National AI Plan a starting point for sovereign capability; decisive action needed

The National AI Plan released today by the Federal Government needs a stronger focus on building robust national capabilities if we want to create a world-leading AI ecosystem for the nation.

The National AI Plan articulates existing government initiatives and identifies opportunities to provide a strong AI narrative, but does not commit to the necessary level of investment in Australian skills or new AI industries.

The National AI Plan shows how AI might be used across key sectors of healthcare and education, and drive job creation through targeted existing investment in infrastructure and people. It recognises the important role government plays as a custodian of critical datasets, and outlines how private sector investment in AI technologies can be leveraged to grow the economy. But it misses an opportunity to invest in local innovators and technology companies as hosts for sovereign AI models and tools.

ATSE welcomes the previously announced commitment to establish an AI Safety Institute, and the commitment to leverage the National Reconstruction Fund to invest $1 billion in digital technologies. Both measures align with ATSE’s report Unleashing Growth: Australia’s AI investment blueprint. The new commitment to an ‘AI Accelerator’ funding round of the Cooperative Research Centres program will further support industry to develop and scale up AI technologies and is a welcome commitment.

The National AI Plan recognises the value of government-held datasets – as enumerated in ATSE’s recent report, Made in Australia: Our AI Opportunity. The commitment to expand access to nationally held datasets, including for pilot AI use cases, is an important action to unlock the value of this resource – we look forward to details on how this will be implemented. Setting expectations for using renewable energy and mitigating water usage for privately owned data centres is welcome and will support sustainability alongside economic growth.

ATSE CEO Kylie Walker said, “The Australian government now needs to act decisively to implement and build on this plan, including through new commitments to AI infrastructure. This has fast become core business, and we need to get it right. Supporting and investing in the rollout of AI technologies through skills training, new infrastructure and business resources will make immediate improvements to the lives of Australians, and build future capability and wealth for the nation.

“The National AI Plan contains some welcome initiatives including a survey of current high-performance computing capabilities. However, realising Australia’s comparative advantages in AI and stemming our loss of talent to other nations is a matter of urgency, as outlined in ATSE’s two recent AI reports.

“What is missing from the plan is a commitment to developing truly sovereign AI capabilities – investing in home-grown AI tools trained on our proprietary data housed in Australian-owned facilities can boost Australia’s GDP by up to 8% over the next decade. From monitoring environmental damage to diagnosing diseases, AI can help Australians live better lives and unlock major investment.”