One Australian business has prevented personnel from utilizing the technology, others are scrambling for suggestions on its cybersecurity implications - while federal government ministers are urging caution.
But others have actually 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 launched its R1 artificial intelligence design and publicly released its chatbot and app, it has upended the AI market.
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Several international market leaders saw their market worths drop after the launch, as DeepSeek revealed AI could be developed using a portion of the expense and processing needed to train designs such as ChatGPT or Meta's Llama.
Its may signal a brand-new market shift, but for federal government and service, the effect is unclear. Whereas ChatGPT's 2022 arrival captured federal governments and companies by surprise as personnel began to try the new AI innovation, at least for the arrival of Deepseek, some had a playbook.
Business as typical
A spokesperson for Telstra said the business had "a rigorous process to assess all AI tools, capabilities, and utilize cases in our business", consisting of a list of approved generative AI tools, and guidelines on how to utilize them.
In the meantime at Telstra, DeepSeek is not approved and its usage is not motivated (although it's not officially blocked).
"Our preferred partner is MS Copilot, and we're rolling out 21,000 Copilot for Microsoft 365 licences to our staff members."
Other companies looked for instant suggestions on whether DeepSeek must be embraced.
Major Australian cybersecurity firm CyberCX's executive director of cyber intelligence, Katherine Mansted, stated customers had already approached the business for suggestions on whether the technology was safe.
"That's no surprise, due to the fact that it seems the whole world has actually remained in a little a DeepSeek craze - both the economically and market inclined and those with the security lens," Mansted said.
DeepSeek and federal government
CyberCX this week took the unusual step of quickly providing recommendations recommending organisations, including government departments and asteroidsathome.net those storing delicate info, strongly consider limiting access to DeepSeek on work devices.
"We know that there is no proactive policy here from federal government ... We've been down this road before," Mansted said. "We've had debates about TikTok, about Chinese monitoring electronic cameras, about Huawei in the telco network, and we constantly act after the truth, not before the fact ... Here, especially due to the fact that the hazards are around compromise of sensitive information, in terms of any info 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 until the end of February 2025 to publish transparency documents about their use of AI.
But understanding who makes choices on the particular use of DeepSeek in the federal government has shown challenging. The attorney general's department, that made the decision to ban TikTok use on government devices, referred inquiries 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 supply an action by the time of publication.
Familiar debates ...
A few of the response in Australia to DeepSeek is by now familiar. There have been calls to ban the innovation, in the middle of concern over how the Chinese federal government might access user information - 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 today that Australia "can not continue the current technique of reacting to each brand-new tech advancement". It called for a tech strategy covering AI that included investing in sovereign AI abilities.
The market minister, Ed Husic, stated on Tuesday it was prematurely to make a choice on whether DeepSeek was a security danger.
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"If there is anything that provides a danger in the nationwide interest, we will always keep an open mind and parentingliteracy.com view what happens. I think it's prematurely to jump to conclusions on that," he said. "But, once again, if we have to act, then responsible governments do."
He worried that Australia is "in the lasts" of planning its reaction and would develop its own regulatory settings.
"The US is flagging their method. The EU has theirs. Canada similarly will have a different method. And our local partners as well are taking a look at this," he said.
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As DeepSeek Upends the aI Industry, one Group is Urging Australia to Embrace The Opportunity
Antonetta Oconner edited this page 2025-02-03 05:50:16 +00:00