South Australia will hold a royal commission into artificial intelligence and the policy around it, with the state government warning of the technology’s potentially destructive impacts as well as acknowledging its upsides. Source: ABC News.
Premier Peter Malinauskas said AI, if unchecked, presented a “material risk to the way society operates”.
He said the inquiry was intended to maximise the benefits and minimise unwanted impacts from the growth of AI.
The royal commission is expected to begin on October 1 and deliver a report to the government no later than July 1 next year.
“The use of artificial intelligence is an exciting opportunity to advance the cause of humanity but it is also true that unchecked artificial intelligence does represent a material risk to the way our society operates and a risk to the future of work if not thought through carefully,” Mr Malinauskas said.
“We are at a really important fork in the road.
“We can choose to allow this industry to come to our country and evolve in a way that is unregulated and unchecked … or we can choose to set the agenda. We can choose to set the guard rails and the policy frameworks to ensure that we use AI in a way that puts people first.”
The announcement followed Mr Malinauskas’s recent trip to the United States, where he met representatives from AI heavyweights OpenAI, Anthropic and Apple.
The Premier said he wanted AI companies to participate in the inquiry, which would shape future approaches to the technology and potential restrictions on its use.
“In a regulated way, we want to teach kids how to use AI but I don’t think we’ve done as much work as we potentially can or should.
“A sign of success might be that a royal commission makes a bunch of recommendations that are well thought through, able to be adopted by state governments and that others may follow.”
The inquiry’s terms of reference will be announced in the next four to six weeks.
But Mr Malinauskas conceded data centres – which the government wants to lure to the state for financial reasons, but are controversial because of their water and energy use – would not be part of the royal commission.
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Royal commission into artificial intelligence launched in South Australia (By Daniel Keane, Jacob Kagi and Sarah Maunder, ABC News)
