The current ‘ChatGPT moment’ is provoking public conversation about the role AI should have in Australian society. This report has been written in the context of rapid change in the ecosystem and heightened expectations about both the risks and possibilities of both ChatGPT in particular and generative AI more broadly.
Generative AI raises questions about opportunities and risks of widespread adoption; the scope and adequacy of national strategic planning and policies; the fitness of legal and regulatory approaches; and the implications of increasing geopolitical competition and geo-specific regulation in AI-related technologies and industries.
This report explains how generative AI, based on language models (LLMs) and multimodal foundation models (MFMs), currently works, given that the technologies are nascent and rapidly evolving, as are the business models, applications and services that are built upon them. Against this backdrop, the report explores foreseeable risks and opportunities, based on current patterns of uptake and application.
This report was convened by the Australian Council of Learned Academies, alongside the Australian Academy of Humanities, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and the Australian Academy of Science. Lead authors were Professors Genevieve Bell AO FTSE FAHA, Jean Burgess FAHA, Julian Thomas FAHA and Shazia Sadiq FTSE.
