There are some crazy mixed-up themes coming out of the ever-more-mainstream discussions about artificial intelligence in this country.
Take Tuesday. Andrew Charlton delivered a speech to the AFR’s AI Summit in Sydney in which he claimed that “trust” is the single biggest factor that decide whether and Australian AI industry will thrive or stall.
“Trust,” he says, “is the single factor, more than chips, more than capital, more than energy that will decide whether a local AI sector is successful,” before going on to announce that the government’s AI Safety Institute – parked within the Industry department – is now operational.
Also on Tuesday, at the very moment Dr Charlton was declaring the AI Safety Institute open, Industry minister Tim Ayres was sitting in a Senate Estimates being accused of under-funding and under-prioritising AI safety.
Independent ACT senator David Pocock said the government was out of step with the concerns of Australians about AI. Funding for the AI Safety Institute – at $29 million over four years – was not adequate for the role it was being asked to perform, he said.
Senator Pocock compared the $29 million being spent over four years in Australia to the £66 million (A$124 million) annual budget of the UK’s AI Security Institute (formerly the AI Safety Institute.
If “trust” is indeed the single biggest factor in whether an Australian AI sector thrives or stalls, then it needs more attention.
But then, we could become the society that is the most trusting in the world of AI, and we would still need the chips, the capital, the talent, the energy and water to build that thriving local AI sector.
At face value, you would have to say that Australia’s AI Safety Institute looks pretty anaemic in terms of budget. But then, if this government was serious, it would not have put the Institute inside the Department of Industry, a place where good ideas and initiatives go to die.
Andrew Charlton’s first instinct on AI is the right one – that Australia must do whatever it can build a strong local AI industry, or be slavishly dependent of offshore tech.
“We can build a world-class Australian AI industry, or we can permanently rent that capability abroad – importing, in perpetuity, the most important technology of the age,” Dr Charlton.
Hear, hear! But if trust really is an issue, then resourcing for AI safety should match the challenge.
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