Government's AI safety priorities announced

The federal government has announced a series of AI safety priorities to help ensure AI works better for Australians, following on from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s speech last week on the government’s plan to introduce AI policy guardrails.

The National AI Plan makes clear that to fully realise the benefits that AI offers, Australians must have confidence that AI is being developed and deployed safely.

These priorities leverage and accelerate ongoing efforts to strengthen protections, increase accountability, and support the safe adoption of AI across the community and within the Australian Government itself. These include:

• Duty of care: Legislate a Digital Duty of Care that puts the onus on AI companies to build in safety by design and proactively address potential harm, led by the Minister for Communications.
• Privacy: Consulting on a second tranche of privacy reform to responsibly strengthen, modernise and simplify Australia’s personal data protection laws, led by the Attorney-General. A robust framework for personal data protection is crucial for both conventional and AI-driven services.
• AI safety in the workplace: Pursue AI safety in the workplace as one of the five agreed priority areas of the tripartite Artificial Intelligence Workplace and Employment Forum, led by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations.
• Consumer protections: Examine options in Australian consumer law to address consumer risks, such as retail surveillance pricing and agentic commerce, led by the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury.
• Framework for automated decision-making: Develop a framework to better regulate the use of automated decision-making within federal agencies, led by the Attorney-General, recognising the importance of ensuring fair, accurate and transparent government decision-making, including in the context of emerging technologies such as AI.
   

The government says these whole-of-government AI safety priorities are not exhaustive of its safety agenda. They build on the establishment of the AI Safety Institute, which has commenced safety testing of frontier AI systems, established research partnerships with the CSIRO including alignment research, finalised a project on multi-agent risk with the Gradient Institute and is collaborating on best-practice AI safety with the International Network for Advanced AI Measurement, Evaluation and Science.

These workstreams build on existing government actions including already legislated criminal offences to ban the sharing of non-consensual deepfake sexually explicit material, and work to ban nudify apps.

Key pillars of the National AI Plan are harnessing the benefits of AI, sharing the benefits, and ensuring Australians remain safe. The government views safety and innovation not as competing priorities, but as complementary goals. Strong safeguards help build trust, enabling innovation to deliver lasting benefits.

Countries that get AI safety right will be those building the trust needed for people and businesses to confidently adopt and embrace the benefits of AI.

Image credit: iStock.com/JuSun