ABC Four Corners probes how big tech is reshaping the global AI race

Four Corners packages a lot of disparate threads—the US safety backlash, Trump‑era policy, Australian regulatory choices, and the lived impact on workers—into a coherent narrative of an AI ‘gold rush’. What stands out is how quickly AI has moved from abstract worry to a material political force: laid‑off tech workers hiking in California, US localities fighting water‑hungry datacenters, and Australian ministers weighing whether to trade stricter regulation for billions in data‑center investment. The documentary makes clear that the race to AGI isn’t just between labs; it’s between jurisdictions offering favorable conditions for hyperscale compute.

For Australia, being courted by OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft is both an opportunity and a trap. Cheap land, relative political stability and a clean‑energy narrative make it attractive as an AI infrastructure hub, but that status can come at the price of weaker domestic guardrails if policymakers feel compelled to ‘stay competitive’ with looser regimes. The program also surfaces a deeper question: whether democracies can set meaningful limits on frontier AI while also welcoming unprecedented levels of AI‑linked foreign direct investment. As more countries play for a role in the AGI supply chain, the Australian debate previewed here is likely to be replayed from Canada to the Nordics.