Every new technology has a tipping point, when it speeds towards ubiquity, changing the world as we once knew it. In the past six months, artificial intelligence, in its various forms, has crossed that threshold.
You can measure it in the billions of dollars being invested; the hope-tinged-with-fear decrees from presidents, prime ministers, Nobel laureates and even the pope.
It promises to be the most transformative technological change since the introduction of electricity, touching everyone and everything as “AI companies monetize the collective knowledge of the human race”.
It will challenge centuries-old notions of national sovereignty and human autonomy in ways not seen since imperial colonisation was at its peak.
Will Australia become, as the John Curtin Research Centre asked in its May review of AI, a “cloud hostage” – physically hosted, legally governed and operationally controlled from abroad? For most people, it still feels a bit abstract.
What does it mean when Demis Hassabis, the Nobel prize-winning founder of Google DeepMind, says it’s like the Industrial Revolution times 10, at 10 times the speed? Or Dario Amodi, head of Anthropic, declares half of all entry-level jobs will disappear in a few years?
Disruption, chaos, exploitation, mass unemployment and loss of sovereignty, or opportunity and transformation as once impossible problems are solved.
Last week, before Anthony Albanese delivered his landmark speech, a series of personal encounters brought it home to me that AI is no longer a hallucinating plaything.
A colleague explained how her workforce now included more AI agents than human beings – agents with names and personalities who sent emails and responded to questions, but apart from tech support, didn’t need to be paid. Agents, who with the right prompts and supervision, could analyse years of data in a flash, and advise humans on what to say in negotiations. They were so good that before hiring a human, the threshold question in her business was: could an AI agent do it? In many cases the answer was yes – and better.
A retired academic had found that Anthropic Fable was an extraordinarily efficient research assistant. He briefed it to distill and compare four recent Australian government-commissioned reports about racism and why so little had been done to implement the findings.
AI suggested that the answer was the uneven distribution of power. Those with cultural and economic power were more successful – so when tackling racism, the disadvantage of the least powerful remained entrenched.
Now there’s something to remember.
The prime minister’s speech on Wednesday showed how seriously the Australian government is taking this. Albanese spoke clearly and cogently, with more than a touch of Australian exceptionalism.
He outlined processes that, if properly implemented, could eliminate the worst mistakes of the past.
Standing in front of a display of Australian native…
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