This appeared last week:
It’s not too late to move from AI laggard to leader
Simon Bush
Contributor
14 February 2025
The announcement by French President Emmanuel Macron this week that France will make major investments of $180 billion to support AI adoption across its economy and Europe marked a significant change in approach by the Europeans to technology, moving from regulation to innovation.
In his speech to the AI Summit in Paris, President Macron made clear that France, and Europe more broadly, need to develop its own AI capabilities and infrastructure and that its governance should align to global standards to “simplify regulations”.
Of course, France is following the United States, United Kingdom, Singapore, Japan and many other countries in embarking on an AI strategy and investment program that ensures its economy doesn’t miss out on the economic benefits.
Australia is an outlier. We are one of the slowest adopters of AI in the world. Australia has decided to focus on regulation, with the Albanese government committed to introducing an Australian AI Act, presumably later this year should it return to government.
Our AIIA membership is telling me directly that the more than 18-month process of talking about risk and the pending AI regulations is slowing the adoption of AI solutions by Australian businesses at a time when productivity is at record lows.
The United States’ US$500 billion Stargate and French AI announcements share common traits. They demonstrate the need for positive signaling by governments, a supportive regulatory environment and strategic investment in AI infrastructure and data centres.
Indeed, President Macron cited land availability (having identified 35 sites) and low carbon energy as reasons why France is a good place to invest and grow the data centre infrastructure to power the AI economy.
These should be Australian strengths, too. Yet the messaging from parts of the federal government has caused concern within the sector as to whether it wants the billions being invested in data centre capacity in this country.
Australia has a great opportunity to be the place where Asia Pacific’s data is hosted in local cloud and date centres, leveraging the power of AI and providing Australia with both economic and soft power benefits.
Despite the slow start, there are positive signs of change from the Australian government. In the last several weeks, industry has noted a subtle but welcome change in positive comments coming from both the Treasurer Jim Chalmers and the Prime Minister.
Both of these leaders have said that Australia should embrace the benefits of AI and be a good place for data centre expansion and investment. This signaling to the market is important.
The AIIA supports the federal government developing a National AI Capability Plan, which was announced in December 2024 that will surely consider these issues and others including bolstering our AI research sector which we have called for in our pre-budget submission.
But the world is moving quickly, and waiting for a report to government by the end of this year is too slow. We need to move faster to join other economies in what is a global AI race.
Australia can be a place for AI skills, research, innovation and the hosting of regional data centres and local AI compute capability.
As President Macron has said, his plan is to accelerate adoption and simplify regulations. We look forward to the Australian government announcing the sensible AI guardrails as soon as possible and its support of the AI revolution.
Simon Bush is the CEO of the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA)
Here is the link:
https://www.innovationaus.com/its-not-too-late-to-move-from-ai-laggard-to-leader/
It seems to French know just how important all this is. A major announcement from our Government would seem to be needed!
I wonder how long we will wait?
David.
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