When AI Agents Grant the Wrong Wish
What happens when AI agents pursue our goals in ways we did not intend? A new piece on alignment, supervisory AI, layered controls and AI sovereignty.
What happens when AI agents pursue our goals in ways we did not intend? A new piece on alignment, supervisory AI, layered controls and AI sovereignty.
It was a privilege to deliver the opening keynote at the Australian AI Safety Forum, bringing together researchers, industry and government to discuss the findings of the International AI Safety Report and what they mean for Australia’s AI safety future. My keynote argued that AI safety is entering a new phase. First, practical AI capability…
What does the international scientific community see as the biggest opportunities, risks and governance priorities for AI? The newly released Preliminary Report from the UN Independent International Scientific Panel on AI provides one of the most comprehensive evidence-based answers to that question to date: https://lnkd.in/gYSZxUpy Congratulations to my colleague Qinghua Lu for leading the working…
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…
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…
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…
In case you missed our year-end summary of the progress we’ve made in responsible AI at CSIRO’s Data61 in 2025, you can find it here. From launching the new Engineering AI Systems book, our practical guide to AI design and the operation of high-quality AI systems, to partnering with the Audit Office of NSW to…

Research Director, CSIRO
Conjoint Professor, CSE UNSW
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