PM expected to make major AI speech this week

The Prime Minister is set to make a significant speech on artificial intelligence this week. His second on AI in just over a fortnight is encouraging a lot of speculation about whether the government will provide more details about its expectations of data centres and AI infrastructure developers. The ABC's national AI reporter is Cam Wilson. Hi, Cam. Is it looking like the Prime Minister is about to announce a shift in the government's AI policy? So we're hearing that there will be a big announcement made later this week. There was a noticeable shift in how the Prime Minister was talking about AI and the fact that he was talking about it altogether a few weeks ago when he gave a speech, which was talking to an economic forum, and as part of that, he was talking about many of the other governments' other initiatives, such as their push for renewable energy, and as part of that, he threw AI into the mix. It wasn't a big part of the speech, but it was very early on and kind of prominently put. And he was speaking about how in Australia, you know, we have to deal with these factors that are changing all around the world. Technology is changing, the world is changing, and we have to respond to it and make the best of it. We can't just let the world, you know, change us. We've got to respond and you know do what we can. So, as part of that, people have kind of believe, based on everything else that is happening, that they are looking to announce some decisions on some of the policy issues that will affect whether AI companies are looking to make major investments in Australia. Okay, so there has been a bit of a pushback overseas, and now we're seeing it in Australia in terms of the rise of data centres, the way that they're using scarce resources, power and water, in addition to some of the localities in which they're based. They're popping up in some suburban areas. Is this speech about also assuring or making the case to Australians about why we need to have AI based in Australia? It looks like he's going to be trying to make that case. It's made a really big effort to broadcast the fact that it is hard on big tech, lots of cracking down on big tech. And this, the data center interest that has kind of come out of nowhere, is another area in which they are seeing that there is a lot of public interest. When I talk to politicians, people who are in the industry and policy, they are all saying that the issue of data centers has really become this enormous focus for public attention in a way that they are completely surprised. In fact, when I spoke to people from the data center industry in particular, they were saying two years ago no one cared if we put up a data center, and now we are in the middle of this like political firestorm. So the government no doubt sees this as happening already in Australia. It sees America, where to be fair, it is a bit of a different issue. The data centers in the US are much bigger, they have a different infrastructure setup. But of course, you know, the basic dynamics are the same, that these are these, you know, new buildings that take up resources that compete in the local community to, you know, power these systems that some people were very fond of. Some people have big reservations about. They are seeing this, understanding that this is an issue that they need to address. And I think they're seeing it as an opportunity to establish their kind of bona fides on this topic, to say, yes, data centers can come to Australia, yes, you can build them here, but in return, we have these demands, and some of the demands that they've kind of foreshadowed are things about you know economic fairness, opportunities, you know, making sure that they are continuing to be based on renewables and helping, not hurting that transition. A lot of things that the government has already been interested on that it now sees as a data center as an opportunity to then mark their stamp. And so is the government also seeking here to talk directly to big tech and the investment sector, given the huge capital that is required for the AI sector to advance in Australia? And what is the message if that is indeed the case? Yeah, so I mean, we are seeing that many of these hyperscalers, which is the big tech companies that are looking to build data centers around the world, not so much just the ones that are used to run these services, that's kind of called inference. So, you know, if you use an AI chatbot, it's kind of like those are the data centers that are kind of smaller, typically need to be placed in metro areas so they're close to the people who are using them. Then you've got these bigger ones that are used for the training. These are you know very, very much like power consuming, resource-intensive, much bigger in scale that many of these companies are looking to place outside of the US for a variety of reasons. Australia has emerged as one of the places that some of these companies are looking to potentially build these. It's a massive investment, but they also see Australia as an attractive place to do it for a variety of reasons. We're politically stable, we've got, you know, a um we've got good education here, we've got you know good infrastructure, renewable energy. For all these reasons, they are thinking about doing it here, but one of the big issues, a major hurdle, is this issue of copyright, this idea that training AI in Australia may not be legal under copyright. They're kind of looking for an answer on that. And I think what we're seeing from the government is maybe we'll see something soon on copyright, but they're also being very clear that before we even have that conversation, we want to set down the rules for Thank you even coming here and thinking about building these data centers. you. Ham Wilson will know more later this week. Thank you.