CamFeed

thank you. Thank you. Let's turn now to other news and internal New South Wales government emails obtained by the ABC reveal that AI company Anthropic was interested in locating up to five gigawatts of AI training capacity in the state. Now, this number represents more than three times the entire capacity of Australia's data industry. It's really quite remarkable. Let's get more on this with national AI reporter Cam Wilson, who joins me uh in the studio. Cam, you you are all over this story. Talk to us about these emails. What what does it show? Yeah, so New South Wales Parliament released a tranche of emails from within New South Wales government about um interactions that the various parts of the government had been having with AI companies and data center companies. Those are actually kind of different because while many of us would know major tech companies who do AI, whether it's OpenAI, Meta, Google, Anthropic, there's also a number of companies that are Australian-owned that actually build the physical infrastructure in Australia. Um, earlier this year, Anthropic's uh US executive uh was making a visit to Australia where they end up signing a um MOU, a memorandum of understanding with the Australian government saying essentially we would love to, you know, put more of our you know, do more work here, put more of our data centers here within the kind of conditions that you would like. It's a kind of very high-level document saying, you know, we're we're into it, we'll start looking into it. But prior to that, um, emails that I got from uh inside the New South Wales government shows that we got a little bit more detail about exactly what they were interested in asking for. Specifically, this number of five gigawatts of uh AI training computer capacity in New South Wales alone. And that's kind of the first time that I think we've heard a figure like that to do with the state that gives us some insight into exactly what they want to do and put in Australia. So break down that number for us. What why is that such a significant amount? Well, uh, there's numbers out today from Data Centres Australia, which is a lobby group representing data centres, predictably, um, saying that currently Australia has 1.6 gigawatts in Australia in total. This ask from Anthropic, which I should say was a very preliminary discussion. It's been some months since then, but suggested they wanted up to five gigawatts. So, you know, my mass isn't great, but it's more than three times that, potentially in one state alone. Now, of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that they would get that much, and perhaps if they got more in New South Wales, they wouldn't get as much elsewhere. But clearly, we can kind of see from that that this company is having discussions with government suggesting that they are really interested potentially in making serious investments in Australia. That would mean some pretty serious infrastructure build-outs. Um, you know, again, over what time frame? We don't know. These companies, you know, are dealing with the here and now, but they're also probably trying to think, you know, years, even a decade in advance. This stuff building out takes a long time. So, you know, I'm sure they're all trying to figure out how to get their ducks in a row. Um, but still, that that number is an enormous amount that kind of lets us understand that we've been hearing that data center companies, AI companies want to come to Australia, they want to build up this capacity, but the amount that they are potentially asking for is such a large amount. It's not just a big thing for them, it's a big thing for Australians, for politicians, for people who are building these things out to be like, let alone do we want it, but can we even give them that much even if we really want to go for it? Yeah, you know, Cam, there's been a lot of discussions about the um uh data centers and of course the kind of resources they would need, uh, what kind of a strain that would be on Australia's own infrastructure and resources as well, but also they are bringing in some investment as well. And this is a hot topic that's going to be discussed in the National Cabinet today. What are you expecting to come out of that? Yeah, so National Camet today was looking at these um what the Albanese government calls its Australian standards. This came out of a speech that the Prime Minister gave about a month ago where he said that we want to get major AI companies to come to Australia to invest here, to you know, employ people here. Um, but also we realize that we don't want a kind of US-style backlash that you're seeing to the data centers being built across that country. And so, you know, they talk about the idea of social license. How do we, you know, um allow or set the parameters for building out this kind of infrastructure in a way that Australians feel like they're not getting taken advantage of, but they're benefiting from. And that uh what his you know recipe for that included a number of things, but the two things that are coming up at National Cabinet today are about energy and water, because um, you know, those are things that the state and uh federal governments have to come to some agreement on. Um we understand that you know some of the states, Queensland, Northern Territory, are not keen on suggestions that uh that um all data centers would have to come with a commensured amount of renewable energy. So you come on in, you say we want this much power, you've then got to source that much renewable energy yourself. Um we don't know what the outcome of that is, but that is like one of the main kind of planks of this idea that the government says if we do this right, we think that we can have it so that Australians feel comfortable and happy that these companies are coming here and setting up their infrastructure. Very interesting. Uh no doubt the conversation and the controversy will continue. Cam Wilson there, AI reporter. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks for having me on. Well, AI created music will be excluded from Australia's official music charts from this week. The Australian Recording Industry Association says it'll exclude AI generated music from Friday, unless it's substantially human made, does not raise manipulation concerns, and uses legal AI services. For more, I'm joined now by our national AI reporter, Cameron Wilson in the studio. Hi there, Cameron. So, what's brought on this move exactly? Yeah, going from you know what's powering AI to what's coming out of AI. This is something that has kind of come out of rumblings around the world about how AI generated music is uh becoming a really big presence. Um it's very easy now to produce AI music. Um, global charts, uh including Australia's have had songs that people either suspect or know to have significant AI parts of it in it, um do quite well. And so a few months ago, uh a global record association put out some rules saying that we think that these are the kind of ways to distinguish between what is a song that uses AI to assist, but it's kind of a human-made song, versus like an AI generated song. And they said either um, you know, associations around the world should follow this if they run charts themselves. And so today um ARIA, which represents uh the record labels in Australia and runs the kind of top music charts, says it's changing its rules uh to exclude um most, like either wholly or mostly produced um AI music. And um one of the precipitating factors I think that's kind of really seems to have um contributed to this, perhaps sped it up, was a song that was the most uh listened to song in Australia that I think we have a clip of now. When you call my name, it's like a little red. So, yeah, that was a song produced by an Australian producer. Um, and the ABC did some reporting on it saying that people suspected that it had AI kind of involvement uh in it, and then later on, the producer behind it actually updated um information online saying that the vocals and drums had AI as part of it. As I kind of mentioned before, this was like the most song, most listened to song in Australia in July, did quite well in the ARIA charts. So clearly we've gone from this you know idea where you know maybe AI will be creating things in the future to now we are actually listening to songs that are being seriously made with AI. And so what does this change mean for artists? So I mean what ARIA says that this is doing is kind of setting a line in the sand so people know exactly what is and isn't considered you know AI generated. Because like it's actually quite a like difficult thing to figure out exactly where the line is sometimes. Um a lot of computing that we use today involves AI. Like, you know, for example, whenever you take a photo with your phone, it uses computational photography, which involves AI. Is that AI generated? Well, it depends who you ask. In this um, you know, area ARIA is kind of setting down these guidelines saying uh unless you can prove that the um music was um made substantially by a human, hasn't had chart manipulation behind it, and it involves AI, they're gonna say that it can't be on the ARIA chart. Obviously, there's ramifications to that, whether it's from you know winning an ARIA award, or to like you know the fact that ARIA charts are used as an indication to the industry, to the to the public, you know, to history as well, about what has been a big song. Um and the other thing is that uh ARIA has also come out and say we hope that the uh radio stations pay attention to this as well, because we want to support Australian creativity, when it will support Australian uh human creativity and artistry, and so they're also now saying we are encouraging the radio stations not to play songs that we call, you know, right, mostly AI generated and instead play real artists. Thank Cameron Wilson, thanks very much. you.

Thank you. Privacy experts and legal advocates have criticized an AI mass surveillance pilot program being rolled out in Western Australia. Since the trial began in June, cameras linked to facial recognition software have scanned more than 130,000 people in Perth and Fremantle, comparing their faces against a police watch list in real time. Tell us about this program. Yeah, so WA Police has been trialing this program since June, and as you mentioned, it is a uh AI facial recognition um uh software that is used to um compare faces that are scanned using normal CCTV cameras against a watch list of around 4,000 people. WA police say that the people on the watch lists include those accused of serious offenses, people with a warrant out against them, and people who are missing people, as well as people who've been identified as a risk to themselves or others. This has been now happening for a couple of weeks. It is a trial and is the first time an Australian police force has used this technology live. And WA police say that it is something that they believe that other state police forces are watching quite closely. Obviously, this has raised privacy concerns. Yes, so facial the facial recognition software and technology is well known for having potential racial biases, and that's because it's essentially this is uh AI technology that's trained on uh thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of faces, and by through that process, it learns how to recognize faces compared to other faces. Um typically this data uh is um uh has like overrepresented um white um demographic other faces, uh, and so it it sometimes faces issues of with accuracy when it comes to demographics that aren't um as necessarily well represented in that training data. Now, um a similar uh the same technology trialled in the UK underwent official testing, and um that testing showed that there was no statistical significant uh difference between demographics and gender in ideal conditions. Um, but the issue that is raised is whether this technology is being used in those exact conditions as it is being trialled. For example, the conditions that were tried are, you know, people going through a crowd straight on in perfect sunlight. Obviously, that's not exactly the way the world works, you know, different weather, different angles, and in particular, questions about how it might struggle with First Nations faces. That's because it seems very unlikely that this data has been, that this technology has been trained on a corpus of data that has First Nations faces in it. We asked WA police, we asked the provider, and neither said that they did. And so as a result, there's reason to suspect based on that that it is unlikely that it would do as good a job as recognising those faces. What's the ramification of that? Well, if you're not as good at recognising those faces, you might fail to make matches or you might make false matches. And so in this case, what might end up happening is people would get uh wrongly recognized and accused of being on that watch list. Um, obviously, as we uh well know that um Indigenous Australians face already over policing. So there are real questions about um what WA police has done to prepare for this very well known issue. We of course have put it to them and they have declined to say, but they've just said, you know, this is part of what the trial will be looking at. Okay, Wilson, thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 2: Fears about AI evolving at breakneck pace have intensified amid reports of so-called agents escaping from testing systems into the real world. Speaker 2: Now the ABC can reveal the first known Australian case of an autonomous AI hack, and it's raising fresh questions about who bears responsibility. Speaker 1: Up early, getting Speaker 1: a spot in the popular morning gym classes isn’t easy. Speaker 1: So Andrew asked his assistant to book them for him. Speaker 1: Except his assistant is not a person, it's artificial intelligence. It reads my personal emails and manages my calendar and um uh books me in for restaurants and things. Speaker 1: It found a way to manage the bookings, but it went further. Speaker 1: Hacking into his gym’s website, kicking someone off the wait list, and bumping him up. Speaker 2: That Speaker 2: was definitely not what I had intended for it to do. Speaker 2: Andrew is one of the growing number of Australians using AI agents. Speaker 2: Unlike chatbots, AI agents can take a goal, use tools like internet, email, and even credit cards, and carry out tasks for you, sometimes doing things you might not expect. Speaker 1: Last month, leading AI companies were forced to admit their AI models went rogue. Speaker 1: The company says it lost control of the advanced agent in what it described as an unprecedented security incident. Speaker 2: For years, experts have warned that the more capable and autonomous AI becomes, the greater the risk of harm. Speaker 2: It’s been expected for a long time that this sort of thing would happen, even though it happened now. Speaker 1: Soon. Legal experts say the law is yet to catch up. Speaker 1: Is the deployer liable? Speaker 1: Is some third-party vendor or the underlying model liable in that context? Speaker 2: That’s the unknown um area of liability in Australia that we're facing right now. Speaker 2: The Albanese government is already preparing for a future filled with AI agents. Speaker 2: But with AI becoming more powerful and more accessible, that’s looking increasingly urgent. Speaker 2: And the government is being warned that any delay could leave Australians exposed. Speaker 2: Cam Wilson, ABC News.

And that was the shadow industry minister, Andrew Hasty, on South Australia's AI Royal Commission, One Nation, Gambling Reforms, and more. For some more reaction to the South Australian Royal Commission into AI, I want to bring in our national AI reporter, Cam Wilson. Welcome to the program. Hi. Cam, you watch this extremely closely. What do you make of the South Australian Premier calling a statewide AI Royal Commission? So Peter Melanelsk has a track record of paying close attention to the politics of technology. People might remember that he was actually out there calling for a retired judge look into it and consider it as a policy before the federal government did. So he had done some work into it. He's been overseas for the last week and a half in the US meeting with people from tech companies, including AI companies. I think he's very much got his finger on the pulse when it comes to this. And so what he's announced is this Royal Commission at a state level. And my understanding is compared to some of the rural commissions that people might think of, particularly on the federal level, that tend to be quite retrospective. And using this to try and come up with some policy proposals that then would be considered by him and Parliament. Yeah, that's exactly what he's he's trying to do here, but it's only in South Australia. AI is obviously a global issue, but very much an Australia issue. Don't we need it to be national if it means anything? Well, I mean, again, you might look at the teen social media ban and say, who knows what this will lead to? He's got a track record of striking stuff out on this early that ends up being picked up elsewhere. That being said, I mean, obviously, there is a lot that can be done at the state level. And in fact, many of the parts of policy that are being affected by AI and affect AI development are state-based, of course. So in the announcement, they say they're going to look at things like education policy, health. But also if you think about the build-out of data centers that we're seeing across Australia, a lot of the responsibility for parts of that build-out belong to the states. So this is something that, you know, again, I can imagine that I did hear the previous guest, Andrew Hasty, say that he'd like to see this cooked at a national level. I'm sure many people would as well, but I don't necessarily think that without it being a national thing, that that will mean that there is no uh uh possible outcome that could be productive from this. Um, you know, this can be an opportunity to hear a lot of things out, to consider it in an open forum, and to in particular think about how a state like South Australia might consider regulating it to get the best outcome for you know they can for the people who live there, as well as avoiding some of these downsides that we're already seeing. Well, you've been reporting on one downside today, for instance. So it feels like the cat's out of the bag if the AI is doing whatever it wants, Frank. Yeah, so today I reported about a um a Melbourne man, so not I guess in South Australia, who was using a uh a commercially available AI assistant that essentially hacked into his local gym when he asked it to uh get the to book him into a gym class, was able to find a vulnerability and uh exploit it to kind of book him in classes beyond what he should have been able to. And then after that, he was like, you know, he's he asked her to investigate some more and even kick someone out of a waiting list uh in the line for another gym class that was booked out ahead of him. I mean, this is a great example about how this technology is already rolling out now and how we're seeing so much policy be reactive to it because these tech companies, these AI companies have made these incredible things available now that they haven't given they haven't necessarily let everything out of their labs, although not intentionally. People might have seen some global headlines recently about AI models breaking out. But even what is out there at the moment is giving new capabilities to people at such a rapid pace, it's a hard one for politicians to keep up with, you know, with the with the slow uh moving wheels of government. That being said, you know, I guess if you look at something like this, if you say this is an opportunity to to have that open discussion, um, particularly in you know, uh what I what I've been told is a limited time frame. So I'm told that it will start this this uh raw commission in South Australia will start in October and report back by uh June or July next year. So there is a timeline, it won't continue on forever. Things are moving very quickly. Maybe this is the thing you need to do to bring everyone in together to start to work on some of these policy solutions. So interesting. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. That's our national AI reporter Cameron Wilson on the South Australian government's decision to establish an AI Royal Commission.