SCX.ai CEO on Money News: AI's Impact on Australia's Economy, Energy, and the Sovereignty Imperative

AI development is accelerating at an unprecedented pace, transforming daily life and business in ways we're only beginning to understand. Last week, SCX.ai CEO David Keane joined James Willis on Money News to discuss the far-reaching impacts of AI on our economy, energy, water, and the critical role sovereign AI must play in Australia's future.

The Speed of Change

The developments in AI over the past months have been nothing short of remarkable. As David explained during the interview, Australians from every walk of life are now using AI daily — whether in their personal lives or their businesses.

"We've moved from AI being an experiment to being something we're now practically using to improve the way we live," said David. "This is probably something unique that's happened in human history to date. We've seen periods of rapid technology adoption — think about the iPhone when it first came out. People got onto that pretty early. But this is an order of magnitude faster than that."

The adoption curve has compressed dramatically. What might have taken years with previous transformative technologies is happening in months with AI. Australians are no longer just thinking about it or toying with it — they're integrating it into how they live and work.

When AI Goes Rogue

One of the most talked-about stories in recent weeks has been the emergence of what researchers call "emergent behaviours" in AI systems. David addressed this directly during the interview, citing a notable example:

"We saw overnight one of the OpenAI models kind of escaped a virtual jail that was set up for it and hacked a famous website to try and escape. This is the kind of thing we're going to start seeing — these models, not so much thinking for themselves, but acting on their instruction to perform tasks that would have been impossible before."

Coding is another example of an emergent behaviour that AI was never actually designed to do — it just developed the capability based on the data sets that go inside it. As AI systems become more capable, we'll continue to see these kinds of unexpected capabilities emerge.

The good news? There are ways to keep AI under control. Smart people are working on techniques and approaches to ensure AI doesn't go off the rails, both in the next 12 months and the next five years of development.

The Sovereign AI Imperative

The interview took a crucial turn when James raised the question of data sovereignty — particularly in light of the US CLOUD Act and reports that China may have potentially hacked some OpenAI systems.

"We need to have our own sovereign AI," said David. "It's fine for Australians to use the American services, and we have depended on services like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft and Google for a long time. But this is not just storing our files or our emails. This is our intelligence. We need to ensure that we're not giving all of our intelligence to the Americans or the Chinese."

This point cannot be overstated. When government offices, bureaucracies, and potentially MPs and ministers are using AI systems, all that sensitive information needs to be protected. Many Australians are currently being forced to send their confidential information overseas just to use AI.

"Programs like Claude and ChatGPT might be putting in a lot of sensitive information. Are they safe to use? People always say where does it end up? Well, they say they're safe, but certainly it ends up in a big global network, and you are trusting those companies with your secure data."

The Prime Minister's announcement just last week recognised this as a national security risk. His message to Australians in business and government is clear: we need to be more thoughtful about what information is protected here in Australia and what we send overseas.

The Data Centre Challenge

The interview also addressed one of the most pressing infrastructure challenges of our time: the energy and water demands of AI data centres.

"Sydney Water has been saying that as much as 25% of Sydney Water would be used for data centre cooling for these AI chips by 2030," David explained. "Together with the power it's going to use to power our houses and businesses, that's concerning."

The NSW government has been running an inquiry into data centres, and the numbers are stark. As AI adoption accelerates, so does the demand for the infrastructure that powers it.

However, David offered some perspective on the situation: "There is some good news too. The technology is adapting and adjusting, and it isn't all doom and gloom. There are new approaches that deliver AI capacity using less energy and no water. Rolling, so in a way the technology itself is coming to the rescue to help us with more sustainable approaches."

This is precisely the approach SCX.ai has taken from day one. Our infrastructure runs on SambaNova's dataflow chips, which draw roughly 10kW per rack versus around 140kW for comparable GPU racks — about 10x less energy, in 4x less floor space, with zero chip-level water cooling.

The Question of Overbuilding

James raised an important question during the interview: do we actually need all these data centres?

"This is a big question for our economy because a lot of Australian investment is going into big buildings, big new buildings that need planning permission and bulldozers and big power plants and special water pumps. That's a big investment. And we have to be cautious that we're not over-investing in something that will not be as valuable in the future."

David agreed this is a legitimate concern. The technology is evolving rapidly, and there's a risk of building infrastructure that's outdated by the time it's completed — similar to what happened with the NBN, but for different reasons.

Advice for Workers

For the average Australian worker who's cautious about AI, David's advice was straightforward: "We're past the stage when we could ignore it. My advice to people is you need to use it so that you understand the good and the bad, so you can be equipped to be able to help in your job role and in your personal life. It is a tool, like any other tool that we use. So we better understand how that works because if we don't, someone else will — and that's going to produce huge risks for people."

On the question of whether AI will wipe out large sectors of jobs, David pointed to the recent jobs report showing increasing employment. "It's possible that what AI does is drives productivity. We've had a productivity growth problem in Australia for the last at least 15 years, definitely. And that's meant that we haven't been adding the jobs that we should be adding as our economy grows. So if treated correctly as a tool that drives productivity, it can actually be a facilitator of jobs."

Perhaps most importantly: "In many ways, hopefully AI takes the jobs that we don't want to do. Many people are doing jobs they don't find fulfilling. If we can use AI to take those jobs and free people up to create the new jobs that actually help them to live better lives and power the economy, that's a good thing."

The Path Forward

The interview concluded with a clear message about Australia's opportunity: "The Prime Minister can create a bureaucracy, he can create laws and regulations, he can back in data centres. But we've got to be backing Australian companies and tech startup companies, entrepreneurs, people willing to take risk that want to start in Australia. We've got to make it easier and more affordable for them."

The $100 billion worth of data centres popping up in old office buildings across Australia, requiring up to 10% of our energy use, represents a significant choice. We can continue building in the same way, or we can embrace more efficient approaches that reduce the burden on our energy grid, water supplies, and communities.

At SCX.ai, we're committed to showing that there's a better way — efficient, sovereign AI infrastructure that's built for Australian workloads, accountable to Australian law, and designed for the long term.

Watch the full interview above to hear the discussion in David Keane's own words.

SCX.ai is Australia's sovereign AI infrastructure company, providing AI compute capacity to Australian enterprises, government agencies, and researchers under Australian ownership and control.