Are Australians 'surrender monkeys' on AI?

0:00ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more. What's on the mind of the country's biggest, most influential and most innovative business leaders? If you're a wily billionaire, you can afford to buy the presidency. You get to find out every Friday with me, Alan Kohler. As I sit down with the people influencing the markets, the economy and the ideas shaping our world. That ought to be a very, very urgent call for Australians to think about the role of money in our own politics. Fine, that's business with Alan Kohler on the ABC Business Daily Feed on ABC Listen. Or wherever you get your podcast. The AI debate has gone from science fiction to global power struggle. Some of the biggest names in tech are warning development may need to slow down. But is Australia going to get caught in the middle between safety, copyright, investment, data centres and the Albanese government's big productivity pitch? And speaking of business development and growth, hundreds of jobs are being cut at Wiala,

1:03putting Labour's green steel and future made in Australia agenda under serious pressure. Welcome to Politics Now. Hi, I'm Patricia Carvellas. And I'm Jacob Greber, coming into your earlobes for once on a Tuesday instead of a Monday. How weird is that? That's kind of wild and people are probably confused about where they are. Do not adjust your set. You're alright though, you're going to get through it. Claire of course did a switcheroo with you yesterday and I love a switcheroo. Let's talk about the biggest yarn in the world. And that's the existential doom of artificial intelligence, which the most prominent, powerful people who run these things, basically tell us is going to destroy our lives. I'm exaggerating a little bit also not. The debate has really gone into a new realm internationally. And I think in Australia too, so just to catch you up, we briefly mentioned on the pod with Claire yesterday,

2:06some of the biggest names in AI, warning the industry may need to slow down. I think the fact that the Anthropic CEO has called for frontier AI development to be basically slowed down, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, backing the broad idea that they need to have limits, that they need to perhaps be this kind of safety switch to turn it all down. It sounds very sci-fi, truthfully. Donald Trump interestingly has pushed back hard on the idea of slowing down, basically saying it's an arms race with China and this is what China wants. And there is also speculation it might all be kind of a ruse since the companies are looking for more investment, high valuation, and that this is actually their way of doing that. Now, I am deeply suspicious of billionaires because I know their profit motive is the most fundamental thing that they live for. And so I believe Colomé Colombe, Jacob, before I throw to you, I think they are deeply motivated by what works for them.

3:08And all of this collaboration and coordination is within their sort of power structure of keeping them at the top of the food chain. But equally, I do believe, actually, that they are a little worried and they're kind of telling us maybe a bit of the truth or am I naive. I said this elsewhere recently, it reminds me of the original nuclear program in the United States, the Manhattan Project and Los Alamos in the desert there in the United States, where they are all building and playing with this incredibly destructive technology, the nuclear bomb. The difference, PK, between the great development of the nuclear weapon and AI, is that the one in America was run by the government. There was a whole bunch of nerds they put in the desert to work the problem out and solve it and come up with the technology. But the government still controlled it all. This is so different, as you say. It's the billionaires, it's private business interests, it's a profit motive,

4:12and it's sitting underneath all of this technology and this race, this incredible race. So, PK, the question then is, what is it for us? What does this fight mean for Australia? Are we sort of the little kids in the playground while the big grown-up kids sort of slug it out? And we're hoping one of the big ones doesn't fall over and land on us. Okay, so this is where we're at. We are just a little bit player, right? We are a little tiny, I mean we're a great island and we punch above our weight and all the good things that I genuinely deeply believe. But you know, in terms of this big debate, AI, it's a worldwide thing, China and America are the big players. We are, you know, a congewish, yeah? However, we can provide guardrails about how it all operates here. We can be influential. They need our land for their data centers. We can leverage our power in terms of an exchange for that land.

5:12They need us, right? These big companies for access to these frontier models, which clearly we want. I suppose for Australia, it's about like flexing the muscle as much as possible. And there are some really interesting thinkers on this or participants in this debate. I think, you know, not surprisingly, because he's often got interesting things to say. You listen to someone like Andrew Hastie, who's the shadow, you know, sovereignty spokesperson, who basically says we shouldn't be a supplicant stage. We need to be pushing for that advantage, Jacob. But I think that's where it's at for us. You know, the Prime Minister's on his way to New York. He will meet with Tim Cook, the Apple CEO. That won't only be on AI. It's obviously on a range of issues. That whole trip, that is kind of key for the Prime Minister to be able to have, I think, some sway when it comes to these issues. And to kind of put our markers on the ground about where we stand,

6:15on how this very, very, very revolutionary technology, which has the power to transform our lives for good and for evil. Right? And we choose, we design our own adventure, don't we? Or we should. Yeah. And I think you can see the political delineation starting to form. The government, and there's a raft of ministers who are all sort of jostling and jockeying to be the voice on AI within the government. And they're all coming at it from slightly different angles. But it's generally a, we want to get into this big time. We want to be part of this wave. We want Australia to be a destination for these big companies. Then you've got the Deputy Prime Minister Richard Miles. He's really pushing back against the idea that open AI is some sort of threat to the country. Andrew Charlton's the other big figure in this debate. He's the Assistant Science Minister, but you know, also known as one of the sharper thinkers in the government. And he's saying governments basically should assume and try and convince citizen that this technology gets better over time.

7:19And he's going to do things for productivity and going to do things for healthcare. But the picker, the problem is, and I don't know what you think, but in the meantime, you've got to spend all this money to invest. That's inflationary. It's another cost that's being poured on top of all the other things we're trying to do at once. We're trying to build more houses. We're trying to fix the grid. We're trying to build transmission. And now we're going to do data centers up the Wazoo. At the same time, it's taking electricians away from jobs they might have been doing elsewhere. So I could see the governments all going home on that front, but there are real challenges making this work. And then we haven't even mentioned the Greens here who just are very, very, and I think with good reason, worried about security and safety and what this does to people's livelihoods. Yeah, and these are very much mainstream concerns, right? Like the Australian public, I reckon are particularly of an internationally in terms of comparison. A little wary, our low adoption of AI in terms of our businesses, I think that tells that story.

8:23It's not just a productivity question, it's the weariness. What's this all about? Like how is this going to change our lives? And there's history here. We've been told a gazillion times, haven't we? That technology is going to make our lives better. And social media is a real live current example of the fact that we spend most of our times trying to uncook ourselves. Like we've been slow roasted, and it's hard to thaw again, right? How do you uncook yourself? Well, I think you haven't worked it out. Once you cooked, you cooked. I know I'm cooked. I try to uncook myself every day, but there's a bit of cooking that's happened. So I think that's the warning shot, isn't it, though? Isn't that like the sort of parallel, we've had a digital revolution. I know AI is very different, but we've had something that we know can be both amazing and also harmful. Yeah, but I think the difference this is, this is so many multiples more, isn't it? This is the digital revolution that we had.

9:25What is it now? 20, 20, 30 years ago, 40 years ago. This is how it's stretched to now. We're really old, you know. Let's go with about 25, 30 years. Yeah, well, they started making that stuff in their, you know, garage in the 70s. I'm talking about Bill Gates and he's making it. Oh, yeah, he's making it. But in terms of our adoption, it's in our lifetime, right? Yeah, it's in our lifetime. But this is happening in the space of a few years, and the consequences are so much bigger. So I think that's the problem. That's what governments and our minds are struggling with. I think it's really interesting to see the Prime Minister actively engage with this. He talked about it at his caucus meeting today. They know that they can't let this one escape them. They have to sound like they're in control of this, even if they're not because of the community anxiety around it. And I think that's wise. I'm not saying they've won that yet, but they know they have to sound like they're leading on it. They cannot sound like we are just, you know, we're just like surrender monkeys.

10:25Like, oh, it's just going to happen. Come steamroll us. No one is going to accept that in the public. I mean, I think even Pauline Hansen, I've said this a million times on this pot. I will say it again. The fact that she mentioned AI in that press club speech says volumes to me about, you know, even the populists know this is a thing. And so he's on to it. I'm not saying he's got the perfect solutions, but he knows he needs to be talking about it and sounding like he's leading on it. Not that he's being led. I want to change the topic to what this wireless job loss story is really about. We mentioned it at the end of last pod. It was just kind of breaking at the time. 500 workers, around 100 contractors, all affected, losing their jobs. The South Australian government took control of the steelworks from San Giv, Gupta's GFG Alliance earlier this year. Basically, it all sort of fell apart government steps in. Federal and state governments have been trying to keep the operation going while administrators prepare for its sale.

11:28Hasn't really worked. The industry minister, Tim Er, says there are two bitters still in the process. But the formation of what it was is pretty much over, isn't it? I mean, that's finished. So it's what it could become. Now there's questions about the kind of high levels of funding that's gone into trying to prop this thing up. And the fact that that hasn't really worked and what's the long term sustainability of it. Oh, this thing's a disaster, Peke. Tell us what you really think. This is a disaster. And that, you know, talking to people who've been involved in this from different angles, from different perspectives of whether they should invest. There were lots of ideas around. There's obviously now a blame game that kicks off. There's a political blame game about whether it was energy that was the problem, whether it was, you know, the lack of investment certainty, whatever the settings might have been. The bottom line is this is a very, very complicated thing they were trying to pull off.

12:32You've got an old asset that you're trying to set up to compete in a world where there's so much to do. There's so much more competition than ever before. And they've tried to kind of stickty-tap this thing back together again and it's fallen over. And there's a lot of public money that's gone into that process. There are now 500 plus 100 contractors, you know, 600 jobs. That's a lot of jobs in a town like Waiala. And essentially now the sales process is, it's still underway, but the two bidders are really bidding for a much diminished set of assets. There's now no furnace. You've got to go back to square one. So what they'll end up doing, I'm told by people who've looked at this, they'll import what are called billets of the raw stock from overseas, from furnaces probably in China. And then they'll turn them into the rolled steel that you sort of see coming out of those big, one of their core, those big machines, big rolly steely machine things, I think it's a technical term.

13:33And that's what they'll do at Waiala if they can keep it going. But the real thing that was always proposed here back years ago was that this was a place where you could try something a little different. You could try making, for instance, green steel, where you build a hydrogen facility that makes green steel instead of using highly carbon intensive steel. And that would be the argument for why that would be competitive. You could sell that to countries where you get a premium for that. Now that was the sort of dream a couple of years ago and that's really fallen away both the state government and the federal governments are not that interested in it. In fact, I was talking to Chris Boe and I interviewed Chris Boe in last night on 730. You know, he said, he says hydrogen does have a future but it's not what the hype was all about and it's not as bleak as it seems. Yeah, and the desperate stakes are because this is a town that relies on this industry. These are people's livelihoods, these are people's communities. It does matter.

14:37You can understand why, I'm not suggesting you were saying it doesn't, by the way, but I'm saying, like, you can understand politically and sort of morally, if I can use that word, why governments have been invested in trying to make this thing work. Oh, I think they're coming at it from good for good reasons. One is we need to have a sovereign steelmaking capacity is the argument that backs a whole lot of public money going into this. But what have we got now? What are we left with now? It's not really that. It's still dependent now without a furnace on material coming from overseas. So I don't think we've even reached that goal. We're sure to that. You've got the raw materials in South Australia. Now we're going to have to bring a bunch of the raw materials or the next stage, the stuff that comes out of the furnace. You can have to bring that in in the form of billets that are imported. So I'm struggling to see how that boosts our sovereign capacity, which was the argument at the bottom of this.

15:39Yeah. And that's the fundamental floor in the argument. Look, I want to move on to one more topic if we can that I think some, well, I don't think it's kind of the sort of bubbling, almost constant story of this term of government, which is the notion that our immigration is too high. And I say the notion because not everyone agrees with that. It depends who you ask, right? Barnaby Joyce was on the ABC's national forum last night hosted by David Spears. And defending the new policy that one nation has now put out, you know, we were saying yesterday with Claire, it's always like a Monday, they set the agenda by putting out a new policy every Monday, the opposition, the official opposition, the coalition always looks like they're on the back foot and the government tries to own other agendas, but I think sometimes has looked like they're on the back foot too. One nation, he says, would follow voters, not economists. I think it's a really interesting line, you know, the idea that it's voters who want this. So people like Barnaby Joyce can just reject any economic kind of feedback. You know, oh, this will lead to a recession. Well, this is what voters want, you know, and sort of will they deny that it'll lead to a recession, but they also just don't engage with it as a concept.

16:51So this issue, right, it's not going to go away. One nation obviously trying to control it, but the government in a bit of a pickle haven't quite announced what they're going to do. And at the same time, the coalition in quite a delicate spot as they want migration to be lower, they want to sort of out, they want to win over the government on migration, but equally, they can't go the one nation wrote the coalitions in a political pitched battle against one nation. And you have people like John O'Donney and saying, look, when we do our policy, it'll be fully costed. You'll see what the effects are on the economy. And that's a pushback against, you know, Barnaby Joyce's sort of vibe vibes, vibes economy. You know, don't worry about that. It's, it's, you know, just do it, man. He sort of, you know, sort of don't worry about evidence or what the real world effects will be. Just do it, man. So the coalitions trying to set itself apart from that, but then you have the government, which I mean, it's the government, it actually has to solve this diabolical problem. And in the last week, they've clearly been trying to duchess the opposition into coming to some sort of agreement on measures that could be taken.

18:04We know the Prime Minister and Angus Taylor met a couple of times last week. I was hearing that the coalition was very much putting a bunch of stuff on the table, things like, for instance, you know, legislating the foreign fighters stuff that the coalition wants to crack down on making people, I think, not come back to Australia ever, even if they're potentially citizens, that kind of thing. And that's really a bridge too far for the government. So the first round of talks between the government and the opposition haven't haven't really succeeded, but I think that's just the start, Pika, I don't know what you're hearing or what you think, but these things often fail at first. That doesn't mean they're dead in the water, doesn't it? Yeah, no, that's totally what I'm hearing. And I think that's broadly the direction it will take. I mean, I had Matt Canavan on afternoom briefing yesterday. And it was really interesting interview on many fronts. But on this issue around immigration, yeah. He actually was very open to working with the government to try and, you know, get something that lowers immigration. He didn't say it was, he said, it's not a blank check, but yeah, we have to be constructive and work to try and get it down.

19:14I think there is, I wouldn't be surprised if there is something they work on. This is good. We get to, we get to triangulate the interviews that we've done. Chris Bowen told 730 last night. He was asked about the opposition's idea on immigration, which is to link housing completions, make the nom, the net overseas migration rate, the same number. So every year you find out how many houses we've built and then that determines your immigration policy. Bowen didn't say, he was given the opportunity to sort of knock that out of the park and he didn't. He, you know, left that one go. He essentially wasn't picking a fight with the coalition on this point. So I think the government and the opposition are very much circling each other. The opposition doesn't, certainly doesn't want to solve problems for the government. And this is one of the biggest problems it has politically. But they want to be a party of government. And this is a problem they'll have one day. So, you know, if they ever get back in. And so they are working, I think, yeah, behind the scenes.

20:17I'm not in Canberra today, Pika. And it's very strange not being in Canberra. You don't feel the little funny little things that you pick up when you walk around and talk to people. I'm sorry, true. I look, you know, I'm famous for a little trick. I think people often find it funny when we we overshare. So I'm going to I do this little trick. I spend a lot of the sitting weeks here as people know for after in briefing and politics now. And I'm a bit FIFO and I park myself on couches where I know ministers will walk past. It's a it's a clever trick. Every, every Gernos got a version of this. It's like, you know, certain corridors you go down at certain times of the day. It's the best thing about like this kind of live environment. I'm like, oh, and everyone knows they're like, you, I'm like, I'm very comfortable on my couch. Would you like to join me in my public office? So yes, we do pick up things. And I think we on the migration stuff in terms of what we're picking up. I think there is real movement on trying to find some sort of consensus in terms of the coalition though. I don't I don't I think this is a win win for them.

21:21And I'll explain. I mean, I know they have the one nation thing. They'll never outbid them. Right? That's a broader problem. You won't win that game. In terms of the government, I don't know why there's I think it's totally politically sellable to say we've backed this because we want to help you right now and get the numbers down. So we want to help you. And we and these guys are in power. So we have to do everything we can. But we still don't think it goes far enough and we'll go further. You know, like that is sure you can exactly they can do it. And if they were doing that line, the government would say, oh, look, they're not even going to help us like rain down, not rain down limit a certain category or make this tweak. They're so they're so interested only in being an opposition. They can't even help the country fix this problem. This little modest change or well, they won't call it modest. But you know what I'm saying. So yeah, I think they're sort of in this dance at the moment. We're still in the early stages of the dance. We've got off the benches at the side of the hall. They're in the middle, occasionally sort of dancing, but yeah, it hasn't fully started yet.

22:23Yeah, look just finally before we say goodbye for two day until, of course, we arrive in your podcast feed tomorrow, because that's what we do. We keep turning up. Something really interesting has happened. And I think a little on the significant side. Okay, are you ready? Paul Enhancin has offered a qualified apology for her comments about First Nations Australians significant because Look, I've watched this woman for 30 years. She is not really high on the apology, like she's not like loving apologies. It's not she's not the Peter B school of saying sorry about everything. Oh, no, no, no, but she has. Now this comes from we mentioned it yesterday. These comments she made very offensive comments on the conservative leaning Jamie J podcast from last year. She says that she thinks that it's kind of shouldn't have kind of said it. That way speaking to news 24 and I quote all I'm saying is basically going back to time of settlement here of what the rest of the world was like with, you know, the British settlement, that type of thing. So I'm not talking about that now at this time. I regret saying that because I don't want to upset people. That's not my intentions.

23:41We've all heard apologies haven't we in this political business many, many apologies. This is you don't buy it. None apology. She's what she's sorry about is that it's upset people. She's not sorry about what she said. Oh, man, I totally agree with you. However, for her not to double down on the primitive is still significant. Am I wrong? Look, it was a yeah, I don't know the original comment was just so so appalling on any objective measure. Everyone's piled onto her. You name them, you know, just into an ampage in the price. The government. Lots and lots of people out there in the community. And I think Barnaby was struggling with it as well when he was asked about it. And so she's backed off. Backed off is a good way of putting it. Yeah, I great. It's not a fit full me a culper. I mean, I you know, if I was an indigenous person, I'm not sure if that would be the kind of apology I was looking for.

24:46But it is a concession from her that it was a really problematic thing to say. It is interesting how this this stuff that's in the archive. Not not even that old. This was only a year ago, I think. And the comments about the prime minister's mother and her and public housing that was several months ago. Everyone's going back through all of the stuff she said. And these these things are bubbling up. The thing is though, this is this is what she's she's been saying these things for 30 odd years. It's just that a new generation and a new set of voters is hearing them for the first time. Yeah. And they're newly relevant because she is doing so well on the polls. And so what she says seems all of the sudden to have consequence because she could be in a genuine position of power. So if you think these things, what does that look like in terms of how the country's run like it's all legit now, right? Anyway, interesting half apology. Let's call it that we'll go with that. You can make up your own mind if you hear a comments. And that's it for politics now today. Jacob, you're okay on a Tuesday. Love you on a Monday. Like you want to Tuesday too, actually.

25:56Well, I'm going to be gone for a little while, but I'm you know, look forward to coming back and tell you all about where I've been. Let's not talk about it now. No, because you're lonely. I've said you. Yeah, you don't want me to sort of have a hecy fit and dramatically storm out of the office because I'm not coming with you. You didn't invite me anyway. Look, whatever. I'll just be put my big girl pants on and move on. Mel Clark will be with me tomorrow. She'll be filling in for David Spears. Keep an eye out for the politics now. Feed. Make sure you like and subscribe. Please share it with your friends. It's the only way we can really share this pod. And it's been. It's been well spread, actually, but I need it to be even spread even more like let's let's get sort of. Let's make it a flu epidemic. You know, share it. Make it make it shareable. Like just just send it to people. Send your questions to the party room at ABC.net.au and friend and I will try and answer your questions mainly. Friend. See you Jacob. See you.