Already a subscriber?A couple of years ago, Kim Krogh Andersen was given a crucial job by Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady
To his relief, and that of Google’s local managing director, Melanie Silva, the project ran smoothly, with an important failsafe: if the questions got too hairy, Santa would tell the caller he had to get back to his busy North Pole workshop.While the AI Santa was mainly a marketing gimmick, and partly a nice little tech experiment, it’s also a reminder that we are on the cusp of a brave new world, where AI will become a part of our daily lives in ways we don’t expect.
Suncorp’s tech boss Adam Bennett says we’ll need different skills and capabilities if Australia is to capture the millions of little productivity boosts that AI can deliver to individuals. Husic said Labor’s efforts to get wage growth up and deliver the stage three tax cuts might pave the way for corporate tax reform on the agenda.
Tax reform to encourage investment of all types is clearly a major issue. As Commonwealth Bank chief executive Matt Comyn pointed out, the way many foreign nations have made AI capacity an issue of national security and national economic security means the Australian government will need to think hard about how big Australia’s home-grown AI sector needs to be. And the obvious question is how we encourage and pay for that investment.