Unions welcome new AI Safety Institute

Australian Unions welcome today’s announcement of the Australian AI Safety Institute, calling it a critical step toward ensuring Australia has a pro-worker, pro-jobs and pro-growth adoption of Artificial Intelligence.

Unions have been campaigning for a whole-of-Government response to empower working people to share in any potential benefits that AI offers. Critical to this is mitigating the risks of AI. Working people have already had their content stolen by AI, their jobs disrupted, and their rights breached by developers and users of this technology.

Appropriate whole-of-government guidance and regulatory responses will help protect Australians from the development of malicious AI tools and minimise harmful use by bad-faith actors.

The new Institute will provide national guidance to ensure developers of AI models, tools, and applications comply with all Australian laws and provide full transparency about how their technology functions, for what purposes, and what safeguards are in place.

Quotes attributable to ACTU Assistant Secretary, Joseph Mitchell:

“The announcement of the AI Safety Institute is an important first step to ensuring that AI developers and deployers comply with Australian law and respect our standards.

“AI is a rapidly evolving technology with broadening applications and uses. Unions welcome the new AI Institute as a vital tool for all regulators to protect against bad-faith uses of the technology.

“Unions welcome the commitment of the Albanese Labor Government to ensuring the AI Safety Institute has the capability to hold developers accountable to Australian law and community expectations. This is crucial for scrutinising and testing models, often developed overseas.

“Working people must share in the benefits of AI. Too many livelihoods have been stolen in the rapid development of these models. The first step in sharing the benefits is protecting against the potential harms.”