David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Industry and Innovation (Senator Ayres) to a question without notice I asked today relating to artificial intelligence.

I'm really concerned about this Albanese Labor government's lack of a plan when it comes to artificial intelligence. We are living in a time when we have this technology improving at an exponential rate. We have experts around the world and here in Australia raising concerns about what artificial intelligence means not just for our economy but for us as a species. Yet we have a government that seems to just give us the lines from the big tech companies who are seeking to profit from this technology. I don't think that is putting Australians first. I don't think that is actually looking at the long term and saying, 'What will be good for Australians?' I find it really hard to cop the argument of 'we will have some data centres, so don't worry about the job losses' and Senator Ayres saying, 'I don't understand where you got those figures from,' when it's Jobs and Skills Australia who are saying that 600,000 Australians will likely lose their jobs.

If you listen to people like Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio and others, and you should, we have to do more. This should be an urgent priority of this government. They should have safeguards in place, when it comes to the development of this technology and the deployment of this technology, and, then, be planning for the economic disruption. Because nothing gives Australians confidence. You go to the supermarket, and you're doing your own check-out; you go to the airline, and you're doing your own check-in. Of course, they are going to allow mass displacement of jobs, and all these big companies will be making an absolute fortune.

Question agreed to.