In February 2023, Australia’s National Science and Technology Council, at the request of the Minister for Industry and Science, the Hon Ed Husic MP, commissioned a report exploring the rapidly evolving area of Generative AI. The Australian Council of Learned Academies was pleased to develop this rapid report, convening contributions from the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, the Academy of the Humanities, and the Academy of Science.
The report has been developed in the context of rapid change in the ecosystem and heightened expectations about 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.
The report responds to the following questions:
What are the opportunities and risks of applying large language models (LLMs) and multimodal foundation models (MFMs) learning technologies over the next two, five and ten years?
- What are some examples of strategies that have been put in place internationally by other advanced economies since the launch of models like ChatGPT to address the potential opportunities and impacts of artificial intelligence (AI)?
Summary points
• ChatGPT is an early example of the kinds of applications and services that will emerge from Generative AI built on LLMs and MFMs. It was developed by the American AI organisation OpenAI – a combined non-profit/for profit entity that received a U$10B investment from Microsoft in 2023. ChatGPT is based on a large language model (LLM) and uses considerable pre- and post-processing of data to deliver a compelling user experience.
• Given the speed of innovation, quantum of investment and lack of technical information, it is almost impossible to accurately forecast opportunities over the next decade. Known risks are clearer, but there are categories of emerging risks that are difficult to forecast. In the shorter term, generative AI, based on LLMs and MFMs, will likely impact everything from banking and finance to public services, education and creative industries.
• Generative AI will raise 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 geo-political competition and geo-specific regulations.
• Generative AI presents opportunities across various industries, including healthcare where LLMs and MFMs are being used to analyse medical images and consolidate patient data, and in engineering to evaluate and optimise designs.
• The current concentration of generative AI activities poses risks for Australia and raises questions about our capabilities, capacities, investments and regulatory frames. Questions include: do we have sufficient compute power, appropriately skilled practitioners, scientific expertise, workforce development strategies and policy settings that range from critical technologies, to education, ethics, governance and regulation?
• LLM and MFMs are generating a surge in interest, innovation and investment. Much of this work is happening inside commercial organisations and is currently concentrated in a small number of organisations and countries, notably the US andChina.
• While some of the architectural innovations are being shared publicly, overall, there is a paucity of information about the development, deployment and commercialisation of these models and the applications and services based upon them.
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 LLMs and MFMs, currently works, given that the technologies are nascent and rapidly evolving (e.g., GPT-4 was publicly released on 14 March 2023 with some multi-modal input functionality and Baidu released Ernie Bot on 16 March with multi-modal output functionality)1 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.
