Safe & Responsible AI in Australia Submission
Stirling & Rose recommends establishing a dedicated taskforce as soon as possible, with an operating period of 18 months, which, at a minimum:
- Acts as an explicitly advisory body to provide the more detailed, technical advice and guidance on equivalent international approaches—and gaps and issues in our existing domestic frameworks;
- Reviews and observes global AI hard law (for example in the EU and China) and guideline style soft AI law positions currently in force (for example, in Singapore and the United States) over a period of 18 months. The point of this is for Australia to learn from those other jurisdictions and gauge how the different approaches work/don’t work, as well as how they need to interact with global standards, prior to implementing our own reforms;
- Contextualises any need for explicit AI Law within other Australian relevant regulatory and legal reforms (for example, reforms of digital assets, banking and payments and privacy);
- Reviews and engages with the Digital Free movement and the Digital Free National Park see here as a proportionate response to the future inability to disconnect from AI.
- provides a forum for collaboration/information sharing and consultation with various legal, technical, and other stakeholders to ensure that Al frameworks can identify and respond to risks as they emerge; and
- Coordinates and works with relevant state and federal agency stakeholders to: (a) review of all Federal and State laws to understand how the adoption of AI and autonomous algorithms will impact the application, interpretation and enforcement of those laws in the short, medium and long term; (b) understand what existing governance mechanisms and legal protections we already have that can mitigate the potential risks and harms of AI in a technologically neutral way; and (c) where appropriate takes a more active role in representing Australia in those international policy forums and standard-setting contexts.
- At the conclusion of an initial 18-month period, the taskforce could make its recommendations to Government for legislative reform including how urgent those reforms are.