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…
Day one has been “slightly” chaotic, in the best possible way. I’ve never seen this many people at a conference. Industry, startups, government, students, press. Rooms were packed, with people standing along the walls and spilling into corridors. The surprise visit by Prime Minister Modi to the exhibition hall added another layer of disruption and…
Reading “Being Indian” by Pavan K. Varma on the flight into New Delhi was an unexpectedly good prelude to the Indian AI Impact Summit. The book wrestles with identity, continuity, and contradiction in a civilisation that absorbs shocks without losing coherence. It made me reflect on how we are currently talking about AI. I’ve just…
Very excited about the work we contributed to the redesign of NSW’s AI Assessment Framework, released last week. It includes several world-leading design elements that reflect a more mature way of thinking about AI risk. Most AI risk frameworks don’t fail because they miss risks. They fail because they never narrow them in a principled…
As Australia’s representative on the international expert advisory panel, I’m glad to see the 2026 AI Safety Science Report released under the leadership of Yoshua Bengio. The findings will be discussed further at the India AI Impact Summit later this month. I will be there. Beyond what is written in the report, CSIRO’s Data61 continues…
Director/Head of CSIRO’s Data61
Conjoint Professor, CSE UNSW
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