Australia's Treasury released its latest Intergenerational Report on Monday, identifying artificial intelligence as one of five major transitions expected to significantly shape the economy over the next 40 years. The report describes agentic AI systems as having become substantially more capable, autonomous and widely used, with performance surpassing human-level benchmarks in some areas.
The other four major transitions outlined in the report are geopolitical conflicts, an aging population, a shift to clean energy, and Australia's industrial transformation toward services.
Notably, the report does not address cryptocurrency or digital assets, continuing a pattern from previous Intergenerational Reports. This omission occurs despite increased focus from the Reserve Bank of Australia on tokenized finance and financial infrastructure upgrades earlier this year. The Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre has estimated that digital finance innovations could generate 24 billion Australian dollars in annual economic gains.
A separate Treasury report called the "Financial Innovation Strategy," released on September 3, does address connections between AI and financial infrastructure. The report noted that agentic systems could increase automated and machine-to-machine transactions, potentially creating greater demand for real-time, interoperable and programmable payment systems.
The Financial Innovation Strategy mentions progress made through the Digital Asset Platform framework, which has provided regulatory clarity for digital finance developments in Australia.
