It is not enough for Australia to rely on the business sector to drive AI investment, according to UNSW scientia professor Toby Walsh. For Australia to take full advantage of the AI opportunity, the Australian government also has heavy lifting to do.
Australia faces two risks right now. The first is what assistant minister for the Digital Economy Andrew Charlton calls the “Uberisation” of the economy, where all the benefits of AI offshore to Silicon Valley. The risk is that we are not sufficiently focused to capitalise on AI’s upside.
In this episode of the Commercial Disco, University of NSW Scientia Professor Toby Walsh talks to InnovationAus.com Publisher Corrie McLeod.
“We need to make investments, and that needs to be by the government as well as business, making big bets on our digital future,” Professor Walsh told the Commercial Disco podcast.
The second risk, he says, is that Australia is not proactive enough in avoiding the downside through the more forceful regulation of AI.
“I’m really worried that we’re going to repeat the mistakes of social media, where it has taken years of negative impact to finally realise that not only can we regulate social media, but that regulation is popular.”
The social media experiment has taught us that tech companies are unable to regulate themselves, he said.
The shift toward AI ‘revolution’ has accelerated again and is bringing with it equal measures of boom and doom.
But governments have a role to play at both ends of that scale. It is not enough to leave the boom to private businesses. And only nation states have the frameworks to adequately regulate.
Professor Walsh says building Australian AI capability is key.
“We need to be investing in our own capabilities. That means investing not just in data centres. Yes, we do need data centers, but we also need to be investing in people. We need to have the capabilities here,” he said.
“I welcome the idea that we should be doing more investment, but we need that investment not just from business, we need that investment from government.
“If you look at the statistics in the last five years. Canada, which has almost the same population, a very similar sort of economy to ours has invested six times what Australia has done into artificial intelligence,” Professor Walsh said.
“Singapore, which has less than a quarter of our population, has invested 15 times. UK, Germany, three times per capita what Australia’s investing.
“We have not made the investments in our future that other nations have been making,” he said.
Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.