Warning of ‘supercharged harm’ from unregulated AI
Australia must urgently increase spending on artificial intelligence and research and development to prevent a generation of young people being “sacrificed for the profit of big tech”.
Australia has not adequately regulated artificial intelligence and fears the same mistakes made about introducing guardrails for social media will be repeated, UNSW Professor Toby Walsh will tell the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday.
“Social media should have been a wake-up call about the harms of unregulated AI,” he will say.
“We are about to amplify the harm we see on social media with a much more powerful and convincing technology.”
Prof Walsh believes new harms are emerging in artificial intelligence that were not considered when current Australian laws were drafted.
He will talk about the “anger, rage and despair” he feels in political conversations about AI being dominated by big tech companies.
“There are huge financial incentives for the tech industry to move quickly and disrupt things, disrupt things like the mental health of our young people,” he says.
“What I fear most is that I will come back here in 3-4 years and say: “We tried to warn you. “But now another generation of young Australians has been sacrificed for the profit of big tech.”
Noting the historic low in Australia’s research and development spending, Prof Walsh will call on the country to increase investment to bring it on par with other developed economies such as South Korea or Sweden.
“Our future is not in transporting red soil and coal to China,” he will say.
“It will be in bits and bytes, increasingly AI-generated bits and bytes.”
Prof Walsh, who also made statements on Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, says that it is outrageous that the technology giant is allowed to trade in Australia by paying minimum tax.
“In my view, if they choose not to contribute to the economy that creates their wealth, they probably shouldn’t be allowed to benefit from it,” he would say.
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