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As DeepSeek Upends the aI Industry, one Group is Urging Australia to Embrace The Opportunity
Belle Gentry edited this page 2025-02-03 11:29:50 +01:00


One Australian business has discouraged staff from utilizing the technology, others are scrambling for suggestions on its cybersecurity implications - while federal government ministers are prompting care.

But others have welcomed DeepSeek's arrival, calling for Australia to follow China's lead in developing effective yet less energy-intensive AI innovation.

In the days considering that the Chinese company released its R1 artificial intelligence design and its chatbot and app, it has actually upended the AI industry.

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Several global industry leaders saw their market price drop after the launch, as DeepSeek showed AI could be developed using a fraction of the expense and processing needed to train models such as ChatGPT or Meta's Llama.

Its arrival might indicate a new market shift, but for government and company, the effect is uncertain. Whereas ChatGPT's 2022 arrival caught governments and companies by surprise as staff started to try out the new AI technology, a minimum of for dokuwiki.stream the arrival of Deepseek, some had a playbook.

Business as usual

A representative for Telstra stated the company had "an extensive process to evaluate all AI tools, capabilities, and use cases in our business", consisting of a list of approved generative AI tools, and standards on how to utilize them.

For now at Telstra, DeepSeek is not authorized and its usage is not motivated (although it's not officially blocked).

"Our favored partner is MS Copilot, and we're rolling out 21,000 Copilot for Microsoft 365 licences to our workers."

Other business sought immediate suggestions on whether DeepSeek need to be adopted.

Major Australian cybersecurity company CyberCX's executive director of cyber intelligence, Katherine Mansted, stated consumers had actually currently approached the company for recommendations on whether the innovation was safe.

"That's no surprise, since it appears the entire world has remained in a little a DeepSeek craze - both the economically and market likely and those with the security lens," Mansted said.

DeepSeek and government

CyberCX this week took the uncommon step of quickly releasing guidance recommending organisations, including government departments and those saving delicate information, bytes-the-dust.com highly consider restricting access to DeepSeek on work devices.

"We understand that there is no proactive policy here from federal government ... We've been down this road before," Mansted said. "We've had disputes about TikTok, about Chinese surveillance electronic cameras, about Huawei in the telco network, and we constantly act after the truth, not before the reality ... Here, especially because the risks are around compromise of sensitive information, in terms of any details that you take into this AI assistant: it's going directly to China.

"We believed we needed to act much faster this time."

Under federal AI policy executed in September 2024, firms have up until the end of February 2025 to release transparency files about their usage of AI.

But understanding who makes choices on the particular use of DeepSeek in the federal government has actually proved challenging. The chief law officer's department, that made the choice to prohibit TikTok utilize on government devices, referred questions to the Digital Transformation Agency, which in turn referred enquires to the Department of Home Affairs.

Home Affairs was asked on Thursday for its main policy and did not offer a response by the time of publication.

Familiar arguments ...

A few of the reaction in Australia to DeepSeek is by now familiar. There have actually been calls to ban the technology, amid concern over how the Chinese federal government might access user data - an echo of the days Huawei was prohibited from the NBN and 5G rollouts in Australia, and more recently, of the argument over prohibiting TikTok.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a strong critic of the China federal government, said this week that Australia "can not continue the existing technique of reacting to each new tech development". It required a tech method covering AI that consisted of investing in sovereign AI capabilities.

The market minister, Ed Husic, stated on Tuesday it was too early to decide on whether DeepSeek was a security risk.

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"If there is anything that provides a danger in the nationwide interest, we will constantly keep an open mind and gdprhub.eu see what happens. I believe it's prematurely to leap to conclusions on that," he stated. "But, once again, if we need to act, then responsible governments do."

He stressed that Australia is "in the final stages" of preparing its reaction and would develop its own regulative settings.

"The US is flagging their approach. The EU has theirs. Canada also will have a different method. And our regional partners as well are taking a look at this," he said.