Source : Perth Now news
Labor frontbencher Andrew Charlton says Australians should “adopt AI everywhere we can”, despite workers and businesses copping a “large and growing bill” for the emerging technology.
The Assistant Science Minister will make a pitch for the Albanese government’s new national standard for AI at the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy on Tuesday.
Last month, Anthony Albanese announced a new Office of AI and guidelines for data centres – measures, he said, were world-leading.
In his speech, Mr Charlton will state while artificial intelligence will lift productivity and national output, “a significant part of that gain may flow back to foreign owners” as Australians face “a large and growing bill for foreign AI”.
As many 20 per cent of Australians pay for an AI subscription, with one in three Australian business firms following suit, Mr Charlton will say.
“Putting households and businesses together, a reasonable estimate is that Australians are already spending between $5-8bn each year on artificial intelligence, with the overwhelming majority of those payments flowing offshore,” he will say.
That could rise to as much as $40bn annually within the decade, he will add.
“That would represent one of the largest recurring outflows in the Australian economy,” Mr Charlton will say.
The Assistant Minister will warn Australia is “playing at the bottom of the stack”, and that by succeeding as it had in securing data centre investment, Australia could “capture more value in the AI value tchain”.
“The next step is using the data centre advantage and investment boom to grow our AI training ecosystem, and give us advantage in compute,” he will say.
“By growing our compute and AI training ecosystem, we will be able to retain, create and attract world-class research and entrepreneurial talent.
“That deepening talent and entrepreneurial base, without any hand of government, will go on to deliver economic growth, enhance sovereignty and deliver a return for Australia.”
Mr Charlton will say expectation five of the new national standards asks data centre providers wanting to build in Australia “to enable access to compute for Australian start-ups, innovative small businesses, researchers and not-for-profits, on favourable terms”.
That would include local AI models and businesses.
“Can a country like Australia compete in the intelligence layer itself?” Mr Charlton will ask.
“Twelve months ago, most serious people would have said no. The frontier looked like a closed contest between a handful of American labs with capital budgets larger than the GDP of small nations, and the only rational strategy for a middle power was to buy well and adopt fast.”
Now, Mr Charlton will say the usage of “open-weight models” was almost on-par with closed models, with the cost of capability collapsing, and the market becoming “genuinely more competitive”.
“The overall implication is that capabilities which seemed out of reach for a country like Australia just twelve months ago, whether strategic or commercial, now appear more feasible – and its likely this trend will continue,” he will say.
“We have real assets to work with. More than fifteen hundred AI-focused companies. Genuine strength in medical imaging, in agriculture, in mining technology, in fintech, in quantum. World-class research institutions. And data of extraordinary quality in domains where we are already a global leader.”
He continued: “the government will have further announcements with the National AI Centre to make in coming weeks on this front. The Finance Minister and I have been doing further work and plan to address Commonwealth CIOs on the matter later this year.
“We should retain the value from scarce national assets. We need to convert Australian data into Australian value. Our agricultural data, our resources data and our creative outputs are valuable intellectual property.
“Ownership, licensing and procurement determine who captures that value. It is why the Prime Minister was right to rule out weakening the rights of Australian creators as a price of investment. Our data and our creative work are national assets, and assets are licensed, not surrendered.”
As a result, Mr Charlton will urged Australians to use AI.
“Adopt AI everywhere we can, to lift the productivity of Australian workers and Australian businesses. That sets the size of the prize,” he will say.
“Second, build around it. Create the companies, the capabilities, the intellectual property and the complementary assets that ensure Australians capture a meaningful share of the value AI creates. That sets our share of the prize.“We should not choose between productivity and value capture. We need both. Because GDP tells us how much Australia produces. But our prosperity depends on how much of the resulting income Australians receive.”
Mr Charlton will say Australia, in the past, welcomed the world’s capital investment.
“But, we brought something valuable of our own to the bargain, and used that build our step ladders. Our task in the age of intelligence is to do it again,” he will say
