# Australia needs artificial intelligence early warning system to defend against AI dangers, cyber intelligence boss says

Canonical source: https://clip.cameronwilson.com.au/s/iHhYhzHwfHnT8wiN9hpceg
Publication: CamClip
Published: 2026-09-15T11:08:24+10:00
Content role: appearance

## Transcript

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Julia Andre reporting there. Well, returning to our top story now. As we've been reporting, tech bosses are stepping up calls for a regulated mandatory kill switch for AI software. At home, the nation's cyber intelligence chief has warned Australia needs an artificial intelligence early warning system to help defend against the dangers of the increasingly powerful technology. Australian Signals Directorate, Director General Abigail Bradshaw also urged Australian organizations to embrace AI for its defensive capabilities. Our national AI technology reporter Cam Wilson joins me now. Hi there, Cam. So just take me through these comments from the Australian Signals Director, uh Directorate General. Yeah, good morning. I um yesterday at a conference which was about um AI by um the think tank ASPE. Um the Director General made some comments about how AI was affecting what she does and what her agency does. And um, you know, by now many people have heard there's this really big global story at the moment about this disruptive uh capacity and potentially catastrophic consequences of AI continuing to develop. She was more talking about the here and now and talking about how already these advances in AI are changing what she has to do and what her agency is dealing with. So she spoke about, for example, the fact that there are these new AI-assisted threats. You know, people are using AI to help with with hacking and other cybercrimes. Um, and also we've, you know, we've even heard about um autonomous AI agents, you know, themselves committing those kinds of um incidents. But she also gave a bit more of an optimistic tone when she was talking about the way that her agency is using AI. She was talking about how um, in some cases, the AI and its ability to help with cyber uh defensive capabilities has meant that things that used to take engineers at the uh ASD weeks has now taken them hours. So she was, you know, we've had a lot of doom and gloom, and no doubt there was a bit of uh potential bad news from this. But she also said that these uh that AI is proving itself to also be a weapon for for her agency. Cam, we've been talking for the last little while about you know this push to slow down the development of AI. You've heard from the assistant technology minister Andrew Charlton, though, saying that Australia can't count on a slowdown of the pace of AI development. Talk me through that. Yeah, so there has been this recent resurgence of this discussion about slowing down AI development over the last week or so. I think pretty much all of the heads of the major frontier AI companies have come out saying, you know, we need to do something to slow down development. They call it pacing the frontier. They're technically saying it's not slowing down, it's pacing, but you know, I think that's pretty much the same thing, just with a bit of marketing sprinkled on top. They're still talking about continuing to develop it, just not at the pace that they are worried about, you know, what happens. What do they mean by what's happens? You know, they mean um, you know, for example, AI starting to become so capable that it reaches what they call recursive self-improvement, which is when AI starts actually being able to assist itself and improve itself faster than people. They call that moment takeoff, and so that's something that people very fear because it introduces this idea of increasingly humans being involved less than this. Um Minister Charlton spoke about this general Maloo over the last um you know week or so, something that I should say has been in discussion for quite a while, but has recently been, you know, particularly prominent. Saying that while, you know, he is he hears these calls, and he's uh of course the Australian government hopes to see safe AI development. He also I would say struck a bit more of a skeptical tone saying that the financial incentives for these AI companies, because they are companies, um, very often with you know demands for returning on investment, um, have these incentives to keep improving. And so as a result, you know, I think that the tone that he was trying to strike is a real one saying that we can't just, you know, hope and and bet on that these companies will find a way to coordinate to slow down. And we as a country need to continue to do policy that assumes that it's not just it will that we are gonna have to be part of something that ensures AI is taking, you know, is being responsible, not just leaving it to the companies themselves. Ken Wilson, thanks for taking us through it all. Thank you. The community of Wyala in South Australia is facing an uncertain future.