- Albanese to create Office of AI to design national rules and oversee policy.
- Office will map Australian standards, streamline approvals, and attract international investment.
- Government cites risks to jobs, defense, energy, education and threats from AI-driven disinformation.
- Anthropic lobbied for copyright reform to enable model training, prompting pressure from creatives to protect unlicensed works.
- Data center investment led March quarter growth; rapid buildout raises energy, water and foreign ownership concerns.
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will create an Office of AI to design national rules for a technology disrupting jobs, defence and energy while also promising an economic boom.
In a speech on Wednesday, Albanese is expected to outline his government’s plan to elevate its response to artificial intelligence with a dedicated office in his department to oversee policy.
The announcement comes after it emerged this week that US startup Anthropic has lobbied Australian officials to change copyright laws to assist the training of AI models.
Meanwhile, investment in data centres was the largest contributor to the country’s economic growth in the three months to March, according to government figures.
Excerpts of Albanese’s speech, viewed by AFP, show the centre-left leader will seek to allay public concern over AI, noting that “every country on earth is grappling with these challenges right now”.
“Getting this right will enhance our appeal to international investors, by delivering greater clarity and speed for approvals, and a streamlined process for verifying compliance,” he is expected to say.
An Office of AI will be established from Wednesday to map out Australian standards.
“This year’s National Defence Strategy identified AI and machine learning as holding ‘the most significant potential for technological disruption’ in the years ahead,” his speech says.
“Extremists and state actors already use AI to create propaganda aimed at young people — and to spread disinformation that targets democracies.”
As the technology impacts energy, law, workplaces and schools, the government will coordinate its approach in the same way it responded to the societal changes brought by aviation in the 1920s and genetics in the 1990s, the Labor leader is expected to say.
Anthropic’s chief executive Dario Amodei has lobbied Australian officials for “copyright reform” as the AI giant seeks to make a major investment in the country, government briefing notes released Monday showed.
However Albanese is also under pressure from musicians, screenwriters and artists to reject proposals from tech giants for unlicensed use of their works to train AI models.
Business investment in data centre machinery and equipment was the largest contributor to economic growth in the March quarter, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported in June, although much of the equipment was imported.
Australia is experiencing one of the world’s biggest buildouts of data centres — ranking sixth behind the US, China, Malaysia, India and Japan, HSBC chief economist for Australia, Paul Bloxham, said in a note last month.
He cautioned that exporting computing power “to the rest of the world” could ultimately benefit offshore owners.
The rate of data centre expansion has also raised questions over energy and water supply.
