By Renju Jose
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s centre-left government said on Thursday it plans to introduce targeted rules for artificial intelligence, including human intervention and transparency, as it rapidly rolls out AI tools across businesses and in everyday life.
Ed Husic, Minister of Industry and Science, presented ten new voluntary guidelines for AI systems and said the government has launched a month-long consultation on whether they should be made mandatory in high-risk environments in the future.
“Australians know AI can do amazing things, but people want to know there are protections in place if it goes wrong,” Husic said in a statement. “Australians want stronger protections for AI, we heard that, we listened.”
The guidance report states that it is critical to enable human control as required throughout the lifecycle of an AI system.
“Meaningful human oversight allows you to intervene when needed and reduces the potential for unintended consequences and harm,” the report said. Companies should be transparent in disclosing the role of AI in generating content, it added.
Regulators around the world have raised concerns about disinformation and fake news caused by AI tools, as generative AI systems such as Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini gain popularity.
As a result, the European Union passed landmark AI laws in May, imposing strict transparency obligations on high-risk AI systems. These obligations go beyond the voluntary, light-touch compliance approach in several countries.
“We don’t think there’s a right to self-regulation anymore. I think we’ve passed that threshold,” Husic told ABC News.
Australia has no specific laws to regulate AI, although it introduced eight voluntary principles for responsible use in 2019. A government report published this year said current settings were inadequate to address high-risk scenarios.
According to Husic, only a third of companies using AI are implementing it responsibly in terms of safety, fairness, accountability and transparency.
“Artificial intelligence is expected to create around 200,000 jobs in Australia by 2030, so it is vital that Australian businesses are equipped to develop and utilise the technology in the right way,” he said.
(Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Jamie Freed)
