Australia wants to be Maker not a Taker in an AI-driven world

That will require a lot more than the shallow rhetoric and analog thinking we've been having for decades

“The real problem of humanity is that we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.” — E.O. Wilson

In those words, Edward Osborne Wilson, the famed biologist and chronicler of human behaviour, nailed the central tension of our time. We are emotionally wired for small, tribal groups, yet we now wield technologies that can radically disrupt and reshape — or destroy — the planet.

AI, gene editing, drones, cyberwarfare, nuclear weapons: all moving faster than our institutions, politics, or public consciousness can keep up.

Wilson died in 2021 at age 92 when the Covid pandemic was still raging, but a year before OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched a global AI arms race. While the new cold war between the US and China was changing the geopolitical threat landscape, Russia hadn’t yet invaded Ukraine and Israel hadn’t been pulled into regional war.

In other words: the new world disorder hadn’t yet revealed itself the way it now has.

Which brings us to Australia — a wealthy, st…