Since 2019, the Australian Department for Industry, Science and Resources has been striving to make the nation a leader in “safe and responsible” artificial intelligence (AI). Key to this is a voluntary framework based on eight AI ethics principles, including “human-centred values”, “fairness” and “transparency and explainability”.
Every subsequent piece of national guidance on AI has spun off these eight principles, imploring business, government and schools to put them into practice. But these voluntary principles have no real hold on organisations that develop and deploy AI systems.
Last month, the Australian government started consulting on a proposal that struck a different tone. Acknowledging “voluntary compliance […] is no longer enough”, it spoke of “mandatory guardrails for AI in high-risk settings”.
