because across the value chain, you've got lots of different actors when it comes to deploying AI systems. So you'll have the frontier model companies, you'll have the systems developers, you'll then have the companies that might be deploying them, and then you'll have the users themselves. And there'll be many more actors along the chain there.
And so trying to work out when something goes wrong who is accountable is very complex. And it's also made more complicated by the fact that these different actors are often in different jurisdictions, which have different approaches to AI law. I think the common law jurisdictions will, in time, start to give us some more clarity around this.
Particularly, I think we're expecting a lot of litigation over the next five years or so as people start to become impacted by these technologies. That could be because we see job displacement. So you might get actions from trade unions. You might get class actions at an environmental level from communities.
And I think all of these things are going to shape the way we perceive accountability in this space.
Is there a country that is sort of leading the way in regulating this? I mean, you mentioned like a lot of the powers residing with tech companies at the moment. Is there a country that you would sort of point to and go, oh, this government is doing particularly well in this area or leading the way in this area?
Governments are really struggling to manage this technology and regulate it.
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Chapter 6: What are the legal responsibilities of companies using AI?
And there's various different models. I think Singapore have got some very interesting guidelines now that they've released this year about agentic technologies in particular. There are some emerging, quite powerful, and I think very useful global standards, which are sometimes described as soft law.
So they're not mandatory law, but they're standards created by groups of experts that organizations can implement, and in some cases get certified against. 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.
Yeah, this is something that the Australian government did in December where it released an artificial intelligence plan. You've been participating here in an artificial intelligence roundtable, which is why you're here in Canberra as we record this. And that was very much the approach. What are the potential risks of that approach from Australia's perspective?
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.
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Chapter 7: Which countries are leading in AI regulation?
Finally, obviously you've worked within the legal system and you've worked a lot in AI. How have you seen it change the way that the legal system works in the UK or more broadly?
i think i think the impact of ai on all sorts of white collar knowledge work is going to be absolutely profound there was a paper that was written in the last month or so with anthropic that looked at the impact of ai on professional work and the legal sector in particular was one that's going to be likely to be very highly impacted I think this comes at a couple of levels.
I mean, clearly our business model as law firms is likely to be impacted because we currently rely on selling our time. And part of the benefit of these tools should be to increase efficiency. Yeah, save time. Save time, we spend less time doing things, and we still get a consistently good output.
But also I think there's a much more profound threat to all professionals, in fact all society, which is the impact of this technology on our critical thinking skills. And we're often finding that people are starting to outsource their brains to these tools. It's been happening for a while. You think about people's inability to navigate when they rely on Google Maps.
Yeah, Google Maps.
Don't know where anything is anymore. Other technologies like that. But we're now seeing that play out in professional work as well. And so there's been some recent research done on that which shows there does appear to be a direct correlation. And it's, you know, human nature to be a bit lazy and rely on these tools. But just relying blindly on the output
is dangerous because the underlying large language models can be fraught with bias. They can hallucinate. And so I do think that is a really, you know, that's a big threat to our profession that we need to counter.
And the best way to do that is to treat these tools as sparring partners, we found, and also to really understand the best ways to use them and to build in some checks and balances along the way.
I was about to ask if there's a white collar worker, whether it's a lawyer or anyone of that stripe listening to you now, is that your sort of best advice to them to kind of be able to thrive in this new era is to make sure that they're not fully reliant on an AI tool, but maybe just using it to make themselves better or more efficient?
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Chapter 8: How is AI changing the landscape of professional work?
Right. Interesting. All right. That's good news for anyone with a philosophy degree, which I don't know that I necessarily expected we were going to get to in this interview, but that's great. Peter, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening. And thanks to the Mindaroo Foundation for making that interview possible.
For more on their research around AI, a link is in your show notes.