It has been a big week for the industry in Sydney with Technology Council’s National Tech Summit rolling through town. It is the third year for the Summit, which has previously been held in Melbourne (last year) and Brisbane in 2023.
It will be interesting to see whether the Tech Council is able to see this travelling annual show continue its progression around Australian capitals, or if will make its home on a rotation of eastern seaboard capitals.
Regardless, it’s a great event, heavy with the globalist view of the world that comes naturally to software giants but nonetheless provided a platform for serious and open policy discussion.
Scott Farquhar coloured in some of the detail of his proposal to enable a “digital embassy” regulatory structure – first put forward in a National Press Club address in July – to be used to allow foreign providers to service markets through the region without necessarily being governed by Australian law.
The idea is that this regulatory change would be used to attract the big tech players to build a significant data centre and AI factory presence in Australia that would potentially service the region.
It’s quite radical and certainly interesting.
Assistant minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy Andrew Charlton provides some commentary on this digital embassy proposal in this podcast interview, in which he also said Australia’s digital ambitions must include building AI models and the software applications that run on them.
Not everyone loves Scott Farquhar’s idea. Peter Lewis from research outfit Essential wrote a column in The Guardian panning the proposal.
Also at the National Tech Summit, Industry minister Tim Ayers said the big tech firms still have some work to do in building trust in AI, and in establishing the social licence that will underwrite its deployment.
NSW Premier Chris Minns told the Summit that he hoped the federal government was looking at ways to encourage superannuation funds to invest more in VC’s – and said the housing affordability issue in Sydney was a problem for tech because so many young people were leaving the city.
Meanwhile, federal Opposition leader Sussan Ley announced a mini-reshuffle of her frontbench, which included Tasmanian senator Claire Chandler’s return to the ministry covering Cyber and Science.
Sydney-based MP Simon Kennedy was appointed to the new role of shadow minister for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Scrutiny of Government Waste.
In the news:
Scott Farquhar unpacks his ‘digital embassies’ plan – InnovationAus [$]
Australian ambition must include local AI models: Charlton – InnovationAus
Australian culture, resources and democracy for $4,300 a year? Thanks for the offer, tech bros, but no thanks – The Guardian
OpenAI announces Stargate UK, with up to 8,000 GPUs at Nscale data centres – Data Centre Dynamics
UK: World’s first quantum computer built using standard silicon chips launched – Interesting Engineering
Anthropic And OpenAI Pay This $450 Million Startup To Test AI’s Capacity For Evil – Forbes
Claire Chandler returns in shadow Cyber and Science portfolios – InnovationAus [$]
Get serious on AI trust, Tim Ayres tells the tech sector – InnovationAus [$]
Chris Minns: Unlock superannuation for VC investment – InnovationAus
Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.