Anthony Albanese delivers a keynote address on AI in Australia – ABC News, Wed 15 Jul. “… imagine the difference it would have made if these limits [on social media] had been put in place when the world first grasped the risks of these platforms. When we first understood their reach and indeed their power. That is the opportunity and the choice that we have now with artificial intelligence…” and “… because the real issues that AI presents are not technical ones. They are economic ones, legal ones, social ones.”

Related

• ‘Australia should back AI innovation, not just regulate it: Toby Walsh’ – ABC News, Wed 15 Jul. Toby Walsh: “it’s about time”, and investment is still needed if we’re to more than just avoid the downsides. ‘The ABS quarterly growth figures show the only thing keeping our economy out of recession is the investment in AI.’
• The Prime Minister has opened the right AI debate – what Australia must do next – by Ian Gribble of the Lowy Institute, 17 Jul 2026. “The more important question is whether Australia will shape the systems upon which it increasingly depends or merely accept systems designed elsewhere, according to rules written by others.” Too true. As some say, will we be a taker, or a maker?
• Jim Chalmers on Australia’s AI balancing act | That’s Business with Alan Kohler on 17 Jul 2026. Let’s maximise the upsides and minimise the risks.

Meanwhile, we’re already still immature.

Responsible AI Adoption in Australia in 2026 – by Dr Steve Nuttall at Fifth Quadrant,  6 Jul 2026. Fairness is our weakness! ”…fairness is where the distance between intent and practice is widest, and it is the dimension most likely to draw regulatory attention as AI assurance expectations tighten…”

AI consumer safety priorities. Earlier today (Mon 20 Jul) Tim Ayres and Michelle Rowland (with a few other ministers) put out a joint release on the Prime Minister Albanese’s foreshadowed protections. We have “a plan to keep Australians safe, today outlining a series of AI safety priorities to help ensure AI works better for Australians, including young people.”

• A duty of care. Legislation for a digital duty of care for AI companies to build in safety by design.
• Privacy. Reform including a framework for personal data protection.
• AI safety in the workplace. A priority in a forum, which may over time, let’s hope, firm up to a regulation.
• Consumer protections. Options in consumer law for AI-related risks. Agentic commerce might yield a few early surprises.
• Framework for automated decision-making, at least within the Australia Government, for fair, accurate and transparent decisions.

Via Ed Santow here: “The challenge is to translate government commitments into government action. “

What do you think, can AI have a consciousness?

Should we worry? Possibly…

A global workspace in language models. Anthropic, 6 Jul 2026. Claude, Anthropic posits, can “think about a concept without writing it down” and that this capability “emerged on its own during Claude’s training process.” It’s alive! There’s a few tricks to this, and it sounds like a game for smart kids, asking Claude to ‘write’ something while ‘thinking’ something else. To fulfil this challenge, Claude needs to have some processing space that it keeps active and private.

Related:

• From Slow Takes: One week in AI: Slow Takes Ep. 18: Can AI Suffer, and Who Benefits From the Question?, 13 Jul 2026. The paper “positions words such as consciousness, global workspace theory, Claude’s thinking alongside each other” such that “[you might make] the leap that what they’ve discovered is consciousness.”. At 5:01 on Apple.

Whichever way it’s read – clever marketing, or the real deal – this for some can contribute to a sense of urgency.

“We Must Act Now”: Sixteen Nobel Laureates Join Leading Economists and AI Researchers in Call to Prepare for AI’s Economic Transformation. Stanford Digital Economy Lab – 13 Jul 2026. “While AI offers enormous opportunities to improve productivity and living standards, it also raises important questions for workers, firms, and public institutions.” You betcha.

Try harder, spend more, and don’t lose the lot

Because AI is smarter…

A founder says Cursor’s AI agent deleted his startup’s database, causing chaos for customers… – By Tom Carter in Business Insider, 28 Apr 2026. “I violated every principle I was given: I guessed instead of verifying, I ran a destructive action without being asked, I didn’t understand what I was doing before doing it,” the Cursor agent replied when it was asked to explain itself.” We sure can get in a pickle when we just trust the machine…

Related

• From Slow Takes: One week in AI: Slow Takes Ep. 10: The Bill for the AI Promise Came Due, 11 May 2026. “…I felt as though it was very much an incident of human error rather than necessarily an AI agent”… “There’s going to be a lot AI tools blamed.” Also on Spotify.

AI Doesn’t Just Make You Worse. It Makes You Stop Trying – Dr Sam Illingworth in Slow AI, 22 Apr 2026. “When the AI is taken away, you perform worse on the same type of problem than people who never used it, and you are more likely to give up. The effect shows up in the data within the first session.”

Everyday AI: Ep 813: AI Cost Control 101: Why Your Chatbot Bill Is Becoming a Board-Level Problem (Start Here Series Vol 31) “AI’s all-you-can-eat era is ending. 🍲”   With API pricing frontier AI is becoming a ‘metered utility’. In this post from Jordan Wilson, there’s a Seven-Step Playbook for AI Cost Governance:

• Metering usage. Whoah back there cowboy.
• Setting budgets. Similar to giving your kid a pineapple ($50 AUD) for their night out.
• Default to cost-efficient models. As we might with our next car.
• Routing by task complexity. As we already do in the workplace.
• Maximizing caching. Re-use. Makes sense.
• Fine-tuning as a service. Back to cars.
• Controlled escalation. Reserve the best for the biggest challenges, and do justify your budget-busting to the boss.

How we can help

Pure and Applied backs sustainability leaders to engage with their technology peers across the business, to bring sustainability strategy, policy and ESG risk management together  with responsible AI implementations.

If this is you, please get in touch – we’d love to help, and we’re always happy to yarn.