Australia urged to set ‘rules of the game’ to harness the productivity potential of AI
The Australian government must set clear rules on the use of artificial intelligence if it wants to secure the consumer and productivity benefits of the technology, the Australian Productivity Commission has said.
In its interim report ‘Harnessing data and digital technology’, published on 5 August, the commission highlighted AI’s potential to underpin a new wave of productivity growth. It said it believes productivity gains above 2.3% are likely, which translates to roughly 4.3% labour productivity growth over the next decade.
The report noted a number of examples of AI use in Australia, including fraud detection, robotic sorting in agriculture, and teaching tools at schools and universities, as well as popular use of large language models such as ChatGPT.
However, it warned that getting regulation right was imperative to keeping Australian consumers safe and to “give businesses the certainty they need to use and develop AI technologies”. Poorly designed regulation could stifle AI investment “without improving outcomes”, it said.
Read more: Australia sets out standards for government AI alongside new collaboration tool
Identifying regulatory gaps
The commission said governments in Australia were working to assess whether there are gaps in existing regulations to address AI-related risks, and that regulatory changes should be considered only if “clear gaps are identified”.
Gap analyses into the risks posed by AI should be “completed with urgency, and until they are, consideration of new, economy wide, AI-specific regulations should be paused,” the commission said.
“Creating overarching, economy-wide regulations before the gaps in the existing regulatory framework are identified creates the risk of duplication and unnecessarily high compliance burden with little benefit to end consumers.”
It added that AI-specific regulations “should only be considered as a last resort” when it is not feasible to adapt existing regulatory frameworks.
The report gave copyright law as an area to which government could bring clarity and certainty through regulation. The commission said it was seeking feedback on “what reforms are needed to bring the copyright regime up to date”.
Read more: US federal government launches action plan to ‘win AI race’
Government’s own use of AI
As well as regulating AI “sensibly”, national, state and local governments in Australia would need to become “exemplars in the use of AI”, the report said, noting that governments’ internal AI policies can have “a significant impact” on the uptake of related technologies.
It also highlighted that governments would need to build foundational capabilities to support AI uptake, including through efforts to raise digital literacy across the economy, and to invest in digital infrastructure such as the high-speed internet necessary for “fully utilising AI”.
“All these levers will be important in grasping the AI opportunity and Australian governments should be reflecting on their performance in each of these areas,” it said.
Read more: New Zealand launches its first national AI strategy
Data and productivity
The report also focused on how data could be leveraged to boost productivity.
It warned that data requirements in the Privacy Act – the country’s main piece of legislation for protecting privacy – were “constraining innovation without providing meaningful protection to individuals”.
It said that compliance measures embedded in the act often made consent and notification “a ‘tick box’ exercise” that encouraged businesses to comply “with the letter of the law but not the spirit of it”.
It suggested amending the act so that privacy obligations would be based principally on outcomes.
It also said that facilitating data access across the economy would help to “stimulate competition and allow businesses to develop innovative products and services”.
Establishing AI standards in government
Shortly before the commission published its interim report, Australia’s Digital Transformation Agency set out technical standards for AI systems used in government covering their entire lifecycle, from initial design to monitoring and decommissioning.
The government also launched ‘GovAI’, a platform designed to foster collaborative use of AI across departments, in late July. GovAI aims to promote the use of AI in collaboration across agencies and features a sandbox for public servants to test AI processes, tools and training.
About Jack Aldane
Jack is a British journalist, cartoonist and podcaster. He graduated from Heythrop College London in 2009 with a BA in philosophy, before living and working in China for three years as a freelance reporter. After training in financial journalism at City University from 2013 to 2014, Jack worked at Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters before moving into editing magazines on global trade and development finance. Shortly after editing opinion writing for UnHerd, he joined the independent think tank ResPublica, where he led a media campaign to change the health and safety requirements around asbestos in UK public buildings. As host and producer of The Booking Club podcast – a conversation series featuring prominent authors and commentators at their favourite restaurants – Jack continues to engage today’s most distinguished thinkers on the biggest problems pertaining to ideology and power in the 21st century. He joined Global Government Forum as its Senior Staff Writer and Community Co-ordinator in 2021.
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