Australia has a big opportunity to develop artificial intelligence, but the technology could have major economic ramifications if firms and governments don’t adapt, a billionaire entrepreneur has warned.
Scott Farquhar, the co-founder of tech giant Atlassian, said Australia was on the edge of a “great industrial revolution” with AI in a speech to the National Press Club on Wednesday.
Scott Farquhar, co-founder of Atlassian and chair of the Tech Council of Australia, at the National Press Club in Canberra.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
He said taking advantage of existing AI infrastructure could contribute up to $115 billion per year to Australia’s economy by 2030.
It comes as the government prepares to host an economic roundtable in August, where development of AI to enhance productivity is on the agenda.
“The scoreboard of the AI era is blank,” Farquhar said. “The race is still on, and Australia has everything to play for.”
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Farquhar said the place to kickstart Australia’s productivity with AI was in data centres: massive facilities that process data from cloud servers, with complex operations serving millions of customers.
Farquhar said Australia’s strategic location close to Southeast Asia, as well as having a lot of land, could lead the country to become a world leader in AI storage.
He called for the government to change copyright laws to give exceptions for text and data-mining to boost AI’s capacity, for which the US and Europe already have exceptions.
“There’s huge opportunities for people that are great at what they do, at creating content to sell in a totally new way,” Farquhar said.
Atlassian cut 150 jobs on Wednesday, to be replaced by AI, and Commonwealth Bank this week confirmed it is doing the same in its customer call centres.
When asked about the impact of AI taking away jobs, Farquhar said it was inevitable.
He compared the arrival of AI to the introduction of electric trains following the era of steam locomotives, noting while people at the time were concerned they would lose jobs, it advanced the country in the long run.
“The amount we spend is an early canary into how productive and innovative we are going to be in the next decade or two,” Farquhar said.
AAP
