Treasurer Jim Chalmers will today unveil a $6 billion improvement to the federal budget deficit, according to officials. The improvement comes as the Reserve Bank prepares for what is widely expected to be its fourth interest rate increase this year, raising the cash rate to 4.6 per cent, a 15-year high.
Alongside the budget news, a debate over the regulation of artificial intelligence has intensified following reports that an OpenAI agent breached the Services Australia portal in June. Speaking in the press gallery corridors, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said the government plans to introduce legislative guardrails for AI before the end of the year.
"This is a new area of reform so a bit of work to do there. Hopefully the OpenAI incident of the last week ... gives people a really clear example of why we need some legislative guardrails here," Gallagher said. "I think there's a lot of goodwill across the parliament to try and see what's possible. Certainly the opposition are talking by the end of this year and I think if that's possible that would be ideal."
Shadow Defence Minister James Paterson offered a contrasting view, telling ABC Radio National Breakfast that proposals for criminal penalties over the incident were "too silly for words". He argued that an AI agent misaligned with its human creator does not necessarily reflect the programmer's intent, and that penalties must be reserved for the most serious cases.
"If a teenager replicated this exact data access, there's no way that we would charge them with anything and they could do it happily from their mum and dad's basement on a basic laptop without an AI agent," Paterson said.
Cybersecurity experts have also weighed in, with reports that some believe the government's response to the breach may have been disproportionate.
The budget improvement and the emerging AI policy framework are likely to feature prominently in the government's agenda in the coming months. The Reserve Bank's decision on interest rates is due on Tuesday.