South Australian Premier Announces AI Royal Commission

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.