Criminals are taking advantage of AI technology to conduct misinformation campaigns, commit fraud and obstruct justice through deepfake audio and video. Australia's eSafety Commission has raised concerns about the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to assist predators in grooming children online as the country debates restrictions on the emerging technology. Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant posted on Twitter that "the manipulative power of generative AI to execute on grooming and sextortion is no longer speculative." "eSafety is already receiving cyberbullying reports and image-based abuse reports around deepfakes," she wrote. "The fact is AI has been'exfiltrated into the wild' without guardrails."

Three Australian-US scientific teams will set their sights on minimising the impact of health pandemics, harmful environmental emissions and drought using AI approaches. Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic welcomed the announcement that the US National Science Foundation and Australia's national science agency CSIRO have awarded grants under their Collaboration Opportunities in Responsible and Ethical AI initiative. The grants total $1.8 million on the US side and $2.3 million on the Australian side, and include researchers from the University of NSW, RMIT University, University of Technology Sydney and the University of Melbourne. "These grants will support valuable research in ethical artificial intelligence, while strengthening relationships between US and Australian research organisations," Minister Husic said. "The NSF-CSIRO initiative will bring the best Australian and US researchers together from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, to share knowledge and learn from each other. "AI is an important driver of new scientific discoveries and economic prosperity, while also safeguarding national wellbeing.

As if anyone needed reminding that a federal election looms, a war of words has broken out between the offices of Industry Minister Karen Andrews and shadow human services minister Ed Husic over a briefing on, of all things, artificial intelligence. Late last year, Mr Husic approached Ms Andrews' office seeking a briefing on the progress of an AI technology roadmap report being prepared by the CSIRO unit Data61 and the Department of Industry, and to get an understanding of the thinking in the report. The request was knocked by the Minister's office – not once but repeatedly – according to Ed Husic and he is not happy about it. These briefings are quite routine and rarely rejected, he says. While there are no specific rules around such briefings, by convention they are commonplace – although the understanding is that they are done in the background, quietly and without any resulting overtly politicisation. Even in the hyper-partisan times we live in, governments see merit in ensuring both the government and opposition benches the opportunity to understand the detail of evolving policy – particularly where there is complexity.

Labor has secured support for a Senate inquiry into the dramatic changes about to hit the workforce in the belief the political establishment is not doing enough to prepare people for the impact of innovation and robotics. The move follows a warning sounded last month by the shadow minister for the future of work and the digital economy Ed Husic who told the AFR's innovation summit that Australia risked being swamped by the consequences of technological change due to the reluctance of government and elements of business to take a lead role in preparing for automation and innovation. Mr Husic said 3.5 million Australian jobs stood to be affected by automation and change, including 250,000 vehicle drivers, while the economy stood to gain $1 trillion by 2030. Yet the rapidly-approaching change was barely audible in the national debate, in part due to the government retreating from its key innovation theme following a backlash during the last election campaign and criticism by former prime minister Tony Abbott.

Despite all its lauding, simply learning to code may not guarantee a future career path, according to Australian PM and Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy, Ed Husic. At a recent Australian Computer Society (ACS) meeting, Husic spoke on the adamance of many politicians in recommending children learn to code to address future changes in the job market. The assumption, he said, is that once we get everyone learning to code, that "everything is going to be safe." Coding, however, isn't the end-all-be-all for meeting the needs of future job seekers, Jusic said. Advances in technology like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning will impact software development in a way that will make coding "good to know, but it's not going to be the safety hatch you all make it out to be," Husic said.