Artificial intelligence has prompted a super-charged technology boom as the world's biggest companies are surged on the Nasdaq in talks about a new era of human-like algorithms.
Here in Australia, the microcosm of Silicon Valley is occurring, with 30,000 people currently working in AI, with many startups leveraging billions of dollars of venture capital.
One local startup that has secured $2.5 million in seed funding is Apate.
Originally founded at Macquarie University, the company has clients including Commonwealth Bank, which pays Apate to unlock chaos to world-wide scammers with tens of thousands of AI-powered chatbots.
Dali Kaafar's AI company has a variety of “personalities” and tens of thousands of chatbots. (ABC News: John Gunn))
Founder Dali Kaafar came up with the idea a few years ago, and decided to take a cold call from a con man and keep it on the line by playing “Nature” and “Confusion” for 44 minutes.
“The time for the con artists has been completely wasted. It's a very counterproductive call for them,” he laughs.
Outside the university, Professor Kaafar developed a large-scale language model (LLM). This was trained to chat with con artists using off-internet videos of real conversations between con artists and Dupe actors.
“You can learn how to really react and get the con artists to get them to learn most,” explains Professor Kaaffer.
Kaafar developed a large-scale language model and trained him to chat with scammers. (ABC News: John Gunn))
Today, Apate has tens of thousands of chatbots, with a variety of “personalities” and even languages. Unfold them by posting phone numbers on the Internet and the dark web.
“They have different attitudes and have different personalities,” says Professor Kaafar.
“Part of the conversation can be somewhat shocking if it is rude or sometimes very polite.
“They are scamming the scammers themselves.“
What other AIs are being developed in Australia?
As AI moves faster, it's becoming more complicated to even define what it is, here and globally.
Rob Nichols, a senior researcher at the Centre for AI, Trusts and Governance at the University of Sydney, believes that AI is currently being spoken as a decades-old software development continuum.
“Text-wise, artificial intelligence is essentially a way of making a computer do more complicated things than traditional software,” he says.
“I think I'm riding it on a continuum, but it was a step change.“
Like many in this field, Dr. Nichols sees the release of ChatGpt by Openai in the US in November 2022 as a moment that supercharged AI and brought it to home and everyday conversations.
“Really, releasing chatbot versions of a large language model changed perception,” he argues.
“What is actually available to computer scientists and people who played artificial intelligence in academia and business is suddenly available to everyone.”
AI startup Heidi Health is developing a platform for the healthcare industry. (supply))
In Melbourne, another AI startup Heidi Health has been developing a platform for the healthcare industry even before the ChatGPT explosion.
An AI-powered app allows doctors and veterinarians to record conversations with patients (or their owners) and generate notes such as referrals to other clinicians, surgical notes, and patient history summary.
“It's a kind of listening in the background,” explains Ben Condon, clinical director at Heidi Health, to ABC News.
“It's not actually diagnosed.”
Less than four years after its establishment, Heidi Health currently has major clients around the world, including hospitals in Australia and owners of Petbarn in Greencross. We also received capital injections from Fund Blackbird.
Ben Condon says he believes the AI platform will save doctors time. (supply))
Melbourne-based Dr. Condon came to work this year after giving up full-time work as a doctor in a hospital emergency. He says he believes in the company's mission to save doctors' time.
“I hope Heidi will make his work a little more sustainable and prevent clinicians from burning out when they see patients.
“It was a wild ride, but it was a lot of fun.“
AI is entrenched in technology
A lobby group in the Australian technology industry says that all 180 members, including celebrities such as Google and Atlassian, are using AI in some way today.
The Australian Technology Council is pushing for further investment from Australia's large pension funds, with the goal of increasing AI employment exponentially to 200,000 by 2030.
Damien Kasabi says he sees AI as a major opportunity. (ABC News: Geoff Kemp))
“There are about 30,000 people whose main tasks are awake every day and are working on AI,” TCA CEO Damian Kassabgi tells ABC News.
“We believe that if we make the investment right, it will increase to 200,000 by 2035.”
This opportunity is not just about supporting AI startups, but also jobs in other related fields, such as data centers installed to store all the information needed for AI systems.
“From our perspective, there is a huge opportunity here,” says Kasabi.
“And the Australian question is, what is our pie piece here?“
“We're just beginning this next phase of the AI revolution, and it's being led, not just Nvidia, Microsoft, Palantir, etc,” says Dan Ives of Wedbush.
“I don't think this is a bubble. This is the 4th Industrial Revolution.“
However, some are concerned about the hype.
In the US, for example, private Openai reportedly receives a valuing talk for US$500 billion, which is larger than Elon Musk's SpaceX, but has never actually made a profit.
Other companies are in the Renaissance from behind AI, including the 48-year-old US company Oracle. Recently, boss Larry Ellison has been made easy for the world's wealthiest person, and has skyrocketed in value over Elon Musk.
Several concerns have been raised about AI's momentum. (Getty Images: CESC Maymo))
“Reasonable investors have to keep this short,” said a former JP Morgan head strategist who recently removed Oracle's surge.
There are also concerns that AI is not as innovative as creators claim. The US University MIT virus report concludes that many companies have struggled to use it in a productive way recently.
Dr. Nichols of the University of Sydney believes there is hype around AI, and believes that having good news about AI stocks is “snatched” as “amplified by algorithmic trading.”
“A kind of important part of that hype is that we are now heading towards artificial general information,” he says.
Dr. Nicholls believes that it is a 20 or 30-year stay in which the industry truly imitates humans, and that current AI is an immeasurable data system that is incredibly good at predicting trends and patterns.
“What it doesn't do is have creative thoughts. It's really hard to teach machines,” he points out.
ai “comes to us quickly”
Belinda Barnet, another scholar working in the AI space at Swinburne University, shares concerns about the exaggerated sector and worries that the “Cultish” industry will move on without “Guardrails.”
“They sell themselves as a natural future and we don't have much choice. It's coming to us and coming quickly,” she says.
“There are some serious questions to ask about what the social impact of this technology will be.“
Currently, one of the big debates in Australia's AI space is whether companies must pay to access all the information they are training their systems, including works by artists and writers.
“If these companies, like Openai, actually had to pay creators, pay artists, pay writers for all the information they're training, they really broke quickly,” says Dr. Barnet.
“They want everything for free.”
Technology Council's Cassabi says his members hope to find “midfield” with artists involved in the AI industry. Generally, he says that a conversation about regulations is “not necessarily about changing individual laws.”
“This is to ensure that regulators and governments understand AI and actually understand how AI is implemented in a new world,” he says.
Apate trained chatbots using videos hosted on YouTube and Vimeo. Professor Kaafar says the company has obtained permission to use the content rather than the original creator.
Professor Kaafar says Apate is open to a model in which AI compensates creators used to train AI. Generally, he also hopes that his company will make a profit within a few years.
“We're really building what we call anti-intellectual platforms,” he says.
“We are weaponizing AI forever.“
This is the first part of a week-long deep diving to AI airing on ABC TV's The Business. In tonight's episode, you can watch this story at 8:44pm on ABC News, 10:30pm on ABC, or at any time on iView.
