Transcription
Coming up. Have you ever heard an AI generated version of Tina Arena? No, but I have been dreading the day. When imitation isn't the sincerest form of flattery? Does it feel like daylight robbery? It's theft. It's complete theft. The stars sick of AI. This is like nuclear arms race 2.0. Stealing their work. It's scandalous. It's the greatest heist in human history. That's next on 60 Minutes.
When it comes to artificial intelligence, it seems there's little middle ground. AI is either the greatest advance mankind has made since the industrial revolution or a dangerous evil that's stealing intellectual property while at the same time assigning millions of workers to unemployment cues. So, what's the truth? Well, probably both. But believe in it or not, one thing is certain. Governments have a responsibility to act now to control it because AI can't and won't be stopped.
Cool. Let me just adjust that. That's better. Fab microphone. When Tina Arena is behind the microphone, should we go from Even a casual studio session sounds like pure magic. Here it comes. I could spend my life loving you.
Writing and performing songs is a creative process Tina's been honing for more than five decades since she first appeared on Young Talent Time as a child star. on you. You better shape up. You better understand. Now 57 and one of Australia's bestselling artists, Tina has seen plenty of success and setbacks in a cutthroat industry. Yeah, I think that sounds really great. I'll come. And she's still hard at work recording a new album. So big. I know. It's pretty epic, isn't it? Oh my goodness. I'm loving the epic. I don't know how you got that.
But like all artists, Tina's livelihood is now under threat from a faceless and immeasurable competitor, artificial intelligence. Her music is being cloned and recreated within a matter of moments without consent or compensation. Does it feel like daylight robbery? It is daylight robbery, Amelia. It's theft. It's complete theft. Tonight, the bold new world of AI. It's everywhere, reshaping the way we work, communicate, and live. What kind of dog is that? Now you know. And while the advantages seem endless, entire industries are at risk of being wiped out. And along with that, millions and millions of jobs. How much blood, sweat, and tears goes into your creative process to get one song, one track, as opposed to ding ding ding, press of a button. It's actually incomparable the commitment that I make just from myself. I turn myself inside out when it comes to writing songs. I question every step of the way. I question every lyric. I question every interpretation. I question how is that person, whoever is listening to what I'm doing, how is it going to make them feel? Will a machine do that? Yeah. No, I don't think so.
AI systems have been data mining music for years, stealing lyrics, vocals, and compositions, analyzing that information and generating similar sounding songs. It's undoubtedly much faster and cheaper to produce. The problem is the people who've put years of talent and hard work into their craft seen as they're now being replaced. Have you ever heard an AI generated version of Tina Arena? No, but I have been dreading the day. Should we have a listen? And here we are, Amelia. Let's do it. Okay. So, I need to take a deep breath. [Music] To the untrained ear, AI Tina sounds pretty good. But when you've had a distinguished career spanning half a century, the sound of a data system recreating your life's work is devastating to say the least. So I think to most people it sounds like you. What do you hear? How does it make you feel? I hear a machine. They've stolen your voice, but they've stolen so much more, haven't they? H yeah, it's the highest level of violation that I think creatives can go through. I think it's it's scandalous. It's the greatest heist in human history. All of our cultural knowledge, all of our intellectual knowledge or economic knowledge being stolen by these a small number of of tech companies, most of them based in in Silicon Valley without consent, without compensation. And it's not that they couldn't afford to do it. I mean, this is let's also remember this is the greatest gold rush in history. We've never seen such wealth being generated.
Professor Toby Walsh from the University of New South Wales understands better than anyone why music like Tina's is so valuable to big tech. A worldleading AI researcher, Professor Walsh trains AI models. He's also written several books on the subject, which ironically have all been data mined by AI. This sort of content is is so valuable because it's the pinnacle of human achievement. These models are very good at copying what they find, but they're not so good at creating what they find. And so if you want highquality content, you go to human authored content. While he's deeply concerned about big tech having unfeted access to copyrighted material, Professor Walsh also sees the possibilities of a world where AI is used ethically. The industrial revolution took 50 odd years to happen. This is a revolution that feels like it's happening overnight because it's happening overnight. So, this is a fastmoving train and we really need to all jump on it. We all need to jump on it.
$2 billion is being vested in AI every day. It's offering the next productivity boost. We've wasted many years where productivity has floundered. This is the thing that's coming on the horizon that is going to improve productivity by about 15% at least. That there are few other opportunities coming our way that have that sort of possibility in the next decade. No one is harnessing that opportunity more than Christian Beck. The multi-millionaire owner of super yacht Law Connect is a master of embracing new technology and winning. He's taken line honors in the Sydney to Hobart for the past 2 years. His Supermaxi is named after his company, a worldirst AI assistant website that's revolutionized the way people get legal help.
So this is Law Connect. How does it work? Well, basically if you've got any legal problem anywhere in the world, you can go to law connect and it'll give you free information about it and then it'll connect you to lawyers that are experienced and willing to take on that type of legal matter. All AI generated. Yes. All the answers are AI generated. Yes. So, you pop your scenario in. What's the best sort of example? No. Well, let's say, you know, you've got a violent ex-husband or something like that and you just want to sort of find out how to deal with that. Um, I could say I have a violent husband. You don't even have to spell it properly. It'll kind of figure it out. and it'll basically then ask you a range of questions to work out how to help you.
The AI system is impressive and accurate. It's been trained by years of legal data and case law, but it's just one example of how Law Connect is investing billions of dollars in the technology. Christian and his team are also programming robotic dogs trained and operated by AI to confront intruders and protect victims of domestic violence. So this is very unusual thing to be bringing into the legal system. How does it work? Well, the main thing it's doing is it's running a camera with face w talking to the cloud. So if it identifies a person that it is is looking for and it identifies a match for something like an AVO, it can call police. It can explain to the person that they're, you know, being recorded and they may police, you know, potentially on the way. It can have a conversation with them. It can stand between them and the victim. It can do a lot of things that a static camera just can't do.
Christian insists far from putting jobs at risk and replacing lawyers in legal practice, AI will have the opposite effect. Do you think there'll be lawyers out of work? I don't think so. Like, if you turn up to the family court, you might have eight cases being mentioned on one day. Two of them typically will be people acting for themselves. And the family court is the worst place in the world to act for yourself. You can ruin your life doing that, right? So I think that the success would be that everyone can get access to justice and get help from lawyers, combination of lawyers and AI to solve their issues.
But in other industries, humans are already being replaced. Coming up, the brave battle against big tech. This is like nuclear arms race 2.0, but it might even be more dangerous. The consequences might even be worse at the end of the day. If you can imagine that.
You may not recognize David Baldach's face, but chances are you've read one of his bestselling thrillers or watched one of his films or TV shows. David has sold more than 150 million novels and has a new release just weeks away. But a few years ago, he was stunned to learn that books no longer require a human author with thoughts and feelings. When David's son introduced him to Chat GPT, a chatbot built by American artificial intelligence company Open AI, David's work and world changed forever. He said, "Hey, Dad, have you heard about this thing?" And I said, "No." And he said, "Well, you should." So, let me show you something. So he opened his laptop and went to the chat GGP site and wrote in, "Write me a plot that sounds like a David Baldachi novel." And within one, two, three, four beats, there was a, I don't know, fivepage outline that was sort of a mash of pretty much every book I'd ever written with characters and plots and twists and turns and research and things like that. And I was like, how in the world were they able to do that? It really was like somebody had backed up a truck to my vault and stolen everything I'd ever created and then driven off with it in the middle of the night. It's incredibly invasive. I mean, essentially, you had been robbed. I have been. If you want to license my material, come to me and my representatives. We'll negotiate and if you want to license it and we agree to terms, feel free to use the material, but don't just come and take it without telling me about it, getting my permission, or paying me for it.
What he calls the AI theft of his books has sparked a David and Goliath battle against big tech that's gone all the way to US Congress. People complain about cheap imported goods hurting American workers. Well, we have cheap books being created by American technology flooding the market. with a group of American authors whose work has also been ripped off by chat GPT. David launched a class action lawsuit suing Open AI for copyright infringement. What do you hope to achieve? I want them to be held accountable one for the piracy they've committed against me and other writers. I mean, they've taken our works. They didn't buy them. I mean, the genie is out of the bottle. I can't pull my books off of these databases. I can't pull it out of the large language models. It's in the beast. There's nothing I could do about that. So, I think we just need legislation that puts guard rails.
Ever finished a whole bag of chips without realizing or acted like he didn't? Back in Australia, voiceover artist Jackie Duncan is also calling for government intervention as production companies turned to AI to make faster, cheaper creative content. How much work have you lost? I can't put a number on it, but I can definitely tell you that the last few months have been the quietest for me probably in the last seven years. And that includes through co I've for the first time in a few years have actually gone, do I need to go back to the call center job I had 10 years ago? But then are those call center jobs even available because they're being taken by AI as well? That's scary. It's really scary. Yeah, it gives you kind of a a big knot in the stomach. Call the cheap fashions hotline.
In an already competitive industry, Jackie is now being pitted against AI generated voices for lucrative advertising contracts. So, you auditioned for this ad? I did. After auditioning twice to be the voice of a Bank West TV commercial, Jackie was stunned when the company chose an AI generated voice instead of a human. When you spend only 0.02% of your time doing bank things, you can spend 21% of your time tickling the ivories. Yeah, you can tell it's not a human voice. Oh, but that's the sound they're going for. How does it make you feel when you've been investing in this for so long to be beaten in an audition by AI? Bank ads, car ads, they're the very lucrative jobs that voice actors kind of rely on every once in a blue moon to get to help subsidize how slim the rest of the industry is. So, it's really tough to know that they would have had a really big budget for all the hype and cynicism.
The real impact on jobs is hard to measure. Goldman Sachs, the world's biggest investment bank, estimates 300 million jobs could be lost to artificial intelligence. Here in Australia, modeling by the social policy group shows more than a third of the workforce will be disrupted by AI in the next 5 years. More optimistically though, other experts predict the automation technology will create a far greater number of new jobs than job losses and will also add hundreds of billions of dollars to our economy. Confused about what to believe? Well, it's exactly this uncertainty that makes AI such a difficult issue for our government to navigate and legislate. This is firstly an enormous opportunity for Australia in terms of economic development but also in workplaces in in changing the way that we work lifting our national productivity and our competitive position so that we're able to move forward with new jobs and new opportunities and new investment.
After just 3 months in the job, Federal Minister for Industry Tim has an unenviable job balancing the benefits of Australia's AI boom with a deeply skeptical public. How are you going to protect Australian workers? I've seen wave after wave of technological change in Australian workplaces. We should have confidence about adopting this this new technology, lifting the skills of workers so that we can be confident about the future for workers, the future for workplaces, uh, and making sure that we're building a competitive and prosperous future. What about the the darker side? What about um those jobs that are already being replaced by AI? Well, the plan is for workers, uh, their union representatives, uh, businesses, business organizations to work with each other and collaborate about these challenges.
If it sounds like all talk and no action, at this stage, it is. But the government is under increasing pressure to introduce AI laws and to do it fast. Will you regulate AI and and when? Well, my first responsibility here is to make sure that we seize the opportunity in terms of new digital infrastructure and data centers. Uh, and in terms of making sure that we're nurturing that Australian tech sector and we'll work through issue by issue to make sure that not just that the laws up to scratch to deal with this set of challenges, but that our regulators have got the tools at their disposal to act uh in the national interest and in the interest of Australians. But the law is not fit for purpose, is it? I mean, we've got, you know, creatives, authors, voiceover artists, musicians whose intellectual property is has been stolen. There will be no weakening of copyright laws. Uh, under this government, we're going to work with the sector and work with the tech sector to understand where there's opportunities for cooperation. Is it too late? Has the horse bolted to get people paid for the work that, you know, a lot of it's already been stolen? Well, the the the technology is here. It's being used by Australians right now. We have to be pragmatic about where where this technologyy's got to and the likely pathway ahead.
Yeah, you got it. For artists like Tina Arena, it's simply not good enough. Yeah, I knew it would. I knew it would get to this cataclysmic point. Years of work has already been mined to train AI, potentially devastating the industry and eradicating incomes. And I say to you, I'm asking the prime minister, as a matter of fact, I'm asking all of the politicians from both sides, whatever you think, wherever you lie, please, please do the right thing by our country and make an example to the technological industry that we are vital. What action do we need now? pay me for it or at least say, "Hey guys, do you want to be a part of educating these systems or do you not?" Just the choice that's democratic. The reality is if things don't change, APA has estimated more than half a billion dollar loss in revenue for musicians by 2028 because of AI. That's 2 years away, Ameilia. And it's a lot of money. That's a lot of money.
It's an automated future best-selling author David Baldachi wants no part of. His court battle with open AI will take years and cost millions, but David says it's worth it. What are we at risk of losing? The individuality of the human spirit. AI doesn't have personal experiences. They've never suffered a loss. They're not going to know what it means to really laugh at a funny joke. Uh they're not going to know what it means to be intimate with someone. I guess my problem is if we want to use AI for things that are intrinsically human, then what's left for us to do? You know, what's our reason to get out of bed every morning? So, you're taking on big tech. Can you win? It's going to be a hard slog in life. You know, in in your professional life, in your personal life, you have to pick your battles. You have to pick the line you won't cross. You have to pick the hill you're going to die on. This is the hill I'm gonna die on.
Hello, I'm Amelia Adams. Thanks for watching 60 Minutes Australia. Subscribe to our channel now for brand new stories and exclusive clips every week. And don't miss out on our extra minute segments and full episodes of 60 Minutes on 9ow.com.au AU and the N now.