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AI technologies can cause “catastrophic harm” due to its capabilities not being fully understood, according to a parliamentary inquiry.
The Select Committee on Adopting Artificial Intelligence has tabled its final report, calling for laws to regulate high-risk uses of AI at the whole-of-economy level.
The committee also urged the federal government to continue consulting creative workers on solutions to the unprecedented theft of their work by multinational tech companies, such as a payment mechanism.
The inquiry was concerned over the potential for AI to be used for social scoring, committing criminal offences, compiling facial recognition databases and remote biometric identification.
“The use of deepfakes and other AI-generated material or AI tools to harm democracy, sow dissent and erode trust in public institutions is perhaps one of the most significant risks of Al,” the report said.
“AI systems could be used for designing chemical weapons, exploiting vulnerabilities in safety-critical software systems, synthesising persuasive disinformation at scale, or evading human control.”
The inquiry also recognised the urgent need to protect creative content from being stolen and mimicked by AI developers.
Inquiry chair and Labor senator Tony Sheldon said creative workers “are at the most imminent risk of AI severely impacting their livelihoods”.
“The committee strongly believes creatives deserve recognition and payment when their work is used to train an AI model,” he said.
“There should also be a payment mechanism when the model produces AI-generated work, based on their original material.”
Sheldon said the tech giants refused to answer direct questions about how they use Australians’ private and personal information.
He said Amazon refused to disclose how it uses data recorded from Alexa devices or published on Kindle and Audible.
Meanwhile, Google said it couldn’t be more transparent about whether it uses copyrighted or private data because it needs to protect its own IP.
Meta admitted it scraped the profiles of every Australian Facebook or Instagram user going back to 2007, but dodged questions about how it uses data from WhatsApp and Messenger.
Sheldon said general-purpose AI models, like GPT, Llama and Gemini, “must be treated as high-risk by default, with mandated transparency, testing, and accountability requirements”.
“If these companies want to operate AI products in Australia, those products should create value, rather than just strip mine us for data and revenue,” he said.
“Amazon, Meta, and Google have already committed arguably the largest act of theft in Australian history by scraping the collective body of human knowledge and creative output, without consent or payment to the owners of that work.
“Where tech companies have scraped copyrighted data without consent or payment, the Government needs to intervene. Creators deserve transparency, and developers should be forced to fairly licence and pay for their work.”
Sheldon said expanding Work Health and Safety laws to cover AI will protect worker’s rights and ensure people have a say in how AI affects their jobs.
“They shouldn’t be hired, rostered, or managed solely by an algorithm or be subject to intrusive AI surveillance,” he said.
“Artificial intelligence has incredible potential to significantly improve productivity, wealth and wellbeing, but it also creates new risks and challenges to our rights and freedoms that Governments around the world need to address.”
The committee has called for standalone laws to “rein in big tech” and existing laws to be amended as necessary.
“These tech giants aren’t pioneers; they’re pirates - pillaging our culture, data, and creativity for their gain while leaving Australians empty-handed,” Sheldon said.
“They want to set their own rules, but Australians need laws that protect rights, not Silicon Valley’s bottom line.”
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