South Australia will hold a royal commission into artificial intelligence, Premier Peter Malinauskas announced in Adelaide on Monday. It is the first inquiry of its kind in Australia.
Three commissioners will be appointed over the coming weeks, drawn in part from outside Australia. Hearings are expected to begin in October and the final report is due by 1 July 2027. The state government has put the cost at about $3 million.
The terms of reference have not been written. Malinauskas said they would follow within four to six weeks, which leaves a commission with a reporting deadline and no defined scope, in a field where the state has no legislative power over the companies building the technology.
“We can choose to allow this industry to come to our country and evolve in a way that is unregulated and unchecked," the Premier said. "Or we can choose to set the agenda." He has said unchecked artificial intelligence poses a material risk to society and to the future of work.”
The areas flagged for examination are the economic and social opportunities for the state, the effect on work, the energy and water that data centres consume, and the use of the technology in health and education.
Toby Walsh, an artificial intelligence researcher at the University of New South Wales, said the drafting will decide whether the exercise produces anything usable. "If the commission is going to get back quickly with some focused recommendations, it's going to have to have some very carefully crafted terms of reference," he said.
A royal commission is the most coercive investigative instrument a government has. It can compel documents and evidence, and it is normally reserved for institutional failure that has already occurred, such as banking misconduct, aged care, or the robodebt scheme. Here it is being pointed at an industry the same government is courting.
Malinauskas met technology companies in the United States earlier this year, and South Australia subsequently signed a memorandum of understanding with OpenAI covering skills, innovation, investment and adoption of the technology. OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman signed for the company.
Neither document binds the other. The memorandum has no published enforcement mechanism, and the commission has no power to regulate a company headquartered in San Francisco. What South Australia can do with the findings is set its own procurement, its own public sector use, and the conditions attached to data centres drawing on its grid and its water.
The terms of reference are the thing to watch. They are due by late September, and the commissioners will be named before them.
