Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and the Digital Economy Jane Hume said she’s reluctant for the country’s AI ethics framework to be more than a voluntary program.
Australia’s Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and the Digital Economy Jane Hume has assured the country’s AI ethics framework will remain voluntary for the foreseeable future. As part of her address during the virtual CEDA AI Innovation in Action event on Tuesday, Hume explained there were sufficient regulatory frameworks in place and that another one would be unnecessary. „We already have a very strong regulatory framework; we already have privacy laws, we already have consumer laws, we already have a data commissioner, we already have a privacy commissioner, we have a misconduct regulator. We have all those guardrails that already sit around the way we run our businesses,“ she told ZDNet. „AI is simply a technology that’s being imposed upon an existing business. It’s important that technology is being used to solve problems. The problems themselves haven’t really changed, so our regulations certainly have to be flexible enough to accommodate technology changes… we want to make sure that there’s nothing in regulations and legislation that prevents the advancement of technology. „But at the same time, building new regulations for technology, unless we can see a use case for it, is something that we would be reluctant to do, to over legislate and overprescribe.“ The federal government developed the national AI ethics framework in 2019, following the release of a discussion paper by Data61, the digital innovation arm of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The discussion paper highlighted a need for development of AI in Australia to be wrapped with a sufficient framework to ensure nothing is set onto citizens without appropriate ethical consideration.
