The Labor government is establishing a new agency that will help guide AI legislation and promote safe use of the technology.
Industry, Science and Resources minister Tim Ayres.
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The government intends the new agency, the Australian AI Safety Institute (AISI), to be an authority for assessing the risk of using the technology and an industry watchdog ensuring AI companies comply with Australian laws.
Industry, Science and Resources minister Tim Ayres said the institute would be the government’s source of “AI safety expertise”.
“AI can revitalise industry, boost productivity and lift the living standards of all Australians, but there are two sides to this coin. While the opportunities are immense, we need to make sure we are keeping Australians safe from any malign uses of AI,” Ayres said.
The government said it would give the institute “capability” to ensure AI companies comply with Australian laws but did not provide detail as to what that would entail.
iTnews has contacted the Department of Industry, Science and Resources for comment.
While not identical, the AISI does share some similarities with another body that the Department of Finance is establishing to regulate use of the technology closer to its own remit.
Finance, working with the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA), is establishing an oversight committee to ensure that government departments and agencies deploy the technology responsibly and consistently.
The DTA is currently drawing up terms of reference for the committee, which will be populated by appointees from the public service, ahead of a launch scheduled for early next year.
The committee is expected to be operational by late next year and to have reached full maturity by early 2027.
The committee is a key deliverable under the whole-of-government AI plan that Finance minister Katy Gallagher announced earlier this month.
In the background, the Department of Home Affairs, which is responsible for the safety of the government technology procurements, has been briefing Commonwealth technology suppliers about its latest AI Policy Advisory and two relevant Protective Security Policy Framework (PSPF) directions.
About two weeks ago, Home Affairs hosted a town hall for 80 suppliers to discusses the advisory and the two PSPF directions.
It’s understood that the group included representatives from the Google, Amazon Web Services, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and others currently certified under its Hosting Certification Framework to supply generative AI technologies.