One Australian company has dissuaded staff from using the technology, others are rushing for recommendations on its cybersecurity implications - while federal government ministers are advising caution.
But others have invited DeepSeek's arrival, requiring Australia to follow China's lead in establishing effective yet less energy-intensive AI technology.
In the days since the Chinese company launched its R1 expert system model and openly launched its chatbot and app, it has overthrown the AI industry.
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Several international market leaders saw their market values drop after the launch, as DeepSeek showed AI might be established using a fraction of the expense and needed to train designs such as ChatGPT or Meta's Llama.
Its arrival might signify a new industry shift, ai-db.science but for government and organization, the impact is uncertain. Whereas ChatGPT's 2022 arrival captured governments and organizations by surprise as staff started to try out the brand-new AI innovation, at least for the arrival of Deepseek, some had a playbook.
Business as typical
A representative for Telstra stated the business had "a rigorous process to examine all AI tools, capabilities, and utilize cases in our organization", including a list of authorized generative AI tools, and guidelines on how to use them.
For now at Telstra, DeepSeek is not authorized and its usage is not motivated (although it's not formally obstructed).
"Our favored partner is MS Copilot, and we're presenting 21,000 Copilot for Microsoft 365 licences to our staff members."
Other companies looked for immediate advice on whether DeepSeek must be adopted.
Major Australian cybersecurity company CyberCX's executive director of cyber intelligence, Katherine Mansted, said customers had currently approached the company for recommendations on whether the innovation was safe.
"That's not a surprise, since it seems the entire world has remained in a little a DeepSeek craze - both the financially and market inclined and those with the security lens," Mansted stated.
DeepSeek and wifidb.science government
CyberCX this week took the uncommon action of rapidly issuing guidance suggesting organisations, consisting of government departments and those storing sensitive info, strongly consider restricting access to DeepSeek on work devices.
"We understand that there is no proactive policy here from federal government ... We've been down this road before," Mansted said. "We've had arguments about TikTok, about Chinese monitoring electronic cameras, about Huawei in the telco network, and we constantly act after the truth, not before the truth ... Here, particularly because the risks are around compromise of delicate info, in regards to any information that you take into this AI assistant: it's going directly to China.
"We believed we needed to act much faster this time."
Under federal AI policy implemented in September 2024, agencies have up until the end of February 2025 to publish transparency documents about their use of AI.
But understanding who makes decisions on the particular use of DeepSeek in the federal government has shown difficult. The chief law officer's department, that made the choice to prohibit TikTok use on government gadgets, referred questions to the Digital Transformation Agency, which in turn referred enquires to the Department of Home Affairs.
Home Affairs was asked on Thursday for its main policy and did not provide a reaction by the time of publication.
Familiar debates ...
A few of the reaction in Australia to DeepSeek is by now familiar. There have actually been calls to ban the innovation, in the middle of issue over how the Chinese government may access user data - an echo of the days Huawei was banned from the NBN and 5G rollouts in Australia, and more just recently, of the argument over prohibiting TikTok.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a strong critic of the China federal government, said today that Australia "can not continue the present method of reacting to each new tech advancement". It called for a tech strategy covering AI that consisted of investing in sovereign AI capabilities.
The industry minister, Ed Husic, stated on Tuesday it was too early to make a decision on whether DeepSeek was a security danger.
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"If there is anything that presents a threat in the national interest, we will always keep an open mind and view what happens. I think it's prematurely to leap to conclusions on that," he stated. "But, again, if we have to act, trade-britanica.trade then accountable federal governments do."
He worried that Australia is "in the lasts" of preparing its response and would establish its own regulative settings.
"The US is flagging their approach. The EU has theirs. Canada similarly will have a different method. And our regional partners also are looking at this," he stated.
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As DeepSeek Upends the aI Industry, one Group is Urging Australia to Embrace The Opportunity
Amee Cremean edited this page 2025-02-03 06:19:55 +01:00