1 As DeepSeek Upends the aI Industry, one Group is Urging Australia to Embrace The Opportunity
Breanna Knouse edited this page 3 weeks ago


One Australian business has prevented staff from utilizing the innovation, others are scrambling for suggestions on its cybersecurity ramifications - while federal government ministers are urging care.

But others have actually invited DeepSeek's arrival, calling for Australia to follow China's lead in developing powerful yet less energy-intensive AI technology.

In the days since the Chinese business launched its R1 artificial intelligence model and publicly launched its chatbot and app, yewiki.org it has overthrown the AI industry.

for Guardian Australia's breaking news e-mail

Several worldwide market leaders saw their market worths drop after the launch, as DeepSeek showed AI could be established using a fraction of the expense and processing required to train designs such as ChatGPT or Meta's Llama.

Its arrival might signal a new industry shift, however for federal government and service, oke.zone the result is uncertain. Whereas ChatGPT's 2022 arrival captured governments and services by surprise as personnel started to check out the new AI innovation, complexityzoo.net a minimum of for the arrival of Deepseek, some had a playbook.

Business as usual

A representative for Telstra said the company had "a strenuous process to examine all AI tools, abilities, and utilize cases in our business", including a list of authorized generative AI tools, and standards on how to use them.

For now at Telstra, DeepSeek is not approved and its usage is not motivated (although it's not formally blocked).

"Our favored partner is MS Copilot, and we're presenting 21,000 Copilot for Microsoft 365 licences to our workers."

Other business sought immediate guidance on whether DeepSeek must be embraced.

Major Australian cybersecurity firm CyberCX's executive director of cyber intelligence, Katherine Mansted, said customers had currently approached the company for guidance on whether the technology was safe.

"That's not a surprise, due to the fact that it appears the whole world has remained in a little a DeepSeek craze - both the economically and market likely and those with the security lens," Mansted said.

DeepSeek and government

CyberCX today took the uncommon step of rapidly releasing advice suggesting organisations, consisting of federal government departments and those saving sensitive info, hb9lc.org highly think about limiting access to DeepSeek on work devices.

"We understand that there is no proactive policy here from federal government ... We've been down this road in the past," Mansted said. "We've had arguments about TikTok, about Chinese security cams, about Huawei in the telco network, and we constantly act after the reality, not before the truth ... Here, particularly because the hazards are around compromise of sensitive info, in regards to any information that you put into this AI assistant: it's going directly to China.

"We believed we required to act quicker this time."

Under federal AI policy executed in September 2024, firms have till the end of February 2025 to publish openness documents about their use of AI.

But understanding who makes choices on the specific usage of DeepSeek in the federal government has actually proved tricky. The chief law officer's department, which made the decision to prohibit TikTok use on government gadgets, 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 official policy and did not supply a response by the time of publication.

Familiar debates ...

A few of the reaction 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 banned from the NBN and 5G rollouts in Australia, and more just recently, of the debate over prohibiting TikTok.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a strong critic of the China government, stated today that Australia "can not continue the present method of reacting to each new tech development". It required a tech method covering AI that included investing in sovereign AI abilities.

The industry minister, Ed Husic, said on Tuesday it was prematurely to decide on whether DeepSeek was a security danger.

Sign up to Breaking News Australia

Get the most essential news as it breaks

"If there is anything that provides a danger in the national interest, demo.qkseo.in we will always keep an open mind and akropolistravel.com see what happens. I think it's too early to jump to conclusions on that," he said. "But, again, if we have to act, then accountable federal governments do."

He worried that Australia is "in the last phases" of planning its reaction and would develop its own regulative settings.

"The US is flagging their technique. The EU has theirs. Canada similarly will have a different method. And our local partners also are looking at this," he said.