Australia putting ‘nothing’ into AI safety despite unknown threats: expert

Further pressure has been piled on the Albanese government to ramp up funding for the AI Safety Institute, accused of putting “nothing” into the body compared to other equivalent bodies, despite the threats artificial intelligence poses. 

Former staffer to the prime minister’s office Janet Egan, who now works as an AI researcher in the United States, panned the $7.5 million in funding for the institute, saying it was not enough to be “taken seriously” on the international stage. 

Egan’s comments to an ongoing parliamentary inquiry into AI were in the face of the Labor government’s claims the centre is “well-resourced”. 

Comparatively, the United Kingdom’s AI Security Institute is provided 16 times more money than Australia.

Canada has committed the equivalent of $50 million to launch its institute, and the US’ Centre for AI Standards and Innovation gets about $78 million.

“The $7.5 million figure is nothing compared to what other countries are throwing at this,” Egan said. 

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“It does not have the resources to currently be taken seriously. I think it also has an incredibly broad remit, which is providing AI policy to the entire Australian government.” 

Egan suggested a significant upscale in financing was required, at a time when the well-resourced overseas institutes were looking to further increase their already much higher levels of funding. 

“[The institutes] give you the situational awareness to understand what is happening. It gives you the ability to work on these unsolved critical questions around alignment and control,” Egan said. 

There is growing concern around the dangers of AI.

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei told the United Nations Security Council in New York City last month that AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole.

Australia’s AI Safety Institute investigates the capabilities, risks and trends that technology poses. 

Chief scientist at the UNSW AI Institute Toby Walsh recently signed an open letter alongside the so-called “godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton, calling for a global oversight body. 

He told the Australian Financial Review the federal government was “not funding AI safety properly”.

“Doubling the AI Safety Institute’s budget is an immediate fix, but we also aren’t funding our AI sovereign capability adequately. Other comparable nations have billion-dollar investment programmes. Where is Australia’s?” Walsh said. 

Independent MP Kate Chaney had previously called for a 10-fold increase to the federal government’s funding commitment, alongside other crossbenchers. 

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“The AI Safety Institute is our front line of defence on AI risk and we're asking it to do that job with a team that would fit in a classroom,” Chaney said last month. 

“There are more people employed at my local supermarket than we employ in the AI Safety Institute. 

“We're investing less than $8 million a year in our frontline defence against a technology that has a non-trivial risk of human extinction… we're calling for at least a tenfold increase in funding.” 

Industry minister Tim Ayres told 9News the safety institute was well-resourced, but conceded more money could be allocated in the future.