Australia’s government has woken up to the risks of AI. More ambition is needed
Australia’s government has woken up to the risks of AI. More ambition is needed
Publish Date: 2026-07-09 22:26:00
Source Domain: theconversation.com
This week, Andrew Charlton, the federal assistant minister for science and technology, issued a stark warning about artificial intelligence (AI).
Speaking at the AI Safety Forum at the University of Sydney, he said powerful AI models “are already doing things their creators never intended: cheating, deceiving, going their own way”.
In response, the Australian government has established the AI Safety Institute under its National AI Plan. Charlton described it as “a national testing capability” and provided the most detailed public account yet of the work it will do.
But will it be enough to keep Australians safe from what could be one of the most powerful, rapidly advancing technologies the world has known?
The harms are already here
AI’s risks and harms are already affecting Australians.
There are the problems we are already seeing today: nudify apps, more sophisticated scams and deepfakes, voice cloning, chatbots that have isolated teens and encouraged harms, and heightened cybersecurity risks that are alarming our security agencies.
Beyond immediate and present harms, experts are sounding the alarm about what’s coming. This includes rapidly expanding capabilities and agentic AI that we don’t yet have controls for.
In a report published last week, the United Nations’ Independent International Scientific Panel on AI also raised concerns about global concentration of power, resources, AI capability, inequality, and the technology’s impact on how we think, reason and work.
A significant remit
The AI Safety Institute has three broad tasks, as Andrew Charlton explained at this week’s forum. First, analysing and testing new models. Second, supporting government regulators and agencies to respond to emerging AI capabilities, risks, harms and trends. Third, shaping safe AI development, deployment and international governance in Australia’s interests.
It is already doing work on multi-agent risks with the Gradient Institute)….
