Australia is leading on digital safety because we want to keep Australians safe. We're living in an age of artificial intelligence. We want to shape this technology in Australia's national interest, rather than have it shape us. We now know that it wasn't just the issue of the Australian sites that have been subject to AI agents accessing information without authorisation. There are dozens of cases, including US government sites. What this does is confirm that approach of making sure that it needs to be appropriate national response, as well as an international response to make sure that humans are in charge of this new and emerging technology.
JOURNALIST: Did your announcement the other day break open the dam on this? And did OpenAI let you know that the US announcement was coming?
PRIME MINISTER: No, they didn't. No, at the time that we made our announcement in New York, we weren't aware of other occurrences. We were acting purely in our national interest. It's up to OpenAI to state why it is that there are now multiple cases where this has occurred. But it's not surprising because if you have an AI agent act independently in the way that it did here in Australia, then it would make common sense that that would have occurred in other places potentially as well.
JOURNALIST: You talked a lot about social license on this. How do you reconcile soliciting data centre investment with keeping the companies accountable on cyber security efforts?
PRIME MINISTER: We have a national interest in ensuring that Australia is shaping technology. You can't stop it happening. It's here now and the revelations this week just confirmed this. That's why we have to be in a position to play a role in how this new technology rolls out. That is what is in Australia's national interest. Artificial intelligence has enormous potential. What it will do is to expand economic growth, boost productivity. It will lead to major breakthroughs in healthcare, in science, and research. So we need to make sure that we mitigate the risk, and the key risk is humans not being in charge of the rollout of this technology. Thank you.
