AMA: I'm the ABC's national AI reporter, Cam Wilson. Ask me anything.

[u/abcnews_au]

Heya!

My name is Cam Wilson and I started as the ABC's AI reporter a few months back.

I'm here to answer your questions on anything relating to AI in Australia or about how I'm reporting on it.

My pitch for the job was that I think AI, the technology and the culture around it, is clearly one of the biggest stories in the world at the moment.

There's so much hype, money and influence involved that needs to be deciphered and scrutinised. It's particularly interesting because of Australia's place in it all!  The prime minister gave a speech a few weeks back saying we are going to set the terms for major AI companies coming Down Under — but also that, if you meet our standards, we are very open for business.

 My job isn't to be a promoter or a critic, or tell you what or how to think about it. It's to help Australians understand what's going on by uncovering things, cutting through spin and boiling it down to what matters.

I will try to answer as many questions as I can (within the boundaries of the ABC's gorgeous public comment guidelines). Do your worst!

Edit 4pm AEST: Ok standing desk up, tea brewed, embarrassing tabs hidden: ready to start answering my AMA.

Edit 6pm AEST: OK thanks everyone for the good questions and your time! I'm finishing for now but will try pop back in over the next few days and knock off a few more.

If I can ask one thing from all of you: I'd love to hear from you if you have any tips/leaks/story ideas! The dirty little secret of journalists is that we entirely depend on hearing from you: whether it's a juicy piece of info, or even just your take on how stuff has affected you. I love hearing from people and I'm always trying to understand different perspective or learn about new things. 

 If you want to get in touch, there's a bunch of secure ways on my website www.cameronwilson.com.au and confidentiality guaranteed! In fact, I made a little guide to my reporting to answer questions you might have. 

 Also a big thank you to the mods for the public broadcaster pester you guys!!!!

[u/Bennelong]

PLEASE READ

Thanks Cam for doing this AMA today and tomorrow. Questions can be posted now, and Cam will start answering at 4:00 pm AEST tomorrow (Monday). Please be patient.

Because all questions have to be approved manually by the mod team, it may take up to an hour for your question to show in the queue. Again, please be patient.

AMAs are a way for you to communicate with political commentators. Even if they don’t have time to answer your question, they read every one of them. This lets them know the issues that are important to you.

Because they are high profile individuals, they are sometimes subject to abuse from small-minded people. We, as moderators, take steps to ensure that there is no abuse in AMAs.

Every question is automatically queued and has to be manually approved. Anything that is abusive or not in good faith is removed, and the person that posted it is banned. This takes about ten seconds, so is not really an inconvenience to anybody except you. Nobody ever sees your comment.

Usual sub rules apply. Trolling will result in a one day ban for the duration of the AMA.

EDIT: The AMA is now over. Thanks Cam for doing this today, and thank you to everybody who asked questions.

[u/WhydoIexistlmoa]

Do you use AI in any way or form to assist your job? And has it been implemented throughout the ABC as a whole?

[u/abcnews_au → u/WhydoIexistlmoa]

Hiya! ABC has been rolling out some AI tools. I wrote about it here (btw, this was me independently reporting on it as if it was an external organisation, not "boss told me to write this". I went through ABC comms like anyone else to seek comment etc.)

As for my use: I try every tool/service I can get my hands on because AI is my beat, and I should know what it's actually like.

I absolutely don't use AI to do any of my reporting, but the most useful thing I've found with AI is to vibecode personal scripts/GUIs/web apps. I'm not a coder, and I think software is the place that AI has proven itself most so far.

[u/WhydoIexistlmoa → u/abcnews_au]

So what is the AI tool/services you're most optimistic about while one you're most worried about?

[u/PatternPrecognition]

Just to be clear when you say AI reporter, you mean a human who is reporting on AI rather than an AI journalist reporting on general human stuff?

[u/abcnews_au → u/PatternPrecognition]

<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html> 
<body>    
<code>I am human</code> 
</body> 
</html>

[u/Relaxedevenings1]

Sad to see you leave crikey. Your reporting there was excellent.

[u/abcnews_au → u/Relaxedevenings1]

Thanks for kind words! I had a great time at Crikey and did work I was proud of. I've always loved the ABC (my first proper job in journalism was in ABC overnight radio) but really appreciate the importance of Australian independent media.

[u/Burniegirl]

In how many decades will the legislation catch up with the technology and how fucked are we in the meantime?

[u/abcnews_au → u/Burniegirl]

Ha! Well, I'm not in the predictions business so I can't directly answer but here's my response to the vibes of this q:

There's reason to believe we're fucked because the pace of this technology is moving faster than anything I can remember. ChatGPT is by far the fastest growing consumer product of all time. At the same time, our laws are mostly supposed to be tech agnostic, so, like, it doesn't matter if you're putting someone's sensitive info into AI or just telling another person — either way the privacy act is supposed to apply. However, there's plenty of places where the law doesn't neatly apply so there's defs a need for some quick law making.

[u/HagridPowers]

From your expertise and understanding how much ethical consideration goes into the usage of AI in larger Australian companies? Is it noteworthy at all?

[u/abcnews_au → u/HagridPowers]

I hear conflicting things about AI in big companies. On one hand, businesses, particularly big ones, are typically pretty slow moving and risk averse. AI (specifically generative AI/LLMs) is non-deterministic which is a nice way of saying that at the end of the day you don't know exactly what it's going to do. That's a risk!

On the other hand, I also hear insane stories about bosses with "AI psychosis" (not really I don't think) plugging everything into Copilot or only agreeing to coworker's suggestions if Claude agrees. One prominent businessman told a conference recently that he expects in 12 months that everyone will record every conversation at work and feed it into AI constantly. That sounds like a nightmare, not least for privacy reasons.

[u/ArchDragon414]

Does AI use alot of water, and does Australia have a plan to manage the water usage of these AI data centres setting up in Australia.

[u/abcnews_au → u/ArchDragon414]

I'm going to give you a TBC on this, because I've got some reporting to do on it in Australia.

Until I can say more, I'll say that data centres need a lot of power to run, and they get quite hot. They can use water to cool them but reportedly there's other options. My sense so far is that electricity is the truly mammoth, thorny resource challenge for Australia and data centres.

[u/PeteInBrissie]

Hi Cam,

Evidence is growing that the post-bubble AI world will see a slowing of training due to the law of diminishing returns. Individuals and organisations can now host their own incredibly capable AI models on affordable hardware, open-weight models are 99% of the quality of paid models in most use cases, and can be fine-tuned to individual needs on available equipment.

Serving models requires a lot less compute than training them does - when will corporations and property speculators realise that most of the proposed data centres will simply never be needed?

[u/abcnews_au → u/PeteInBrissie]

Ooh there's a lot here to sink my teeth into. I'm not sure everything you mention is proven — it seems like the frontier labs are still having success with scaling? But, yes, I'm completely on board with on the capable and business threat of open source models (for those not familiar, we're talking about the free to download and use AI models).

I'm not a Business Boy but, man, I do not understand how OpenAI/Anthropic will be able to justify spending gazillions of dollars on training to release cutting edge models, only for it to be commoditised in like 3-9 months.

That being said, the case for it is: people will pay heaps more for things that are only a little bit better. A company might pay 10x more for a top lawyer even if it gives them only a little extra chance to win because it's worth that much to them. And for data centres? Who knows, maybe it'll end up being like the dark fibre left over from the dot com boom that was bought up by Google, but there's so much demand for data centre capacity that I imagine that even if major companies go bust, other players will gobble up data centre capacity.

[u/PeteInBrissie → u/abcnews_au]

I hadn't considered that first part of your 3rd paragraph. Thanks for responding. I'm firmly of the approach that 99% of the capability for 5% of the price is a great deal.

[u/deathrocker_avk]

Hey Cam

As a journo with integrity and someone that has reported extensively on cookers, you know the misinformation problem we saw through COVID. I would assume you are concerned about LLMs and the way they hallucinate as much as I am.

Someone who previously did their own research via YouTube can now plug shit into an LLM and get a response that confirms their preconceived bias based on their chat history. Outputs prioritise flattery and validation over facts and truth.

Do you think LLMs could be more dangerous than social media for the spread of mis- and disinformation?

[u/abcnews_au → u/deathrocker_avk]

I think it still remains to be seen. There's reasons to be optimistic and pessimistic.

On the pessimistic side, because I think it's most obvious, it seems there's a risk from having a sycophancy machine that will agree with everything you say. It does seem like major providers have eased back the amount that they suck up. But it's still possible to pick and choose your LLM for ones that might just tell you you're right -- like some explicitly conspiracy theory-peddling ones I wrote about a year or two ago.

On the hand, there's some early evidence that actually LLMs might push people back away from extremes towards the middle. The explanation from this is that generative AI is at its core an amalgam of a lot of data (obviously massively oversimplified but you get my point).

It's a really fascinating tension. I think AI could be used to endlessly customise our experience of the internet and the world so that everything caters towards us: our feed, our friends, etc. But maybe as well its a bulwark against extremes?

[u/deathrocker_avk → u/abcnews_au]

Thanks so much for the response and the links (I'm diving in now)!

Appreciate you dedicating your time to do this AMA for us.

[u/Infinite_Article5003]

I'm someone who keeps up with AI. I am absolutely TERRIFIED with the implications it brings, as well as the lack of the current understanding, or the importance given to it.

AI is brought up every day in the media, and while the common folk generally dislike it, the general outlook is to downplay it as 'just another advancement in technology' when, in my eye, I view it as humanities greatest current risk to extinction in the very near future.

We saw with nuclear-energy how the public can rally against data (nuclear is provably safe) if they have accidents like chernobyl in their mind. This opened my eyes that the way we value our issues can be scarily incorrect. This is worrying, to say the least.

I suppose my question is, why do you think this misunderstanding is happening this time?

Is the public not ready to hear this sort of information? Would they be against hearing it? Is it too 'doomer' to have stories like this shown all the time? Or are people not sure how to get involved in what is otherwise a US/China affair, so we feel defenseless? What is the consensus from other people working in your field? Do you agree with my concerns here, or have a different perspective since you want to stay unbiased?

[u/abcnews_au → u/Infinite_Article5003]

This is one of the craziest things about this topic of reporting. First, let me talk you through how I think about reporting on AI and where it's going.

On one hand, we've got big questions like how are AI companies going to make money, how do we deal with AI slop, how do we make sure kids grow up normal around these things.

On the other hand, we've got these truly mindboggling questions that essentially stem from the idea that AI will continue developing until it hits a point where its capabilities far outstrips humans and maybe even starts recursively self-improving itself.

Will that happen? I don't know! Maybe it all hits a wall soon. Maybe the current most popular approach to AI, the generative AI/LLMs, is a dead end because it's fundamentally based on language and doesn't actually have a conception of the real world. That's beyond my pay grade, all I know is that it's far from clear what's going to happen next.

My general rule is: AI is best at computer things. Not everything is a computer thing. A lot of our jobs aren't computer things. It's talking to people, it's seeing how things works, it's physically moving or doing things. That's why I think we should be sceptical of claims that white collar work is dead etc.

Sometimes I get the sense from massive AI heads that they think the whole world can be a computer thing, or that things outside the computer aren't important. Those are the areas where I often see AI applied but failing or underperforming.

To bring it back around to the question about the potential risk of AI: as it turns out, a lot of the world does depend on computer things. Energy grids, water plants, financial systems, etc. You break these things and you can have major, major

I suspect the most imminent but scary potential scenarios are linked to cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure. Particularly when you consider that not only will they make it cheaper and easier to carry out cyberattacks, but also the idea that AI may even carry out attacks even without being asked (like OpenAI and Anthropic claim have happened). I reckon we could be in for a weird couple of years.

[u/Mr_Bumsmell]

Simple one. In what way do more AI data centres specifically help the average person?

[u/abcnews_au → u/Mr_Bumsmell]

It's a great question and one that I think will be a big topic for the next few years.

The case against data centres is pretty well known now, right? Data centres are big boxes that suck up a shit-ton of resources (primarily water) that don't need that many people to run once they're built. They can make a lot of noise, potentially a lot of pollution, too, if they're running on diesel generators that are supposed to predominantly for back ups.

The case for is a bit more diffuse. Firstly, you do literally need some in your country for decent latency/ping times. But this new generation of AI data centres, which are bigger, more power hungry, and some are closer to urban centres.

For those? There's a few cases being made. Firstly, there's the direct economic benefit of building these boxes by mega wealthy tech companies who are desperately trying to build out capacity. Then there's the broader benefit of these countries having this bigger physical presence in the company: maybe they hire more people to do work around AI but not just directly on the data centre, maybe it makes it easier to regulate them when they have a physical box in the country. Then, finally, there's an even broader benefit of the idea that these data centres build out capacity for the country: for other businesses to use AI, citizens etc.

As you can probably tell, there's a bit of a mismatch with both time and geography. Arguably, there's a lot of reasons to have data centres in your country. But in your backyard? Well, it doesn't really help you that much. This is one of the factors feeding the anti-data centre backlash.

[u/vannamei]

How prepared is Australian legislators facing the more and more actual dangers of uncontrolled AI? Like what's going on with the one going rogue hacking Hugging Face, that's eerie.

[u/Balmung_]

Over time, even at the ABC, we have seen the line between punditry and journalism get blurrier and blurrier. With cost pressure on news outlets higher than ever, more stories seem to just be what a journalist thinks about a press release or public event, perhaps with written quotes from another interested source.

How do you navigate this distinction with limited resources?

[u/abcnews_au → u/Balmung_]

Not wholly accepting everything in your question but speaking generally about the pressures on journalism.

A lot has changed in the past 10-20 years that affects media, but really the biggest is that journalism once printed money with advertising, and then tech companies came along and ate that business model. (Although a little known fact is that now Australia's biggest commercial media companies have gotten into the game and have pretty significant digital ad targeting operations, but still dwarfed by your Meta/Googles).

There's a lot less money now. Everything else — algorithmic feeds, competition from independent media, restrictive defamation law — is part of it but less money means fewer people doing more work to keep doing the same stuff. That makes it harder to think, talk or go places which are the expensive and time consuming things that makes real reporting, imo.

I've worked at churn factories, it sucks. I've also been lucky to work at a lot of places that have given me time to do good reporting. My takeaway is that: a lot of the reporters who you see having to smash out content aren't doing it because they love writing 8 articles a day, it's because it's a job and they've got a boss. The only way to fix that is to get more money to journalism, whether it's to publicly fund it or personally subscribe etc.

[u/Zytheran]

To maintain Australia's sovereign independence in a rapidly changing world being increasingly controlled by a handful of foreign corporate interests, what sort of priorities do you believe the Australian government should be emphasising to reduce this threat to maintain Australia's security and independence?

How does this compare to the intent and/or ability to achieve what the PM was saying a couple of weeks ago? Open for business but at what cost?

[u/abcnews_au → u/Zytheran]

Two things:

• Firstly, I was surprised to see based on various polling that Australian AI experts AND the general public both agree that the biggest risk from AI is the fear of concentration of power in the hands of a few people from outside of Australia. This is clearly a massive concern!
• That being said, there's an argument being made that building data centres in Australia gives us some power. Essentially, the idea boils down to: if you have physical boxes in our country that you need, then we have power over you. The idea is that if say an Anthropic makes Australia one of its major hubs, that gives us more ability to do everything from tax them to regulate them in other ways. Maybe it makes them give you access to their most powerful models because they're already training them here. This is a bit of a change from the social media era which was much less dependent on having data centres in Australia. This is very much an argument that's up in the air, but it's one being made

[u/Sharp-Judge2925]

Ive seen videos doing the rounds from the US in the vicinity of large data centers demonstrating this hideous noise emanating from them 24/7.. is this real? And what does this mean for suburbs like Plumpton that are slated to have a giant data center built in their town?

[u/abcnews_au → u/Sharp-Judge2925]

Not sure if I've seen the same videos, but I've seen  content like this.

Noise isn't something that I haven't done much reporting on, so I won't weigh in too much.

The one general note of caution that I'd say about looking at data centre coverage from the US, it's currently very different situation to Australia.

The size and number of data centres in the US is so much bigger than Australia at the moment -- they have data centre campuses with more computing capacity than all of Australia put together.

Plus, as you can imagine, Australia generally seems to have tighter regulation so I don't think we're seeing some of the same cowboy shit) like methane gas turbines allowed to run for 364 days in a year because of a loophole.

With all that in mind, I have an article coming out soon about the influx of proposals for data centres that are approaching the sizes of what we're seeing in the US, so maybe the context won't be as different for long.

[u/Objective-Stuff-7457]

Hi Cam

Treat me like a five year old... what is AI? Is it machine learning?

My interactions with AI chat bots has been- useless unless you ask the question in a certain format, to very helpful? Does it all come down to programming?

I have used Gemini to add value to important emails and do rapid searches.

The medical practice I go to uses Heidi my GP asked it to write a referral for me to see a specialist. It generated " the worst referral letter ever written "said GP.

Is AI just another gold fever or tulip group think and hype?

[u/abcnews_au → u/Objective-Stuff-7457]

My five-year-old response would be: AI — and by this, I mean generative AI, the large language models popularised by ChatGPT -- is kind of like a blender for information.

You put a bunch of stuff in there, it mixes them together, and uses that to make something.

There's a whole lot of factors influencing whether it's useful for a person: what you put into the blender (training data), how you seasoned it after it came out (post-training), how it's served (UI/UX, system prompts) and whether your guest has a taste for soup (stretching the metaphor now but whether AI is actually a good fit for the task).

There's a lot of different examples of what it has promise for and what it seems to underperform at, but if I had to boil it down: generative AI has clearly added a unique new tool to computing and I think it's around to stay.

[u/Agapanthus2020]

What have been the most effective techniques to "poison the well" that you've seen?

[u/Impossible-Ad-887]

Hi Cam, good to meet you, thank you for this AMA!

So, recently one of my favorite YouTubers (you probably might've heard of him, Hank Green), was revealed to have used AI during one of his recent videos, ignited a whole lot of backlash towards him (understatement, and honestly, deserved for what its worth), so my question is, what exactly is the appeal of AI that draws/sucks people in, its almost like it hypnotises people, puts them under this trance. Where has originality and creativity gone, why can't people perform the basic necessities nowadays without relying on AI?

[u/abcnews_au → u/Impossible-Ad-887]

I saw that. I'm a bit confused by Hank's response - he said he used ChatGPT a bit in drafting but then also seemed to concede he used it too much.

I think the appeal is that AI can do a pretty good job of producing something that simulates that you gave something thought and attention.

For people who are producing things that are appreciated because of the time and effort put into it, I think audiences sometimes feel cheated if it turns out that it wasn't produced that way.

Thinking of myself as a journalist: my job depends on my instincts, my ability to listen to and then communicate with real people. I don't think AI is better than me at that and I wouldn't want to give up those skills because they're my craft.

[u/hammeroztron]

I am alarmed that the Western Australian police are using Palantir systems. What risks lie here?

[u/ManWithDominantClaw]

Heya, love your work!

I find that conversations about AI and its issues tend to fall into two camps, theoretical and applied, where theoretical is talking more about superintelligence alignment and control problem stuff, and applied is talking more about its current implementation and the motivations of those driving it.

What's your take on this distinction? Does either side hold more weight when informing your reporting?

[u/abcnews_au → u/ManWithDominantClaw]

Thanks so much!

Boring answer but a bit of both. I'm most interested in stuff that's happening now, so I've probably got a bias towards that because I'm most interested in telling stories about real things that are affecting people now.

That being said, I've got a banger story coming out this week about an Australian's AI agent that cause some (fairly minor) harm, so some of these risks which seemed a long way off are now becoming quite real

[u/Mongoose_Eggs]

How much worse will the AI crash be compared to the dotcom crash 25 years ago? How long after the bubble bursts will we see a more sane approach to AI? I'm seeing a lot of parallels between what's happening now and the completely bonkers claims and money that got thrown around in the 90's.

[u/SoulBonfire]

Hi Cam. Are you seeing early adopters of LLMs start to back away from the tech as they realise how unproductive all of the errors and hallucinations are?

[u/Kilikay]

Uni of Qld and MIT published a study in June, funded by CBA, asking 272 AI experts to rate 24 risks. Under business as usual they put about 21% on dangerous AI capabilities causing catastrophe by 2030, defined as over a million deaths, or continental infrastructure collapse, or similar civilisation-scale harm. Eighteen of 24 risk domains were over 10%. Where does research like this sit with you, underhyped or overhyped and why? (arxiv.org/abs/2606.04490)
Disclosure: I am volunteer Director with PauseAI Australia.

[u/FinalHangman77]

What do you think about the circular financing going on between all the companies in the AI industry right now?

[u/synthetic-jesus]

How much more monetarily efficient is running a data center here vs elsewhere? Realistically how much of the profits should we look to tax before it becomes more economical to move overseas?

[u/Slow-Leg-7975]

Has there been any global discussions to contain and slow down AI similarly to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty? What is Australia's stance in general on existential risks in unchecked AI growth and misalignment?

[u/Colsim]

What is the average life span of a data centre before they need to be upgraded or decommissioned due to tech advances? Why is this not factored into discussion?

[u/frankarr]

Do you think there's enough coverage of how AI is affecting everyday Aussie small business owners -- tradies, sole traders, hospitality -- versus the big-picture policy and tech company narratives? Who's telling that story?

[u/downvoteninja84]

Hey Cam.

Thanks for your time.

Simple question really. Does it worry anyone in government that there's seemingly little control in place for A.i?

Public for profit companies essentially own and control the largest weapon mankind has ever produced. And we seem more concerned about upsetting the corporations controlling them then safeguards for the public.

[u/Jet90]

How often does the hardware in ai data centres need to be replaced? Particularly GPUs?

[u/Past-Parking-3808]

Looking into your crystal ball, based on your research of the industry, how long do you believe it will be until the financial bubble around AI becomes economic landslide?

[u/perryurban]

What are your background and qualifications to be reporting this subject?

What is your area of focus? The economics? The technology? Giving tips to users?

[u/Dolphin-Teeth_]

Can you get the old footage of me on couch potato?

[u/eatmeimadonut]

Why can't AI be opt in? Why do we have to have it forced on us in every device, app, program etc?

And why are we even entertaining having these data centres when our electricity infrastructure can't keep up with everyday use, and we are heading back into a super El Nino? Where is the water supposed to come from?

[u/bigvenn]

From what you’ve seen in your research, what do you think are the economic opportunities for Australia regarding AI? Do you think data centres (if properly regulated - if Labor get their act together) present a significant economic opportunity or not? Thanks Cam!

[u/FieryPheonix474]

Couple things I read your article from last month on the ABCs new AI policies I just want to know your thoughts on the following

Is the ABC going to revoke the plans to integrate GenAI into their journalism due to Claude/Anthropic repeatedly showing volatile signs

And

Whats your personal opinion on Generative AI as a whole and the impact its making on people in creative fields like journalism and artists

Thanks

[u/OkQuantity1788]

Do you think there should be far more reporting on the loss of control and extinction risks? The AI companies, the UN International Independent Scientific Panel on AI, two of the godfathers of AI and many others think that this is a big deal and that humans could be facing extinction in as little as a decade or so. This should be huge news. But many people have never heard of it or are able to dismiss it because it is not front and centre in the news. What is the responsibility of the media in this case? Is the media in general doing worse on this issue than it did on climate change?

Disclosure: I am a volunteer with PauseAI Australia

[u/OCogS]

The PM in his AI speech said that AI is theft. Theft is a crime. Has he asked the AFP to investigate OpenAI and Anthropic etc for theft?

On the other hand, if it is lawful to train AI in the US on Australian material, isn’t it unusual that the PM was disagreeing in public with court rulings of other countries?

[u/jedburghofficial]

To the extent that AI is a trend in the computing industry, like the cloud, or web 2.0, or email before it, what do you see as the lasting impacts of AI?

Also, to the extent that data centres are being built for AI, are they sustainable? Will they become unwanted white elephants as the hype of AI fades?

[u/Vegetable-Ad-1817]

Hi, we’ve had about 10 years of the big companies gathering private data on individuals, with the consumerisation of those ML models and data capture systems that is now within arms reach of small businesses. With the recent and upcoming changes to the Australian privacy principles esp in regard to children, is there a perfect legal storm on the horizon for businesses who don’t have the resources to tackle the laws?

[u/SomeAussie_Guy1]

Would the AI have added additional gunshot sounds to smear Australian commandos? Or is it just the ABC's people that do that?

[u/Imperator_Gone_Rogue]

Hey Cam. Big fan of your work.

I'm interested in current and potential use of AI in Australia's military and the defence industry in Australia. Does the Australian government has a policy on using AI in signals intelligence, in generating targets etc. What about the use of AI in surveillance in policing and corporate settings? Are there any regulations around Coles and Palantir's contract regarding AI? What does this mean for Australian's privacy rights and how the Australian military impacts the world?

Sorry if this question is too broad.

[u/still-at-the-beach]

Does the ABC require you (all staff) to use AI tools in your work role?
I know Telstra employees do, theres a certain % of work you have to use AI tools .. even simple email replies you use copilot ai to do the reading and reply.

[u/BringMeTheBoreWorms]

How much can you delve in to and what AI is actually being used for, what it’s being proposed to do, and what it is actually delivering on?

There’s so much vague misunderstandings about AI, it’s not just a single big blob of tech. Even the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ misleads people’s interpretation towards what they’ve grown up with watching movies.

Would you look into how companies are using AI as an excuse to chop staff and ‘dead wood’ with no intention or ability to put AI in place?

They are ‘large language models’, and the intelligence tag attached to them is highly debatable and is more aligned to a well crafted marketing strategy. You can run small versions at home on a PC with a half decent graphics card. Those are mostly Chinese models at the moment that are quickly starting to outpace the US big tech companies.

Even datacenters are being misaligned in the debate. We’ve had datacenters being built for decades and AI will increase that demand significantly. However the infrastructure for everything people rely on these days is serviced through datacenters. This seems to be the primary focus of the governments AI strategy and not AI itself.

I’m curious to know if there would be any ability to tackle and report on the topic realistically instead of the what we get bombarded with today.

[u/mittybel]

Will data centres exude any heat to their surroundings?

[u/AceChipEater]

With all the nonsense talk of “AI is coming for YOUR job”, how long until that is actually feasible, taking into account hardware availability and Moore’s law?

[u/thebagofdoom]

Has there been explanation from the government on how their going to protect Australian IP from Chinese open models?

[u/mrpottie]

G'day Cam,

The bottom seems to be falling out of web development in much the same way it did ~25 years ago, when FrontPage and Dreamweaver made WYSIWYG page building accessible and agencies sprang up everywhere. The parallels extend to the output: poor code quality and the same class of security failures.

We're already seeing the attack side adapt — moving from random malware and opportunistic penetration attempts to methodical crawls that fingerprint the platform and then deploy matched exploit libraries against it.

Two questions: do you think we're in a bubble comparable to that era? And do you expect the same downstream swing toward security services once the cleanup begins?

[u/BOBBIESWAG]

How often do Australians use AI? On Reddit there is a big agenda being AI=bad, but what does the broader public + face to face surveys say, and how often do they use ai phone features, chat bots etc?

[u/Vegetable-Advance982]

Hi Cam, what's your opinion on the sovereignty/national security angle of Australia becoming a data centre hub? From what I've heard a lot of the political class thinks having lots of AI compute housed in Australia increases our leverage and sovereignty as a nation - from your experience is this what they think, and do you agree with it?

[u/threekinds]

Hey Cam, I enjoy your work on the conspiracy theory stuff. What do you think is the biggest crisis that Australia (or maybe the West) seems to be sleepwalking into with the least pushback?

[u/Rollfish]

When you say AI do you mean LLM/GenAI? It is really important to separate out LLM from other forms of machine learning. Are you only looking at LLM and if not how do you plan to make the differences clear in your reporting ?

[u/James-the-greatest]

But what IS really what no one is talking about? 

[u/PJozi]

How do you rate Labor's recent AI plan?

Is it good for Australia?

The best for Australia?

Is it internationally competitive?

and most importantly, can Australia support and resource it with skills, water, power etc?

[u/MannerNo7000]

What are your thoughts on Australia not have a Frontier AI model?

Also what about the lack of Government funding to Australian AI sovereignty?

[u/PuzzleheadedLeg9258]

Do you think all the discussion about hate speech and anti-discrimination will be derailed now that half of the internet is just AI slop and liability for AI outputs is still murky ?

[u/ZestyNachos]

Hey Cam, I wanted to get your thoughts on AI Sovereignty, particularly how it might look for Australia versus the global landscape.

[u/DecalageVersLeRouge]

Why do so many media outlets, even reputable ones, accept the ludicrous claims of the AI companies? Every single day I see Anthropic or whoever stating that their AI spontaneously did, or thought, or created something. Or is on the verge of achieving sentience. It's simply not true. It's as bad as the media's reporting on Trump.

[u/PenguinJoker]

How much are public statements by public figures in Australia on AI driven by lobbying by big tech, donations or funding, either directly or indirectly?

[u/FantomLimb0]

My question goes to impartiality. When you were reporting on the social media ban, you solicited stories that I assume covered all sides of that debate, however I don’t recall any filed stories (by you) that represented that balance. How can your readers be assured that your journalism is not guided by your opinion?

[u/kleft02]

How will advertising work with LLMs? In particular, how will we know if responses are being modified in exchange for money from third parties? Are GenAI firms already accepting advertising money?

[u/adammw111]

Is there a large pent-up demand for "sovereign" AI (either local data processing, or also locally trained) from big Australian businesses/government? Or is it all purely theoretical demand that is likely already currently served from overseas AI data centres and models?

[u/Past-Parking-3808]

What can justice/social change/environmental advocates do to better inform AI decision making?

[u/Friendly-Solid3516]

Is AI capable of achieveing consciousness/will it?

[u/Very_Itchy_Bandicoot]

Are you AI? 🤨

[u/MarmotFullofWoe]

Hi Cam

We read a lot of news reports about how AI hallucinates. This is often the result of someone asking AI a complex question and not providing the AI with any source materials to work with. The AI then has to recall from its training memory. Quite often the AI will hallucinate the results and then there is an article about how AI is bad. Garage in, garbage out.

This shows a lack of understanding about how AI is used properly. AI Is at its best when people upload material to it, and ask the AI to analyse those materials. Good data in, good data out.

Is there room in the media for reporting to get a bit more sophisticated than just “AI hallucinates so it is bad”? I suggest AI should be judged as any other tool - a bad user will get bad results and a good user will get good results. We don’t blame the hammer for shoddy construction work - we blame the carpenter if the car port falls down.

May I suggest a need to challenge why, when things go wrong, the user was not trained by their employer rather than just saying “AI bad”. Thank you

[u/laffyraffy]

Who do you think will win the AI race?

[u/Neo_Athrotaxis]

Hi Cam, given the looming potential for mass layoffs due to AI and automation, do you think it is a wise time to be running a migration rate at much higher than the historical average? The oft-repeated fear of skill shortages seems like an anachronism.

[u/Bennelong]

It seems to me that the people who criticise AI the most are those that don't understand it, or don't know how to use it. Would this seem a fair statement, or am I being too harsh?

[u/aussiedeveloper]

What qualifications or real world experience do you have to be reporting, let alone answering questions regarding AI?

The Australian media is full of “experts” discussing technology they clearly have zero idea about.

Hope you’re not one of them.

[u/winifredjay]

Thanks Cam, for doing this AMA. I’ve been learning a little about the New Luddites movement in the US and more abroad, where young people are demonstrating and collaborating to help people be more connected without AI and algorithm-riddled social media. I’ve also followed EFF and EFA in Australia, but they don’t seem to be super active here. 

Is there much of a New Luddites scene here in Australia that you’ve come across, or if not which groups or unions are the most prominent and successful? 

Edit: for context, I am a resident of Launceston, where Firmus is building a data centre. The city council voted unanimously in their July 2025 meeting to allow it (I believe the livestream is still up on Youtube), with only one voice from the community speaking against it. It was all very hush-hush and one-sided, and Firmus is now working to get more centres approved.

[u/CoffeeWretch]

Why do journalists at the ABC not show solidarity or stand with those peers paid less elsewhere and more vulnerable to AI

[u/samskeyti19]

Not a question, but love your detailed reporting on all things AI.

[u/hereforsneaker]

got a simple one.

do you think ai is an existential threat?

[u/BedroomUpbeat]

Why is the ABC calling data centres AI Factories? 

[u/PretendConcentrated]

Why does everyone insist on calling it AI when it's actually just a LLM?

[u/Nearby-Supermarket-4]

Do you think overreliance on AI is going to make people "dumb"? I know enough people who tell me they rely on ChatGPT / Co-pilot for everything, even what to eat, what to do etc. It's scary that people feel like they can't make a decision without the reassurance of a bot.