South Australia will hold a royal commission into artificial intelligence and the policy around it, with the state government warning of its potentially destructive impacts as well as acknowledging its upsides.
Premier Peter Malinauskas said AI, if unchecked, presented a “material risk to the way society operates”.
He said the inquiry was intended to maximise benefits and minimise unwanted impacts from the growth of AI.
The royal commission is expected to commence in October and report by mid next year.
“We are at a really important fork in the road where we can choose to allow this industry to come to our country and evolve in a way that is unregulated and unchecked,” Mr Malinauskas said.
“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 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 the royal commission would follow his recent trip to the United States where he met with representatives from AI heavyweights OpenAI, Anthropic and Apple.
The inquiry’s terms of reference will be announced in the next four to six weeks.
Three royal commissioners will also be appointed in that time.
Mr Malinauskas said he expected the cost of the royal commission to be around $3 million.
“The cost of the royal commission is really chicken feed in comparison to the cost of society if we don’t think through the complex questions that are going to be asked of us with the deployment of this technology,” he said.
“If we don’t do this properly we could see very significant changes in the way that people work … [and] a more rapid destruction of demand in some areas of the labour market.”
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