Former Labor Leader Bill Shorten and former Coalition Defence Minister Christopher Pyne have both joined the chorus for a slowdown in the development of artificial intelligence (AI).
Both issued blunt warnings on 7.30 about the damage AI could do if guardrails are not introduced as Mr Shorten compared AI to nuclear weapons and called for an AI version of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT).
That treaty was introduced in 1970 to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, promote peaceful use of nuclear energy and pursue negotiations towards disarmament.
"This is a marvellous technology, but until we can regulate it, we need to slow down.
"What we're seeing at the cutting edge of AI laboratories is actually a technology which doesn't appear to need humans to make decisions. Once you eliminate human oversight, there's no guarantee that what we're designing will actually make decisions in the best interest of humanity."
Mr Shorten said he was not suggesting that building data centres or infrastructure was a problem but that AI needed more human oversight.
It was a sentiment Mr Pyne, who now holds a number of positions as a strategic advisor and consultant, including for the defence industry, echoed.
"AI has tremendous opportunity for the human race It has the capacity to make our lives much, much better, not just from a health perspective, but many others," Mr Pyne said.
"But there is an inherent danger.
"Obviously human beings are the smartest being on the planet, we have dominion of the globe because we might not be the strongest, we might not be the fastest, but we're the smartest.
"And we've created something that's actually smarter than us and with regenerative self-improvement is going to get much smarter and much quicker than we ever can.
"So we could have actually created the means of the human race's destruction."
Pressed if that was something he expected, Mr Pyne pulled back.
"I'm an optimist. I think it will all be okay in the end, but we wouldn't want to underestimate what we've done," he said.
An AI non-proliferation treaty?
With that warning the pair were asked what could be done to bring the rapid development of AI under control.
It is that same question those in the industry have been facing.
First AI researcher Jacob Coxon, who left OpenAI to join Anthropic, decided to leave the industry, accusing both US companies of "gambling with our lives" in the race to develop models capable of self-improvement.
That sparked a deluge of calls to slow it down from Geoffrey Hinton, widely known as the "godfather of AI", Anthropic boss Dario Amodei, OpenAI head Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who owns xAI.
"We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models," Mr Amodei wrote in a post on his personal website.
Given the nuclear comparisons made earlier Mr Shorten was asked if an AI version of the NNPT was needed.
"Dario [Amodei] has proposed a plan, which does involve independent verification," Mr Shorten said.
"It does involve, as technologies are being developed, that you have external observers like we have the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"As a middle power we can help lead this debate, but it's pretty interesting that you have the technology leaders, the private sector saying, 'hey, we need help here. We need regulation'.
"So I do think there is some analogies between the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the proliferation of AI and maybe some of the solutions that were used for nuclear weapons need to be put into place here."
Again Mr Pyne agreed and while he said AI was a race in two between the US and China, he suggested that guardrails were necessary to prevent potential rogue actors from being involved.
"China and the United States are locked in a competition over AI for different reasons and it could be very dangerous," he said.
"But by the same token, we as humans need to live on this planet and we need them to come to an agreement that the rest of the world can then fold into."
Cutting immigration is 'economic self-harm'
With the issue if immigration dominating policy agenda after One Nation released their policy earlier in the week it was put to the two former senior politicians what should be done.
Mr Shorten, who is currently the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra, acknowledged the government had work to do but cautioned them against acting too harshly, especially when it comes to mooted changes to policy around international students.
"We need migrants for this country to do well. Migrants tend to pay, as a group they're more likely to pay tax.
"I am worried that in this debate about migration, we are engaging in economic self-harm."
He said that didn't mean changes to policy could not be made but that cutting international student numbers would become a potential economic nightmare.
"If some people are overstaying their visas, by all means clamp down but economic self-harm when it comes to cutting international students is a real problem.
"It's international students whose fees cross-subsidise us being able to support Aussie kids. It's international students' fees who allow us to be able to fund research, which the nation wouldn't otherwise get.
"And in regional Australia ... if you take out international students, there will be job losses.
So governments have got to have a migration debate, but it's not going to save a government or an opposition."
Asked for his take on the issue, Mr Pyne said "migration has built this country".
"Everything Bill said about international students is right.
"What politicians need to do is actually start standing up for migration, a population that is sustainable and explaining the benefits that this brings because Australia is so powerful internationally because of its multiculturalism and all the people in Australia who do business with the countries that they came from or their grandparents came from because of the knowledge they have, the skills they gain, the language commonalities.
"These things are not something that we should be embarrassed about."
