As a judge for the The Australian Financial Review(AFR) AI Awards this year, I greatly appreciated the opportunity to review such a strong field of entries. The submissions highlighted not only the breadth of AI innovation across Australia, but also the significant impact organisations are already achieving at scale. It was a privilege to present…
Really appreciated that the National Communication Museum AI Summit (Thanks, Emily Siddons) brought together a privacy professional (Patricia Calabro), a psychiatrist/science-fiction writer (Grace Chan https://lnkd.in/gXtd6N-k) and me, an AI engineer/scientist, to discuss trust and automated decision making. Before the panel, I wandered through the museum and unexpectedly went down memory lane: childhood computers, old communication…
A great panel yesterday at the Aus Gov Data Summit. Here were my key messages. Why do we call AI a black box when we can inspect every parameter, activation, and optimisation step? The challenge sits with understanding. Even with full visibility, we still cannot explain why the system behaves the way it does. But…
At the recent GovAI Summit, I spoke on “Engineering Trustworthy AI at Scale: How CSIRO Enables Responsible AI Across Government.” I have given similar talks before, but this one was a bit different. I focused more directly on a question that is often misunderstood: What do we actually mean by scalable AI? Most discussions interpret…
Good panel discussion the Deloitte Connect event yesterday: “Why Australia? Conditions that cement us as a regional leader and exporter of AI.” Thanks to Joana Valente for moderating, and to fellow panellists Paul Grimes Belinda Dennett , and Rianne Van Veldhuizen for a thoughtful conversation. My contribution focused on a few questions/dimensions that may help…
I’m very proud of two pieces of work we have released with our partner, the Australian Sports Commission: A Guide for Responsible AI in Sport and AI for Australian Sport. Together they form one of the world’s first national playbooks for how AI should be developed and used responsibly across the sporting ecosystem. The work…
Back from New Delhi, and after letting the conversations and ideas settle for a few days, here are my final reflections from the AI Impact Summit. As a scientist, the most valuable moments were not the plenaries, but the deep, sometimes once-in-a-lifetime discussions with individual AI pioneers building AI in frontier labs, startups and research…
Day four was what happens when strategic autonomy meets market dominance in the same auditorium. With tightened entrance security and roadblocks across New Delhi, I had to arrive at Bharat Mandapam almost two hours before the official start, carrying only my phone. Even my uniball pen was nearly dismantled for inspection. But it was worth…
Day three, the research symposium day, was the reason I came. You do not often get to hear and interact with Sir Demis Hassabis, Yoshua Bengio, Yann LeCun and alike on the same day. Sir Demis predicted AGI within five to eight years. Whether that timeline holds or not, two themes stood out. First, learning…
Day two was a collision of optimism, scale, and strategic uncertainty. I spent most of it roaming the exhibition hall and joining panels. Reportedly, the summit is attracting close to 300,000 people. Large global firms, small startups, sovereign AI showcases. It genuinely feels as if the entire AI industry has descended on India. What did…
Research Director, CSIRO
Conjoint Professor, CSE UNSW
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