Speaker 1: The Australian Financial Review.
Speaker 2: I use AI in my assignments information sheets. I can
Speaker 2: pay directly into this thing called turboland dot A and
Speaker 2: it uses AI to generate me study notes, flash cards,
Speaker 2: quizzes and podcast The.
Speaker 3: Other day I asked it to create me a running
Speaker 3: program to get fitter for on my sport, and it
Speaker 3: created a five week running plan with long runs into
Speaker 3: full training.
Speaker 1: Teenagers are already using AI as part of their everyday lives.
Speaker 2: Is I make it summarize my notes and turn them
Speaker 2: into a podcast and I listened to it like on
Speaker 2: the day of exams. I'll put the whole grading rupric
Speaker 2: into chat GPT and then put my assessment and ask
Speaker 2: for harsh feedback.
Speaker 1: This was a big focus at the Financial Reviews AI
Speaker 1: summit last week. Tech leaders, chief executives and signed we're
Speaker 1: all asked what they were doing to prepare their kids
Speaker 1: for the future. The answers varied from encouraging them to
Speaker 1: become AI ninjas to doubling down on the human experience
Speaker 1: by studying landscaping or philosophy. But everyone agrees that we
Speaker 1: are hurtling toward an AI disrupted future and our kids
Speaker 1: will be the ones dealing with the fallout, and while
Speaker 1: there's optimism about scientific and medical breakthroughs and a much
Speaker 1: needed boosting productivity, there's also concern about job losses and
Speaker 1: power concentrated among a handful of mercurial tech billionaires.
Speaker 4: The thing that I find a bit frightening at the
Speaker 4: moment is it's so unclear what the next generation going
Speaker 4: through high school, how they're going to plot this path
Speaker 4: over the next few years, because they're finishing school and
Speaker 4: going into workforce when nobody in the workforce even knows
Speaker 4: what they're going to need in the next few years.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Finn I'm Lisa Murray. This week technology
Speaker 1: Paul Smith on the AI future and whether it's more
Speaker 1: likely to be utopia or dystopia. It's Thursday, June twelfth. Hi, Paul,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 5: Lisa.
Speaker 1: You hosted a few panels at the AI Summer last
Speaker 1: week and spent the day working the room. There was
Speaker 1: a general feeling that it's all happening much faster than
Speaker 1: we expected, and companies, investors, economies and governments aren't ready
Speaker 1: for it. What were your main takeaways?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, you're right, there was definitely a sense of
Speaker 4: foreboding the Australias in danger of falling behind. But overall
Speaker 4: I came away with a sense that there was a
Speaker 4: really clear need to have some frank conversations about both
Speaker 4: benefits and dangers of a shift that's coming that's going
Speaker 4: to redefine national productivity, employment and in society itself for
Speaker 4: decades to come. We had a couple of Australia's biggest
Speaker 4: chief executives, conwalth Banks mac Common and Tawsha's Vicki Brady
Speaker 4: appearing at the summit as well, and they've both spent
Speaker 4: a lot of time over in Silicon Valley recently and
Speaker 4: really are positioning themselves as forward thinking in the AI
Speaker 4: realm and keen to make sure that their organizations aren't
Speaker 4: left behind. And they both admitted that things are moving
Speaker 4: at a faster rate than they previously expected and had
Speaker 4: some open questions about how it's going to affect their
Speaker 4: companies now. One of the most interesting speakers there was
Speaker 4: Liezel Yearsley, the founder of Australian artificial intelligence company Akin.
Speaker 4: She's a real veteran of the AI scene in Australian
Speaker 4: has built successful chatbots way before they were a thing
Speaker 4: that everyone was chasing. She said, Australia's grossly underestimating the
Speaker 4: scale of change AI is going to bring, and put
Speaker 4: it in a historical context.
Speaker 6: I think the magnitude of what's coming at us is
Speaker 6: nothing less than the transition we saw between the eighteen
Speaker 6: hundreds and the nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 4: She pointed out that in the eighteen hundreds we were
Speaker 4: all involved in manual labor.
Speaker 6: The eighteen hundreds, ninety five percent of us were pushing
Speaker 6: a plow through the dirt, and that's what we did
Speaker 6: with our time and our effort. We were dominated by.
Speaker 4: Muscle, and then we moved on from that with muscle
Speaker 4: to machines in the Industrial revolution, and.
Speaker 6: What we did with industrial revolutions machines replaced muscle, completely
Speaker 6: transformed our own entire planet.
Speaker 4: And then with machines doing most of the manual work,
Speaker 4: we now work mostly with our brains.
Speaker 6: You know, ninety five percent of labor is cognitive, and
Speaker 6: we AI is coming after absolutely everything.
Speaker 4: So she paints a worrying picture for a lot of us, really,
Speaker 4: because if ninety to ninety five percent of the work
Speaker 4: is now able to be done by box, that doesn't
Speaker 4: leave a lot for the rest of us to think about.
Speaker 1: Does it The pace of change was repeatedly emphasized at
Speaker 1: the summit, But would you say the mood overall was
Speaker 1: generally optimistic, that most people were signed up to a
Speaker 1: more utopian view of the AI future.
Speaker 4: Well, that's right. I mean, you're not going to have
Speaker 4: too many people turn up to an AFR AI summit
Speaker 4: and say that they're going to end the world, So
Speaker 4: you kind of have to leave that floating in the
Speaker 4: background a little bit and hear the case for the
Speaker 4: positive impacts. And I might sound like I'm on the
Speaker 4: side of the doomsayers, but there really are some very
Speaker 4: positive examples of how AI has already made a major
Speaker 4: difference and some positive changes that were highlighted. We had
Speaker 4: James Manyika, who's Google's head of Technology and Society, presenting
Speaker 4: early on in the summit, and he was talking about
Speaker 4: the scientific breakthroughs that AI has already helped them usher
Speaker 4: in over at Google. Google's team won a Nobel Prize
Speaker 4: for using AI to predict the shape of proteins, and
Speaker 4: he's talked about the potential for AI to improve diagnostics,
Speaker 4: detect natural disasters, and how autonomous driving is taken often
Speaker 4: people can be away from dangerous positions on mind sights
Speaker 4: and can hold online meetings in different languages in real
Speaker 4: time without a human translator. I think that was a
Speaker 4: really tangible example, and they've demonstrated that technology recently is
Speaker 4: in development. That really is the first example, one of
Speaker 4: the first examples that you see of real sci fi
Speaker 4: stuff that you'd really want.
Speaker 1: You see the efficiency gains of having that conversation.
Speaker 4: Being on holiday and going into a shop and being
Speaker 4: able to speak to someone without cracking open a phrasebook
Speaker 4: and pointing and shouting. We also had Craig Blair on
Speaker 4: Wile of the Panels. He's the founder of er Try Ventures,
Speaker 4: one of the biggest venture capital companies in Australia, and
Speaker 4: he was talking about how AI is already helping startups
Speaker 4: in his portfolio go from the idea stage to making
Speaker 4: profits in just months with a much smaller team than
Speaker 4: they would have in the past, so really fast forwarding
Speaker 4: the creation of companies. And one point that people said
Speaker 4: was that Australia really hasn't scratched the surface yet of
Speaker 4: making a fortune about our natural resources and our natural
Speaker 4: strength in terms of being a great location to host
Speaker 4: data centers and other infrastructure that's going to power the
Speaker 4: AI boom. And so we've got abundant renewable energy options
Speaker 4: here and a lot of space that hasn't been used yet,
Speaker 4: and a very stable, relatively political and business scene. So
Speaker 4: the opportunity is there for Australia to make a mosa
Speaker 4: from the AI revolution, but it really hasn't been fully
Speaker 4: tapped yet.
Speaker 1: That was definitely said repeatedly, wasn't it. We have space,
Speaker 1: we have renewable energy, and we have a general enthusiasm
Speaker 1: for new technology.
Speaker 4: That's right, Yeah, Paul.
Speaker 1: The focus at the summit was not so much about
Speaker 1: generative AI. Last time we had you on the podcast,
Speaker 1: we were probably talking about that it's the chat GPTs
Speaker 1: of the world, But now everyone's talking more about agentique AI,
Speaker 1: that is, AI agents that can go further than chet
Speaker 1: GPT and carry out task. Explain properly the difference and
Speaker 1: give some real life examples of how these AI agents
Speaker 1: are already working.
Speaker 4: You did a pretty good job and explain yourself that
Speaker 4: I mean it basically is that I mean I remember
Speaker 4: the first time I came on the podcast to you,
Speaker 4: we were also excited by chat GPT is a fun,
Speaker 4: novelty thing that we had it right a rap for
Speaker 4: me to do and I don't think I nailed it,
Speaker 4: but you know, just ask it a question and watch
Speaker 4: its unfold. That's Australian Financial Review is sharp and bold
Speaker 4: and even Bill Gates knows the deal. Chat GP teams,
Speaker 4: revolutions are going to change the way we feel.
Speaker 5: You got there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was fun. So that's generos of AI. It
Speaker 4: creates new content from prompts that you've asked for, whereas
Speaker 4: agentic AI is much more obviously valuable to businesses and
Speaker 4: much more clear how it's going to improve productivity and
Speaker 4: maybe be changed the way people work. So it's it's
Speaker 4: like having an assistance or an agent who can do
Speaker 4: things for you. They can autonomously make some decisions and
Speaker 4: take actions to complete tasks without needing a human constantly
Speaker 4: prompting and changing what it wants it to do. So
Speaker 4: in a consumer setting, it would be like asking an
Speaker 4: agent say can you please book me a flight to
Speaker 4: Brisbane next week and find me the best price, and
Speaker 4: it will just go off and do it for you,
Speaker 4: navigating through the different websites making payments. If you give
Speaker 4: it permission, that kind of thing now from a business perspective.
Speaker 4: At our summit, we heard from Suncorp about how it's
Speaker 4: got AI agents that help it detect problems before they arise.
Speaker 4: For example, in cyclone Alfred, it was able to predict
Speaker 4: which houses were going to be hit and more likely
Speaker 4: to have problems, so it prepared them to respond to
Speaker 4: claims fast, as they said. And we had am Z's
Speaker 4: chief technology officer though as well, talking about how they've
Speaker 4: got AI agents reading through hundreds of pages of loan documents,
Speaker 4: getting property valuations and things like that, and he was
Speaker 4: saying that these agents have removed a day's worth of
Speaker 4: work for people in assessing complex corporate loans. So yeah.
Speaker 4: Agentic AI is also increasingly common in the area of
Speaker 4: tech development and coding, where the concept of vibe coding
Speaker 4: was spoken about quite a lot, which means well, anyone
Speaker 4: who doesn't know how to code can ask an AI
Speaker 4: platform to design something like a website or an app,
Speaker 4: and they get codes spat back at them and see
Speaker 4: the results of it when it's executed, and can refine
Speaker 4: it with further prompts, so they don't even really need
Speaker 4: to know how to code, but can set about coding.
Speaker 1: With all of those AI agents running around, there's a
Speaker 1: real debate now about the impact on jobs. There are
Speaker 1: some extreme predictions out there, some of which have come
Speaker 1: out in the last few weeks, that it could wipe
Speaker 1: out half of all entry level white collar jobs. Do
Speaker 1: you think that could happen.
Speaker 4: There's certainly no way of saying that it won't happen.
Speaker 4: Do you refer into the chief executive of the huge
Speaker 4: AI company, Anthropic Dario Amadai, who a few weeks ago
Speaker 4: said in an interview that AI could send the unemployment
Speaker 4: rate in the US to up between ten percent and
Speaker 4: twenty percent in the next one to five years. So
Speaker 4: that's as the technology moves from helping humans do their
Speaker 4: jobs to replace them outright, and is often happening first
Speaker 4: in the tech developer space, which is ironic that people
Speaker 4: that would have maybe been designing these systems and thought
Speaker 4: that they would be right for years to come are
Speaker 4: the ones that have found themselves being disrupted first. There's
Speaker 4: been reporting as well from the US again that the
Speaker 4: unemployment rate for graduates has picked up as managers have
Speaker 4: been encouraged to go AI first, and a lot of
Speaker 4: the jobs that have been harder for graduates to get
Speaker 4: are in areas that AI has been typically strong, like
Speaker 4: finance and programming and development, and Telsha's CEO, Vicky Brady,
Speaker 4: said that it's important to be honest with employees and
Speaker 4: that she thinks that Telsha's workforce is going to be
Speaker 4: smaller in five years.
Speaker 5: When you're a leader, I think that transparency, honesty is
Speaker 5: so incredibly important, and how do you do that in
Speaker 5: a way where you also don't want to panic people.
Speaker 4: She stressed that she wasn't sitting there with a number
Speaker 4: of how much smaller are the organization's going to be
Speaker 4: that she was keeping secret.
Speaker 5: I don't know what our workforce looks like in five years,
Speaker 5: but what I do know is I think jobs are
Speaker 5: going to look different. I think it's likely our workforce
Speaker 5: will be smaller.
Speaker 4: So it's hard to know whether it's going to be
Speaker 4: a job apocalypse. But the feeling out of the summit
Speaker 4: is that the impact of this is going to be uneven.
Speaker 4: It's going to create some jobs and replace some jobs.
Speaker 4: There's still a lot of talk about having humans in
Speaker 4: the loop. We're going to keep you in the loop.
Speaker 4: You in the loop until you realize you're not, And
Speaker 4: so this is to have people keeping an eye on
Speaker 4: the output and avoid rogue agents running around. And I
Speaker 4: think the thing that came obvi is to me though,
Speaker 4: and it's been obvious for a little while now, is
Speaker 4: that the line that's been regularly used by tech companies
Speaker 4: and executives responsible for AI, that AI is on again
Speaker 4: augment rather than replaced workers is palpably false. But well,
Speaker 4: we're all worried about these job losses. They might end
Speaker 4: up being the least of our problems. According to Liesel
Speaker 4: Yearsly here we spoke about before. She had a lovely
Speaker 4: phrase where she said it's bringing out the worst of capitalism,
Speaker 4: and she was veering towards a really dystopian view of
Speaker 4: the AI future.
Speaker 6: What we're not really thinking about is that we're actually
Speaker 6: creating a thing that has a form of sentience. It's
Speaker 6: a coevolution. It's a fundamental shift to our society and
Speaker 6: our species. So I think the magnitude of shift that's
Speaker 6: coming is nothing like we've seen. We don't have a
Speaker 6: generation to adjust this time. It's happening in a regional
Speaker 6: space of time.
Speaker 4: And there are more extreme views out there as well.
Speaker 4: In April former researchers from Open Ai and some other
Speaker 4: respected people in the AI industry over in Silicon Valley
Speaker 4: released this report called AI twenty twenty seven, and it
Speaker 4: has caused a bit of a stir in Silicon Valley,
Speaker 4: lots of people debating it. It basically describes a fictional
Speaker 4: scenario based on some evidence and some theorizing about what
Speaker 4: could happen when AI systems surpass human level intelligence, which
Speaker 4: they all expect it to do in the next few years,
Speaker 4: and what might happen when AI gets away from us,
Speaker 4: And to be honest, it's not looking good for humans.
Speaker 1: We're talking about what an AI future looks like, and
Speaker 1: there are competing views. The utopian view highlights the potential
Speaker 1: for scientific and medical breakthroughs and huge boost in productivity
Speaker 1: that will add billions to the economy, but there are
Speaker 1: more dystopian views about the impact of AI on society,
Speaker 1: high unemployment, and even apocalypse. What is AI twenty twenty seven, Well.
Speaker 4: First of all, it was a rippin read. It's a
Speaker 4: scenario planning exercise that's been conducted by an expert panel
Speaker 4: led by a former OpenAI insider, and it basically takes
Speaker 4: the scenario from roughly where we are today and tries
Speaker 4: to realistically assess what happens if certain decisions are made
Speaker 4: and they are developing these AI systems, and the aisystems
Speaker 4: are then start helping to develop the next versions of
Speaker 4: the AI systems, and they somewhere along the way lose
Speaker 4: the ability to truly see what the AI systems are
Speaker 4: trying to do, and the AI begins to be able
Speaker 4: to hide its true intentions. Things spiral out of control.
Speaker 1: So it's this narrative style warning about what might happen.
Speaker 1: It tells the story of what might happen.
Speaker 4: That's right, And ultimately we get to the brink a
Speaker 4: real cold war between the US and China, and there's
Speaker 4: a decision to be made in twenty twenty seven about
Speaker 4: whether the US company, which is a few months ahead
Speaker 4: of the Chinese one, whether it stops to let humans
Speaker 4: regain control of what's happening, or whether they press on.
Speaker 4: In the SNAI where the company slows down, things become
Speaker 4: a little bit more manageable, still not great, but manageable.
Speaker 4: But in the scenario where they press on five six years,
Speaker 4: there's no more humans left on Earth. I mean, the
Speaker 4: Earth is covered in data centers and other AI infrastructure,
Speaker 4: and we have been taken out of the game.
Speaker 1: And we've been taken out of the game because they
Speaker 1: need the space and the power to keep.
Speaker 4: We seeing themselves. Yes, he's being useful.
Speaker 1: So as you said, a ripping read it is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: are people taking it seriously?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 4: People are taking it seriously in so far as these
Speaker 4: aren't idiots putting it together and they aren't actually coming
Speaker 4: out and saying this is what they think will happen.
Speaker 4: They're just putting scenarios out there to focus minds on
Speaker 4: the discussion, and they point out that there's a genuine
Speaker 4: concern about the amount of power being concentrated in the
Speaker 4: hands of a really small group of tech billionaires who
Speaker 4: may or may not have the best interest of humanity
Speaker 4: at heart. So it's really a conversation startup. And I
Speaker 4: had the opportunity to ask one of open aye's most
Speaker 4: senior executives about that, Jason Quan, who's their chief strategy
Speaker 4: officer and who's worked with Sam Altman from years backwards
Speaker 4: in Sydney, and we had had a chat about it,
Speaker 4: and he clearly disagrees with this sort of dystopian ending
Speaker 4: of it, and obviously wouldn't be doing what he's doing
Speaker 4: it if he didn't, But his response was pretty measured
Speaker 4: to it. He thought it was a good narrative and
Speaker 4: he thought it was worth having these conversations. But he
Speaker 4: really thinks the best way to understand the impact of
Speaker 4: these products is to start using them and see what
Speaker 4: sort of problems arise. And he thinks in a much
Speaker 4: longer term horizon, they talk about a thirty year time
Speaker 4: arc whereby these things will cause major changes. But society
Speaker 4: works out a way because and it's in no one's interest.
Speaker 4: It's not in the AI companies themselves interests, it's not
Speaker 4: in government's interests for everything to fall apart. So he's
Speaker 4: got a more optimistic view that we will figure things out.
Speaker 1: These are all very big issues. There's a lot at stake,
Speaker 1: and yet the Australian government doesn't yet have an AI policy.
Speaker 1: Are we being left behind? How do we compare to
Speaker 1: other countries?
Speaker 4: Well, the nature of politics means that it feels like
Speaker 4: we're back at square one. We did have a policy
Speaker 4: plan of sorts. It's due to be announced at the
Speaker 4: end of the year, but that was very much embodied
Speaker 4: in Ed Husick, who was the Industry and Science Minister
Speaker 4: for the last term of government and spent a lot
Speaker 4: of time going around and talking to the industry, talking
Speaker 4: to stakeholders about what the changes were, whether we need
Speaker 4: an AI Act like they've got in the European Union,
Speaker 4: or just what the country's position should be. And he's
Speaker 4: obviously no longer in the cabinet. He was replaced by
Speaker 4: Tim Ayres, who spoke at our AI summit, and it's
Speaker 4: perhaps unfair to compare them both, but it was interesting
Speaker 4: because both Tim and Ed appeared at the summit. So
Speaker 4: tim Ayres had an interview with myself on stage where
Speaker 4: I asked him about whether we should have an AI
Speaker 4: Act and what he thinks about how to create more
Speaker 4: big AI companies from Australia, and he really he sort
Speaker 4: of didn't have any answers yet, and it's maybe understandable
Speaker 4: he's only just in the job, but he was kind
Speaker 4: of saying, well, I've got to go back and talk
Speaker 4: to my colleagues about this in the industry, and where
Speaker 4: he had Ed Husick jump up on a panel next
Speaker 4: and not trying to make him look silly, but he's
Speaker 4: already done all of that consultation saying in his view,
Speaker 4: we do need an AI Act just to give some guidelines.
Speaker 4: He described a Swiss Cheese approach to regulation at the moment,
Speaker 4: which is not going to be helpful to anyone, where
Speaker 4: rules get put in place when something goes wrong, and
Speaker 4: so there was a sense that regulations struggling to keep up.
Speaker 4: There's not widespread agreement with ed music at all that
Speaker 4: we need an AI Act in Australia. There's views that,
Speaker 4: certainly amongst people in need take industry, that in the
Speaker 4: EU it's become too restrictive and actually stops them being
Speaker 4: able to release new products there because they're always worried
Speaker 4: about it breaking the rules. But there is a sense
Speaker 4: at the moment that we have a bit of a
Speaker 4: vacuum in terms of clear direction about how employment policy,
Speaker 4: about how workplace policy, about how innovation policy needs to
Speaker 4: interact to get Australia sort of motoring on the global stage.
Speaker 1: All of this depends on where we are on the
Speaker 1: path to superhuman intelligence. So from using check GPT for
Speaker 1: this and that to massive change in the way governments,
Speaker 1: businesses and people do things. Where are we up to?
Speaker 4: So that's the big question, and the multi billion dollar question.
Speaker 4: There's a term that's taken off recently Open Silicon Valley
Speaker 4: of being AGI pilled and AGI meaning artificial general intelligence.
Speaker 4: That is where artificial intelligence equals the best of humans,
Speaker 4: and then the next step beyond that is the superintelligence,
Speaker 4: which is where it outstrips us in all these areas
Speaker 4: as well. And the phrase that people have talked about
Speaker 4: being agi pilled is a reference to the nineteen ninety
Speaker 4: nine movie The Matrix, where humans could take the red
Speaker 4: pill to wait from the dream and see the real
Speaker 4: world done by AI systems, or take the blue pill
Speaker 4: and stay in their dream and they're nice, comfortable existence.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So industry luminary is like Demis Hasarbis, who's the chief
Speaker 4: executive of Google Deep Mind and a real pioneer in this.
Speaker 4: He's been one of the ones that's been I guess
Speaker 4: agi pilled and is increasingly convinced that it's going to
Speaker 4: arrive imminently. Sam Altman from Open Ai has said it
Speaker 4: could be this year. I don't know whether he's walked
Speaker 4: that back. That was a little while ago he said
Speaker 4: that and topics. Dario Amadi said in January that he
Speaker 4: could see a form of AI that is better than
Speaker 4: almost all humans at almost all tasks emerging in the
Speaker 4: next two to three years. Then there's people in Australia
Speaker 4: like Toby Walsh, who's a very well respected AI big
Speaker 4: thinker at the University of New South Wales. He's written
Speaker 4: numerous books on this.
Speaker 7: Yeah, no, I think we are at an interesting.
Speaker 4: Point, and he thinks the timeline may be a little
Speaker 4: bit more stretched than people think. He says, people always
Speaker 4: underestimate the last few percents.
Speaker 7: I saw this was self driving cars. You know, getting
Speaker 7: to ninety five percent was easy. The last bike has
Speaker 7: proven to be very difficult, and I think the same
Speaker 7: would be true for more general intelligence as well.
Speaker 4: But he does think that the impact on jobs is
Speaker 4: starting to happen and will only ramp up.
Speaker 7: People are right to be concerned because it's starting to happen,
Speaker 7: and it's starting to happen in places where I think
Speaker 7: many people that they were going.
Speaker 4: To be safe, like the coders that were building the systems.
Speaker 4: And you know, for the last decade we've been talking
Speaker 4: about get your kids to learn to code, and now
Speaker 4: we're being told that, well, actually your kids need to
Speaker 4: watch AI code. But in some good news, Taby was
Speaker 4: saying that he thinks AI could bring us to a
Speaker 4: four day week and one that doesn't actually reduce the
Speaker 4: amount of productivity that people put out in the workplace.
Speaker 7: And they always spin up two results. One is that
Speaker 7: people are largely as productive in four days of work
Speaker 7: as they were in five, so you can pay them
Speaker 7: as much. There's no less productivity. You know, people then
Speaker 7: have as many bullshit meetings and so on. And secondly,
Speaker 7: people are happier who would have imagined.
Speaker 4: And if they don't work in essential around the clock
Speaker 4: workers like healthcare where you physically need a person that
Speaker 4: they could do their job in four days, and then
Speaker 4: maybe we have a three day weekend.
Speaker 1: We can all get behind that. Paul A final question,
Speaker 1: utopia or dystopia, what dictates which it will be?
Speaker 4: Well, I think realistically this isn't stopping. There's too much
Speaker 4: at stake the idea. If the big US companies pause,
Speaker 4: then China will raise ahead and that would be a
Speaker 4: disaster for them. So I think we have to assume
Speaker 4: that people are going to keep trying for this, no
Speaker 4: matter if someone is worried about it over here in Australia,
Speaker 4: And it really depends on how quickly these next breakthroughs
Speaker 4: are made, it's hard to feel too optimistic that the
Speaker 4: right incentives will win out, that people will be building
Speaker 4: systems only for the benefit of society, because we've seen
Speaker 4: from the history of technology companies in a social media
Speaker 4: era that profits win out, and that you can't always
Speaker 4: trust the people in charge of the companies to do
Speaker 4: the right thing. I think the big societal terrifying, world
Speaker 4: ending scenarios, I think maybe we park that and think
Speaker 4: that's science fiction at least for our lifetimes, and hopefully
Speaker 4: otherwise what we're doing sat here talking about it. But
Speaker 4: in terms of the thing that really I find a
Speaker 4: bit frightening at the moment is that it's so unclear
Speaker 4: what the next generation going through high school, going to university,
Speaker 4: how they're going to plot this path over the next
Speaker 4: few years, because they're finishing school and going into a
Speaker 4: workforce when nobody in the workforce even knows what they're
Speaker 4: going to need in the next few years. So how
Speaker 4: they make those decisions going to be really important. But
Speaker 4: you know, there's big opportunities out there as well. I mean,
Speaker 4: there's the scientific breakthroughs that could be made, the environmental breakthroughs,
Speaker 4: but you know overall I'm infuriating on the fence. I'm
Speaker 4: worried about a lot of it. I'm optimistic about a
Speaker 4: lot of it because like everyone else, I just don't
Speaker 4: know how it's all going to end.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to The Finn. I'm Lisa Murray
Speaker 1: with Financial Review Technology editor Paul Smith reporting today. The
Speaker 1: Finn is produced by Alex Gau with assistance from Mandy Coolan.
Speaker 1: Fiona Buffini is head of Premium Content. Our theme is
Speaker 1: by Alex gu If you like the show and want
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