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Can the government really get ahead of the curve on AI? – Australian Politics podcast

The Guardian

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The political editor, Tom McIlroy, speaks to the assistant minister for science, technology and the digital economy, Andrew Charlton, about this week’s announcement of environmental and energy safeguards on new datacentres in Australia

Summary

This discussion examines the Australian government's strategy for balancing AI innovation with national standards, specifically focusing on new environmental and energy safeguards for data centers. Assistant Minister Andrew Charlton addresses the erosion of public trust in AI, citing personal experience with intellectual property scraping by frontier AI lab Anthropic. The dialogue emphasizes the necessity of regulatory frameworks to mitigate systemic risks while positioning Australia to benefit from technological advancements. It highlights a shift in Australian policy toward proactive governance of the physical and digital infrastructure underpinning frontier AI systems.

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00:00:0000:00:00Can the government really get ahead of the curve on AI? – Australian Politics podcastOn Wednesday, the Labor government announced environmental and energy safeguards on new datacentres in Australia. Our political editor, Tom McIlroy, speaks to the assistant minister for science, technology and the digital economy, Dr Andrew Charlton, about the government’s push for national standards on datacentres.The former Rudd staffer and economist speaks about having his own book scraped by Anthropic, low public trust in AI, and how the government wants to use regulation to balance risk and opportunityExplore more on these topicsAustralian politicsAustralian PoliticsAI (artificial intelligence)Labor party