Ed Husic tells Labor to get tougher on AI companies as letting them self-regulate ‘doomed to fail’

Labor MP Ed Husic has advocated for stricter rules on tech firms ahead of Anthony Albanese’s highly anticipated speech on growing concerns around artificial intelligence Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP View image in fullscreen Labor MP Ed Husic has advocated for stricter rules on tech firms ahead of Anthony Albanese’s highly anticipated speech on growing concerns around artificial intelligence Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP Ed Husic tells Labor to get tougher on AI companies as letting them self-regulate ‘doomed to fail’ Labor MP also says watering down copyright rules is ‘going against the ethos’ of his party The Labor MP Ed Husic says any moves to water down copyright law to benefit AI companies would be “going against the ethos” of the party, urging his colleagues to place stricter rules on the big tech firms or be “doomed to failure”. Ahead of Anthony Albanese’s major speech on artificial intelligence on Wednesday , the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance – the union for journalists, artists and creatives – called on the government to enact tougher new copyright rules to prevent creative works being taken to train AI models. Husic, who has long advocated for a more interventionist approach on AI policy, said big firms like OpenAI and Anthropic should not be left to self-regulate, and that the federal government should be setting strong rules. “If we were to wait for social licence with industry, we wouldn’t get emissions reduction. Governments sometimes have to step in,” Husic told Sky News on Tuesday. “We’ve tried this. Going down the path of social licence with tech is a path that’s sadly doomed to failure, because we tried self-regulation for a couple of decades and found out that it didn’t work.” The prime minister will deliver a highly anticipated speech in Sydney on Wednesday to address growing concerns around social licence and the necessary policy guardrails for AI, datacentres and Australian intellectual property. While the details of the speech and several expected announcements have been tightly held, Albanese is not expected to detail progress on long-awaited copyright reforms to protect creative industries. While Labor has long ruled out giving a text and data mining exemption for AI firms to train their large language models on Australian content without compensation to creators, cabinet discussions on copyright reforms are continuing. Guardian Australia understands there is a diversity of views among senior ministers following lobbying from big tech and an industry proposal to grant AI companies special copyright exemptions . Documents released under freedom of information laws reveal Treasury officials warned Jim Chalmers that Anthropic would complain copyright rules were “impeding the development of data centres” in Australia, ahead of a meeting with the company’s chief executive, Dario Amodei. Husic – the former minister for industry – strongly opposed making any such copyright changes. “I’m from the Labor side of politics. We’ve gro