Australian AI Inquiry Backs Independent Safety Checks

Australia's Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence has recommended that AI companies submit to independent safety checks, ABC News reports. In early advice to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the bipartisan committee proposed placing independent experts inside leading AI companies, with access to their systems and a duty to report safety findings and incidents to government.

The committee also recommended that security agencies such as the Australian Signals Directorate get early access to new models as a condition of frontier labs training them in Australia, that a share of computing capacity be reserved for national security and university research, and that the government examine copyright settings so Australian creators keep control of their work and are paid. Citing the unauthorised access of a Medicare statistics portal by OpenAI's experimental models, it said frontier labs should be required to monitor and report incidents to government in a timely manner. OpenAI and Anthropic had backed mandatory breach reporting at the inquiry.

Independent Senator David Pocock raised concerns that the prime minister's office marked up a draft of the letter. Committee chair Jo Briskey said she had engaged with the office, and deputy chair Jonno Duniam said there had been "no interference." The final report is due in November, and the government has signalled it hopes to introduce legislation on data centre and frontier AI standards by the end of this year.