Independent MP Kate Chaney has warned that Australia’s new AI Safety Institute is severely underfunded, as she and other independent MPs urge the federal government to slow down and regulate before opening the floodgates to artificial intelligence.
The AI Safety Institute began operating in June, tasked with coordinating the federal government’s response to rapid developments in AI. Labor committed nearly $30 million to establish the institute, with about $8 million a year in ongoing funding from the end of the decade.
Chaney is not convinced the institute has the capacity to confront the sector’s significant challenges.
“We’re investing less than $8 million a year in our frontline defence against a technology that has a non-trivial risk of human extinction,” she said on Thursday.
“We invest 200 times more than that in biosecurity because we know how important it is, and AI is more powerful, more expensive to remediate, and faster than any pest, and its impact could be felt across the whole economy.”
Nine independent MPs are calling for funding to be lifted to $100 million a year as an immediate response, and have floated the idea of establishing a dedicated AI department for the longer term.
The push comes as the government works through possible concessions to big tech companies on copyright, aimed at opening the door to AI training centres being built in Australia.
Chaney said Australia was in a uniquely terrible position.
“We have a lose-lose-lose situation,” she said, noting that artists have no incentive to create and are not receiving compensation, while the government has no leverage if tech companies walk away from investing in emerging technologies.
Canberra singer-songwriter Stella Eve said allowing AI models to scrape creative work to train a model to generate music was inherently wrong, telling AAP that the idea a company could take her works without credit or compensation made her sick, and that music is something made by people, not generated.
A parliamentary committee inquiry into AI begins on Friday, hearing evidence from government department representatives.