Latest / The Morning Edition / Guardrails or ‘world leader’: How Anthony Albanese responds to OpenAI’s hack
Transcript
- 0:03S1: I'm Stephanie Peatling, filling in for Jacqueline Maley, and you're
- 0:06S1: listening to Inside Politics from the Age and The Sydney
- 0:09S1: Morning Herald. Today we're going international to talk about Prime
- 0:16S1: Minister Anthony Albanese trip to New York for the annual
- 0:19S1: meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. It's been quite
- 0:22S1: an eventful few days for the PM, who has, among
- 0:25S1: other things, spoken about Australia's attempts to crack down on
- 0:28S1: social media, met with US President Donald Trump and given
- 0:32S1: a speech in which he declared the post-World war II
- 0:34S1: World Order no longer fit for purpose. But all of
- 0:38S1: that was nearly forgotten when Mr. Albanese stood up in
- 0:41S1: what was very early on Thursday morning, our time to
- 0:44S1: announce an open AI agent infiltrating a Medicare website in June,
- 0:48S1: accessing both public and private files. Joining me in Canberra
- 0:53S1: is chief political correspondent Paul Chuckle and live from New York,
- 0:57S1: where he is travelling with the Prime Minister, national correspondent
- 1:00S1: Rob Harris. Let's get started. Let's start with you, Rob.
- 1:06S1: You've been travelling with the Prime Minister since he left
- 1:08S1: Canberra last week. And this morning he had some pretty
- 1:10S1: surprising news to announce. Can you talk us through what happened?
- 1:13S2: Yeah, well, with with not much notice. We got invited
- 1:17S2: to the consulate here in New York where the PM
- 1:21S2: came out and announced there'd been sort of a major
- 1:23S2: security breach, in his view, which was an AI agent
- 1:28S2: accessing a Medicare linked site. We don't know a hell
- 1:34S2: of a lot. Well, we know a bit. We know
- 1:36S2: that it's no private information so far. But in the
- 1:40S2: scheme of things, and in the scheme of, I guess,
- 1:42S2: AI debate at the moment, it's a, I guess, a
- 1:46S2: pretty important reminder of the power behind this stuff.
- 1:49S1: The incident itself is disturbing enough, Rob, but there's also
- 1:51S1: a very murky timeline here, which raises some very difficult
- 1:55S1: questions for the government. What happened and why did it
- 1:58S1: take so long for the Prime Minister to tell people
- 2:00S1: what took place?
- 2:01S2: Well, that's a very good question. And it's not only
- 2:05S2: the government, but I guess it's it's AI as well.
- 2:07S2: So what we know is that around about June 18th,
- 2:10S2: the open AI agent was basically sort of scraping a
- 2:15S2: Medicare statistics site and penetrated further than perhaps it should have. Now,
- 2:21S2: open AI found out quite a few weeks later that
- 2:24S2: this has occurred. And from what we can gather today
- 2:27S2: on around about September 10th. So that's three or so
- 2:31S2: months afterwards, it notified the government. Now, the Prime Minister
- 2:34S2: said it sent an email to sort of a public
- 2:36S2: email address, and that's how it first found out. Now,
- 2:40S2: the Prime Minister was advised on the weekend. So it
- 2:44S2: sort of means it's what's the 24th or 25th today, um,
- 2:49S2: depending on what time zone you're in. So that means
- 2:52S2: 15 days since the government first found out or since
- 2:55S2: government agencies first found out and about four days since
- 2:59S2: the Prime Minister found out. Now they are saying that ASD,
- 3:03S2: the Australian Signals Directorate, which of course is the cyber
- 3:06S2: authority in Australia where we're checking things and investigating. And
- 3:12S2: that was the holdup between the Prime Minister being advised
- 3:15S2: and and the announcement today. Now, the PM said, you know,
- 3:18S2: he wanted to be open and transparent about this. This
- 3:20S2: is a potential sort of threat to people's data and
- 3:24S2: very personal data, obviously, within within Medicare. And that's why
- 3:28S2: I wanted to come clean. And we have also found
- 3:31S2: out three other sites, a statistics site, the Australian um
- 3:35S2: health linked one and a couple of state ones are
- 3:38S2: potentially also involved. But yeah, it's, it was very politically
- 3:42S2: convenient for the PM. Now you can be cynical of this.
- 3:45S2: We've got no reason to doubt that they deliberately held
- 3:47S2: this up to use it for political advantages. But if
- 3:50S2: you wanted to, it would also be a perfect scenario. So, um,
- 3:54S2: we'll just I think people will have their own views
- 3:56S2: about this. Steph.
- 3:59S1: Far be it from us to have conspiracy theories. Rob. Paul,
- 4:02S1: let's bring you in here. While Rob was in New
- 4:04S1: York with the PM. You were watching Deputy Prime Minister
- 4:07S1: Richard Marles and Government Services Minister Katy Gallagher try to
- 4:11S1: walk us through the timeline of what happened. What extra
- 4:14S1: information did they give us that can shed light on
- 4:17S1: the sequence of events and the severity of the actual incident?
- 4:21S3: Well, in terms of the severity, to Rob's point there,
- 4:24S3: in terms of how significant an event this was, there's
- 4:28S3: no doubt that Richard Marles, who's the deputy prime minister
- 4:30S3: and has been one of the AI spruikers inside the cabinet,
- 4:33S3: used slightly toned down rhetoric compared to the Prime Minister,
- 4:36S3: who stood up a few hours earlier in New York.
- 4:38S3: At the press conference Rob was dutifully attending. Richard Marles
- 4:42S3: was emphasising the point that while this was a significant
- 4:45S3: event and spoke to broader risks, particularly around recursive AI,
- 4:50S3: which are these models that teach themselves and might break
- 4:53S3: out of human control, which has created a significant amount
- 4:56S3: of concern even among the AI billionaire owners. He did
- 5:00S3: add to that that this was a relatively minor incident,
- 5:03S3: that there was no personal private data breached. Now, having
- 5:08S3: said that, he does say that, you know, our more
- 5:12S3: significant national security information has a fortress in front of it,
- 5:16S3: and we're confident that AI models would not be able
- 5:19S3: to creep around it, but that this information, even though
- 5:23S3: it was not hugely sensitive, was not all public. And
- 5:26S3: so there was a fence that needed to be jumped here.
- 5:29S3: And so the government's message is that, yes, this was
- 5:31S3: not a significant privacy breach, but it still represents a
- 5:35S3: cyber attack. That's the language that Andrew Charlton used today
- 5:38S3: on radio. And so that it does speak to a
- 5:40S3: broader risk. Now, to Rob's point. There's no doubt that
- 5:43S3: this fits into a broader narrative that the government is
- 5:46S3: trying to sell in New York, and the Prime Minister
- 5:48S3: is trying to sell around digital safety. It's trying to
- 5:51S3: be a world leader. The Prime Minister sees it as
- 5:52S3: a part of his political legacy. Now digital duty of care,
- 5:55S3: the social media ban for teens and now, in his mind,
- 5:58S3: lead in the world on AI. But people could make
- 6:02S3: up their own minds as to whether the Prime Minister
- 6:03S3: might have used slightly toned down rhetoric to make the
- 6:06S3: points that Richard Marles made later on about the severity.
- 6:10S1: AI has obviously been a huge policy issue for the
- 6:12S1: federal government this year, Paul, as it has for governments
- 6:15S1: around the world. And it's using phrases like establishing guardrails
- 6:19S1: and making sure humans are in charge, while also using
- 6:22S1: terms like fortress and fences and so forth. But it
- 6:25S1: certainly doesn't feel like the humans are in charge, does it?
- 6:28S3: Yeah. Well, in, in this conversation now, which has been
- 6:31S3: bubbling away for years but has really heated up in
- 6:34S3: recent months, it's AI and guardrails and safety have become
- 6:37S3: almost the diplomatic and political buzzwords. And Rob would be
- 6:40S3: experiencing that in New York. But in in all of
- 6:43S3: this conversation, there is a sense that the risks are
- 6:47S3: somewhat esoteric to a normal voter mum or dad in
- 6:50S3: the street who runs a small business or is going
- 6:53S3: to their public service job at most. Uses AI to
- 6:56S3: put some inferences in and learn information more quickly, or
- 6:59S3: to perhaps schedule their lives or to, you know, give
- 7:02S3: themselves some more convenience. But this incident with Medicare data,
- 7:08S3: some of which is public, some of which was not
- 7:10S3: being breached, is one of the first real world examples
- 7:13S3: of what these systems can do in a bigger picture sense,
- 7:17S3: in terms of compromising the way government works or the
- 7:20S3: way critical systems work. And even though this was not
- 7:23S3: an attack from a nefarious foreign country like China, which
- 7:26S3: would create even more worry, and which we do know
- 7:28S3: is happening all the time, this has brought to life
- 7:31S3: one of the broader risks of AI in terms of
- 7:33S3: these systems breaking out, as I've said, of human control.
- 7:37S3: And I was just reading some reports in the Financial
- 7:39S3: Times and BBC, which has this story at the top
- 7:41S3: of its website, so clearly has captured global attention. This, apparently,
- 7:46S3: according to some analysts, is the first known hack of
- 7:49S3: a government website by a AI model, an AI bot.
- 7:53S3: So even though it is minor in some regards, and
- 7:57S3: there is a, I think, plausible argument that the government
- 7:59S3: has used this politically, this has become a global breakout
- 8:02S3: moment to exemplify the problem that people are becoming worried about.
- 8:07S1: Yeah, right on that, Paul, because we've seen, you know,
- 8:10S1: multiple hacks, cyber attacks in the past few years, but
- 8:13S1: they've been by people basically working behind the screens of
- 8:18S1: their computers to try and get access to people's data
- 8:21S1: for malicious reasons or just for the heck of it. Basically,
- 8:25S1: we've seen it happen at multiple telecommunications companies. It's happened
- 8:29S1: at our universities. Uh, it results in great, you know,
- 8:33S1: annoyance to most people because they have to change passwords
- 8:36S1: and so on. But it's a whole different level, isn't it,
- 8:38S1: when it's not even an unnamed or unfaced human sitting
- 8:41S1: behind a computer screen, it's, it's a bot.
- 8:44S3: It is. And it's not a 25 year old hacker
- 8:47S3: sitting in a bot farm in Russia or or China.
- 8:50S3: It's a company who OpenAI and anthropic and others are
- 8:55S3: firms that have been, you know, Australia is bending over
- 8:57S3: backwards in some ways to try and lure these companies
- 9:00S3: to do major investments in Australia, because, as Richard Marles
- 9:03S3: has said, when he went over to visit Sam Altman
- 9:06S3: only two weeks ago, as Richard Marles said at that time,
- 9:09S3: this is the biggest moment in Australia's sovereignty trajectory since
- 9:12S3: World War Two in terms of trying to bring ourselves
- 9:15S3: into the development of these technologies, which he compares to
- 9:18S3: the nuclear arms race, and needing to be close to
- 9:21S3: the good guy in the nuclear arms race, being America,
- 9:25S3: with which we have an alliance rather than China. So
- 9:27S3: there's a perplexing kind of paradox here that will be
- 9:29S3: very hard for the general voter to understand. Whereas on
- 9:33S3: one hand, the government is saying that we need to
- 9:35S3: become much closer to the companies developing these technologies. But
- 9:39S3: on the other hand, our systems have been breached, and
- 9:42S3: we need to put up some guardrails and make sure
- 9:44S3: that we're able to manage the risks. So it's just
- 9:47S3: another moment in this new tech world where people will
- 9:51S3: be left scratching their heads and the world seems to
- 9:52S3: be moving very quickly.
- 9:54S1: Rob, there's been a bit of a split within the government,
- 9:56S1: hasn't there, for the for the past little while now,
- 9:59S1: about how hard it should go in on attempting to
- 10:02S1: regulate AI or on the other side, how quickly it
- 10:05S1: should embrace AI. There's been ministers like Andrew Charlton who
- 10:09S1: are pretty enthusiastic about its benefits. They don't want Australia
- 10:12S1: to be left behind, while other people, such as former
- 10:15S1: minister Ed Husic, think that we should be much more cautious.
- 10:18S1: How is this going to affect the internal conversations within
- 10:21S1: the government?
- 10:22S2: Well, I, I think pretty much the Prime Minister has
- 10:26S2: pointed to where we are now. Look, AI is a
- 10:29S2: lot of different things to a lot of different people.
- 10:32S2: To some groups. It's about Australian creatives and sort of
- 10:35S2: writers and music and songwriters and cultural people, and that
- 10:41S2: probably appeals to the PM. I would say, you know,
- 10:43S2: his his background, he loves to be loved by that crowd.
- 10:47S2: And there's a big argument there about copyright and around
- 10:50S2: sort of the cultural sector. But then, you know, there's
- 10:52S2: issues like data centers and people who worry about data
- 10:56S2: centers in their neighborhood, worry about water and data centers,
- 10:59S2: worry about energy in data centers. And then there are
- 11:03S2: issues like what we're seeing now, the incredible power of
- 11:06S2: AI and what it could do to the potential of
- 11:09S2: our security. And plus what it might do to middle
- 11:11S2: class jobs. So there's a lot of different issues. And look, simply,
- 11:15S2: I think it's all that, you know, where they're where
- 11:17S2: they're going to fall is where they get a balance, right?
- 11:19S2: I mean, you're not going to, you're not going to
- 11:22S2: really pull back from this stuff now. But it is interesting. Obviously,
- 11:26S2: we were part of a a group of 22 countries
- 11:29S2: that at the UN this week, which involved France and
- 11:32S2: Finland and Sweden, a lot of sort of OECD countries
- 11:36S2: basically saying, look, let's let's be careful about this stuff.
- 11:39S2: Let's put some guardrails in place. The only problem is
- 11:42S2: Donald Trump here in America isn't really interested in that.
- 11:46S2: He is basically only sees the economic advantages. Obviously, a
- 11:50S2: lot of the AI companies are based here. He wants
- 11:53S2: to win the AI race, as he says on his
- 11:56S2: social media. And that race is basically between China and
- 12:00S2: the US. So Donald Trump doesn't want to put much
- 12:03S2: hindrance on that. Now, the interesting thing is he is
- 12:07S2: really the one that's out there on his own, to
- 12:09S2: be honest, because even the AI companies now, Sam Altman
- 12:13S2: and the fellow firm anthropic, whose name escapes me for now,
- 12:16S2: Dario Paul, you might know his name. Yes, that's the one.
- 12:20S2: That's the one. They were both at the UN today,
- 12:23S2: basically admitting that they need to be held back. You
- 12:26S2: know that there needs to be these guardrails. So are
- 12:28S2: we going to see a position? I don't think anyone
- 12:30S2: will trust them to regulate themselves. And that's why they
- 12:33S2: want government sort of to intervene. But as we see
- 12:37S2: with sort of social media bans and digital duty of care,
- 12:40S2: the US doesn't really want foreign governments putting any regulation
- 12:44S2: on this stuff. so I suspect we'll find a way
- 12:48S2: through it. But until we do, it will be a
- 12:50S2: really pointy political debate.
- 12:52S3: And worth noting that amid this debate, there is a meeting,
- 12:56S3: as we're speaking, between the two men who have most
- 12:59S3: the greatest ability to shape this in the president of
- 13:01S3: China and the president of the US. And as you say, Rob,
- 13:04S3: there's this kind of shadow boxing and posturing going on
- 13:07S3: between the leaders of the tech firms themselves, with anthropic
- 13:10S3: and OpenAI saying we need regulation but not doing much self-regulation.
- 13:15S3: On the other hand, there's Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang
- 13:17S3: of Nvidia, who this week have said it should be
- 13:20S3: on the firms themselves. There should be no overarching framework
- 13:23S3: to regulate. And on the Trump posturing on how he's
- 13:27S3: been speaking about regulation and pushing firmly against it to
- 13:31S3: try and get ahead of China. It was only in
- 13:34S3: June this year, or perhaps July, when the Trump administration
- 13:38S3: and the white House. This apparently went all the way
- 13:40S3: up to Trump, pulled back on Anthropic's latest model because
- 13:43S3: of its risks and said, we can't be sending this
- 13:46S3: across the world. And the white House took a very
- 13:48S3: hands on role, which was a real sharp turn for Trump.
- 13:51S3: And that prompted a big shift inside the Australian cabinet.
- 13:54S3: There was a cabinet discussion on that, and the view
- 13:56S3: at that time in Australia was, Holy crap, Trump might
- 13:59S3: actually take a hands on role here. We don't know
- 14:02S3: when we'll be cut off from these models, which might
- 14:05S3: become crucial to our defence and national security and economy.
- 14:08S3: And we need to do something to link ourselves into
- 14:11S3: the US system so that we can create leverage within
- 14:14S3: it and become closer to the firms and bring them
- 14:16S3: into Australia. So there's all these competing tensions, and the
- 14:20S3: conversation is moving so quickly that I don't think it's
- 14:23S3: so unpredictable as to where the US even lands on
- 14:25S3: this question of regulation.
- 14:26S2: Well, just to that, Paul, I mean, I don't think
- 14:29S2: I was even on the agenda at the UN this
- 14:32S2: time last year. So this is this is where the
- 14:35S2: debate has gone so quickly. I know journalists weren't writing
- 14:39S2: about this stuff 12 months ago. I mean, this is
- 14:41S2: a this is something evolving so quickly, so fast that,
- 14:44S2: you know, I don't know where we'll be tomorrow, let
- 14:46S2: alone next week, let alone next month, let alone next year.
- 14:48S3: Totally. And the Prime Minister wants to position himself as
- 14:51S3: a world leader on this. Some might portray that as cynical,
- 14:54S3: but in terms of him selling his message back home
- 14:56S3: as to why he's over in the UN talking about
- 14:58S3: tech as a small a leader of a pretty small nation,
- 15:01S3: this incident does add weight to his argument to Middle
- 15:05S3: Australia that this is worth this is worth talking about
- 15:08S3: on the national stage.
- 15:09S1: On that point, though. And Rob, let's chat to you
- 15:11S1: about this for a minute. I mean, as you rightly
- 15:14S1: point out, at this meeting last year, the Prime Minister
- 15:17S1: was in attendance to talk about what was Australia's crackdown
- 15:22S1: on social media, which is kind of a similar story
- 15:24S1: to what we're seeing with AI. Social media many years
- 15:27S1: ago was seen as this exciting new technology that would
- 15:31S1: benefit us all. Lo and behold, a few years later,
- 15:33S1: we all started to think a little bit. You know,
- 15:35S1: more about that and decided maybe it wasn't so good
- 15:37S1: and tried to regulate it. That's proved quite difficult. And
- 15:40S1: yet the Prime Minister has continued to be out there
- 15:43S1: with attempts to regulate it. Now he's back at the
- 15:46S1: same meeting with a similar message on AI. Is he
- 15:49S1: a world leader on this, Rob?
- 15:50S2: Look, I think they bring it back to that social
- 15:52S2: media point quite a lot. They say, look, it took
- 15:55S2: us a long time. It took us a long time
- 15:57S2: to realize and perhaps it was almost too late in
- 16:00S2: many cases that, you know, a lot of young kids, obviously,
- 16:03S2: we've seen a lot of young kids lives have been
- 16:05S2: changed by social media. And perhaps people do lament that
- 16:08S2: they were too slow to affect change, and that's why
- 16:11S2: they're getting out ahead on this. Look, I mean, I've
- 16:14S2: obviously been cynical earlier on in this podcast about the announcement.
- 16:19S2: I think what they're doing is very noble. And I think,
- 16:21S2: you know, they are showing genuine leadership. They are working
- 16:25S2: with a lot of middle powers, you know, Canada and Britain,
- 16:28S2: but also some of the European countries who are really
- 16:31S2: interested in this and they're trying to affect change. And
- 16:33S2: I think we should be very proud of that, that
- 16:36S2: they're on the world stage. It is easy to sort
- 16:38S2: of sneer and say they're off at the UN and
- 16:41S2: talk about cost of living. But this is a real
- 16:43S2: world issue. It's just a matter of fact of balancing everything.
- 16:46S2: You know, unfortunately, our politics is so binary nowadays. It's
- 16:49S2: like you can only be doing one thing or the other,
- 16:51S2: but you should be able to walk and chew gum.
- 16:53S2: So it is very good. They are playing a leading
- 16:55S2: role here, whether they affect change, I'm not sure, but
- 16:58S2: I think the Prime Minister made a pretty important speech
- 17:00S2: tonight saying that we've got to do it together. No
- 17:03S2: one can do it by themselves. And the more the
- 17:05S2: more the merrier in that sense. And, uh, they've I
- 17:08S2: think they've made inroads. You know, this little incident, uh,
- 17:11S2: won't probably be remembered in a few weeks, let alone
- 17:14S2: a few months. I wouldn't have thought. But the bigger
- 17:16S2: issue remains that they need to get this stuff under control,
- 17:19S2: and hopefully it's a step towards doing so.
- 17:21S3: And can it even be brought under control, is the
- 17:23S3: bigger question.
- 17:24S1: Well, indeed. And let's maybe have one final question on
- 17:27S1: that point, Paul. We've heard a lot from various people
- 17:30S1: with hot takes on this this morning, but one of
- 17:32S1: them is is a very knowledgeable person, former cyber security
- 17:36S1: Alastair MacGibbon. He seemed pretty appalled that this had been
- 17:40S1: able to to take place, and was quite shocked at
- 17:43S1: the timeline and the lack of detection capability that Australia
- 17:47S1: seemed to have. Is he right to be so shocked
- 17:50S1: and can we expect to see a lot more investment
- 17:52S1: in this area from the federal government?
- 17:53S3: For sure. Well, Andrew Charlton, who's really the AI zealot
- 17:57S3: in the government, comes from the tech world, has a
- 17:59S3: business background, said on radio this morning that in very
- 18:02S3: clear terms, this is a cyber attack and we should
- 18:04S3: be treating it as such. And he said that we've
- 18:07S3: learnt lessons around where our information is stored. The government
- 18:10S3: has announced that they have moved some of this information
- 18:12S3: behind a different kind of firewall. And so even though
- 18:15S3: it wasn't personal sensitive information, it has highlighted a broader issue.
- 18:19S3: And one could plausibly argue that the government's been caught
- 18:21S3: on the back foot and has blamed a firm for
- 18:25S3: their own failings in managing data. I think this will
- 18:29S3: add impetus to the government's legislative agenda, which they plan
- 18:32S3: to introduce to the Parliament early next year, which goes
- 18:35S3: to AI safety and goes to also data centers and planning,
- 18:40S3: but you're hearing noises from the government now that this
- 18:42S3: will put a greater focus, perhaps greater speed around ensuring
- 18:46S3: that data is managed in a proper way. But the
- 18:49S3: way in which it permeates the broader AI debate in
- 18:52S3: terms of adoption and the attraction of investment for data centers,
- 18:56S3: it's hard to see this being a moment in Australian
- 18:59S3: discourse that creates increased sentiment for a speedy AI transition.
- 19:05S3: You'd suspect it goes in the other direction, but we'll see.
- 19:08S2: Before the census, the Auditor General's office put out a
- 19:11S2: report that ten years after a major cyber attack, that
- 19:14S2: the website that does the census still wasn't ready, that
- 19:17S2: they hadn't paid attention to enough recommendations from cyber security
- 19:21S2: agencies within the government, and they hadn't invested. I mean,
- 19:25S2: the reality is our politics is so cynical nowadays. There
- 19:28S2: aren't a lot of votes in investing in cyber security
- 19:31S2: for government websites. So it doesn't get the money and
- 19:33S2: the attention it's got. So perhaps this is now where
- 19:36S2: a our government's got to stand up and do the
- 19:38S2: right thing instead of throwing money at the wrong places.
- 19:41S3: And so the other thing to say on enforcement is
- 19:43S3: that while this was not a significant breach with huge consequences,
- 19:48S3: it could be a catalyst for sovereign nations to think
- 19:52S3: deeply about whether further breaches and there could be many,
- 19:56S3: many further breaches like this as recursive AI becomes more advanced.
- 20:00S3: Whether such breaches do require strong enforcement action, and whether
- 20:04S3: sovereign nations enact new laws that create clear consequences for
- 20:09S3: such breaches, and the characteristic of this incident that might
- 20:14S3: give greater impetus for that push is the delay in
- 20:18S3: open AI. Informing the Australian Government about this incident took
- 20:21S3: a couple of months. And the way in which the
- 20:24S3: incident was disclosed, which was an email to a generic
- 20:28S3: email based. So rather than any human to human contact,
- 20:31S3: there was an email into a generic inbox from open AI,
- 20:35S3: which didn't raise immediate alarm bells. It was picked up
- 20:38S3: the next day and then was sent on to the
- 20:40S3: Australian Signals Directorate four days later. But, uh, really, in
- 20:44S3: a situation like this, you'd have an actual person from
- 20:47S3: open AI make a call to an influential policymaker or
- 20:50S3: bureaucrat to escalate this quite quickly. But instead you had
- 20:53S3: this delay and then a really substandard email, which does
- 20:59S3: go to this concern of policy makers around the way
- 21:03S3: these major AI firms interact with democracies and the way
- 21:07S3: they treat voter bases. You've seen this in the debate
- 21:11S3: around data centers and the way they've treated some local communities.
- 21:14S3: That's not across the board problem, but has particularly been
- 21:16S3: acute in the US. These firms are as powerful or
- 21:20S3: more powerful than most sovereign nations, and there is a
- 21:24S3: growing sense among policy makers that if these AI firms
- 21:27S3: don't treat democratic governments with greater respect, they will lose
- 21:32S3: the social license that governments do want them to retain
- 21:36S3: so that they can roll out these systems and increase
- 21:38S3: productivity and national defenses. So I think there's a possibility
- 21:42S3: here that this moment translates into some greater clarity around
- 21:46S3: clear laws for such breaches.
- 21:48S1: We can only hope, Rob, we'll let you get to bed.
- 21:51S1: Thank you both for your time.
- 21:53S3: See you in your back rub. Bye, Steph. Cheers.
- 22:00S1: You can read all our political news on our website,
- 22:02S1: theage.com.au or sm.com.au. Today's episode was produced by Josh towers
- 22:10S1: with help from Debbie Harrington. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills,
- 22:14S1: and our podcasts are overseen by Lisa Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick.
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- 22:26S1: thanks for listening.