Governments warned not to hold back AI, tech start-ups
Australia is well placed to benefit from the global boom in artificial intelligence, but governments and regulators need to get the policy settings right so they don’t hinder startups.
That’s the message from two of the nation’s biggest entrepreneurs in artificial intelligence, including the head of an infrastructure company that operates a network of energy-efficient data centers powering the technology.
“This is arguably the major industrial transformation in modern history,” Craig Scroggie, chairman of the NextDC exchange, told a conference in Sydney on Tuesday.
Mr Scroggie echoed comments made earlier in the day by OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman that Australia was potentially at a good point in AI development.
Both noted the country’s stable security and political environment, clear regulatory regimes and natural energy resources that could support its future as a global leader.
While the AI industry is still in its relatively early stages, it attracts trillions of dollars in investment annually globally; It is a pool that Australia should also benefit from.
McKinsey Partner Angus Dawson pointed to the US taking a light touch on regulation, relying on voluntary commitments from tech companies and industry-led legislation to encourage rapid innovation.
“There’s actually a logic to this because there’s no way to regulate quickly enough to really understand what’s going on and think about the consequences,” he told an artificial intelligence conference hosted by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
“As a country, we have to decide where we want to be on this spectrum, otherwise we will find that we are actually holding everything back.”
Square Peg Co-Founder Paul Bassat, who was also one of the founders of the Seek employment site in 1997, said that there are some large domestic technology companies in Australia such as Canva, Afterpay and Airwallex.
“We are strongest at the application layer (applying the technology), historically we have generally been less strong at the edge (or development) of the technology,” he said.
Mr Bassat said Australia needed many more new technology businesses to get the lift they needed to compete globally.
“We’re going to need a lot of new companies,” he said, adding that he didn’t want to get into a debate about the merits of this month’s federal budget, which has been criticized for not providing enough support for start-ups.
“Every single lever needs to be in place to make sure we produce a lot of small and medium-sized businesses.
“Start-ups are new companies that will produce jobs that will be the future of the country.
“This is the mission of every policymaker, anyone who really cares about what kind of economy, what kind of society we will have in the next 20 years.”
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