AI chatbot lands Google execs in a pickle at Senate hearing

Google executives have denied relying on artificial intelligence to answer questions at a Senate hearing on Friday after an AI chatbot suddenly interjected during their testimony.

Google’s Australian director of government affairs and public policy, Lucinda Longcroft, was facing questions over teleconference about her company’s AI policies when an AI chatbot with a male, American voice interrupted while she was speaking.

“Let’s explore responsible AI across the life cycle,” the chatbot said. “That’s a great statement, it highlights the ...”

“There is Google, stepping in to be responsible,” Longcroft quickly added.

Independent senator David Pocock asked Longcroft about whether she had used artificial intelligence to help prepare her responses.

“Can I ask what interrupted you earlier, when you were talking, and we heard a voice?” he asked. “Is AI helping you on this call? Have you got a screen there that’s helping with answers?”

Google’s Lucinda Longcroft denied receiving AI assistance in her Senate questioning.Credit: Parliament of Australia

Longcroft said that wasn’t the case.

“I can categorically state that AI has not been involved in the answers to any of these questions here today,” she told the hearing.

“Aside from the small interjection from the assistant while I was delivering that opening statement, the assistant was not active at any point in this testimony.”

Senators remained sceptical, and the committee’s chair, Labor senator Tony Sheldon, asked that the transcript of the AI assistant’s prompts be provided to the committee to fully understand the extent of any AI involvement.

Meanwhile, Longcroft pushed back against a recent US court decision that ruled Google’s search business to be an illegal monopoly.

Publishers and smaller start-ups are concerned that Google’s search dominance – in which it controls about 95 per cent of the Australian search market – could be replicated in the AI industry.

“We consider ourselves one of many search engines in Australia, despite our popularity,” Longcroft said. “We will be appealing [against] that [US federal court] decision.”

Executives from fellow US tech giants Amazon and Microsoft were also grilled at the wide-ranging committee hearing on generative AI, as parliamentarians weigh the best approach to regulating the nascent technology.

Senator David Pocock and member for Curtin Kate Chaney.Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald

Issues of energy consumption, election deepfakes and misinformation, potential job losses and economic opportunity were all on the table as Canberra races to catch up to the AI arms race tearing through the economy.

Sheldon asked about claims from voice actors that their voices were already being replaced by generative AI clones.

Last month, the Australian Association of Voice Actors provided evidence that their contracts effectively granted rights to Amazon to use their voices to generate audiobooks through AI, a move the group said might cost thousands of Australian jobs.

“You have the audacity to sit there and not tell us why. You have got responsibility, you have come to the hearing, we want to know, and the public wants to know why you have made that decision,” Sheldon asked Amazon executives.

Labor senator Tony Sheldon: “If I was a writer listening to this, I would be terrified”.Credit: Photo: Trevor Collens

“My understanding is that this is something that Audible is approaching thoughtfully,” Amazon’s head of public policy for Australia and New Zealand, Matt Levey, said in response.

“They are speaking with the professional narration community. They are also exploring the way in which publishers and creators want to use text-to-speech technology to reach customers more broadly.

Microsoft managing director Steven Worrall.Credit: AFR

“So to your specific question, senator, as to why this technology would be explored, it may be because there may be a preference of some publishers and creators to actually reach [an] audience using text-to-speech technology.”

Sheldon said the answer “defied belief.”

“Your answers provide no comfort to people worried they are getting ripped off as a result of their life’s work, and if I was a writer or a voice actor listening to this, I would be terrified.”

Microsoft executives, including its local managing director, Steven Worrall, fielded questions about AI’s intense energy usage. AI is emerging as a major driver of rising energy consumption and carbon emissions, with the technologies bringing with them significant environmental costs.

Microsoft research has found that a single query on ChatGPT can use the equivalent energy of running a light bulb for 20 minutes.

“There is no question. This is well documented – that AI models and the services that we’re talking about are far heavier consumers of power than the cloud services that predated them,” Worrall said.

“We think this is one of the fundamental issues that we as an industry will need to resolve and adapt to as we go forward. For Microsoft, we have made a commitment to, by 2030, be carbon-neutral and water-positive as part of our overall sustainability strategy. We remain on track to deliver that commitment.”

Get news and reviews on technology, gadgets and gaming in our Technology newsletter. Sign up to receive it every Friday.