Anthony Albanese’s attempt to push back against the combined might of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the US government looks a Sisyphean task.

In Greek mythology, King Sisyphus spent his days pushing rocks up hills only for them to roll back down again. The Prime Minister’s plan to legislate around AI may prove similarly punishing.

As part of the plan Mr Albanese vowed to get tough on mega-cap US tech businesses. He also set out plans for an AI Office to oversee new laws to protect copyright, the environment, jobs, safety, and national security. Basically all of society.

The intentions are sound. The real problem is no Western government has yet found an effective way to contain the out-of-control power of big tech companies.

Facebook-owner Meta, Google-parent Alphabet, Amazon, Uber and Microsoft are the real drivers of the AI spending boom.

This monopoly group already owns nearly all of the internet’s digital economy. It will also be the ultimate owners of and financial beneficiaries from AI technology.

Mr Albanese suggested he saw this and warned others will write and play by the AI rules, unless Australia does.

Failure to write them he said. “Would mean subcontracting our sovereignty and security to the control of foreign monopolies. And relegating our workers and our economy to the last link of the digital supply chain.

“We cannot - and we will not - accept that for Australia.”

Few would disagree with that ambition. The difficulty lies in turning it into effective policy.

Environmental compliance laws on data centres is not going to shake big tech’s grip on AI. Nor is legislation against copyright theft, or to protect workers’ rights.

Mega-cap tech’s power and reach to more than 3.5 billion daily users is now too entrenched.

Their platforms connect billions of people, control vast pools of data and sit between businesses, consumers, advertisers and governments.

The only scenario to break big tech’s grip on the AI revolution is legislation to break its monopoly on the digital economy. This would only succeed in the US where the tight union of Congress, Wall Street and Silicon Valley makes it unlikely to ever happen. The courts have also failed in the US.

Australia can impose standards, protections and penalties on AI within its borders. What it cannot do is control a tech whose funding, ownership and intellectual property remains concentrated in the US.

Demanding rent

In his speech acknowledging AI represents a new frontier for human advancement, Mr Albanese also referenced history, democracy, workplace rights, the arts, social justice, and education. He also drew parallels to the last Industrial Revolution over the 200 years up to 1900.

“Back when the industrial revolution was fundamentally altering the shape of the economy and the nature of work the minimum wage and eight-hour day were radical experiments,” he said.

“Today, those Australian ideas are rights that workers have fought for and won around the globe.”

The comparison is useful, although perhaps not in the way the government intends.

That last Industrial Revolution also helped shift economic power away from feudal landowners towards a capitalist system in which workers sold their labour and companies competed to make profits.

The AI revolution is actually likely to accelerate the global economy’s shift in the opposite direction.

Rather than broadening ownership and competition, it will likely accelerate the return to rent-seeking, with a small number of tech landlords charging businesses and consumers for access to the digital infrastructure on which modern life depends.

Before industrialisation, peasants and serfs paid rent to landowners who controlled the productive assets of the economy. The old feudal status epitomised exploitation and power imbalances.

Big tech’s potential to harness AI for more control and rent again threatens to create an economy of serfs and landlords. Around two-in-three people already works for mega-cap tech for free everyday in using its apps, creating content, and sending it data to sell adverts.

Any government that can unscramble this egg would likely receive a lot of support.

For now though Albanese’s efforts to tame AI look like a Sisyphean task.