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 one has been “slightly” chaotic, in the best possible way. Iโve 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. Iโve just…
Happy new year! The shutdown period is often when the noise drops and the big questions surface. This year, that quiet coincided with genuinely striking progress in AI coding agents, especially in the six to eight weeks following the release of Claude Opus 4.5, and its integration into Claude Code. We have seen world-class software…
As part of the international expert advisory group representing Australia, Iโm pleased to see the second Key Update of the AI Safety Science Report, led by Yoshua Bengio, released (link in the comment). The official update captures the broad progress: more robust adversarial training, better AI-generated content tracking, wider adoption of frontier safety frameworks, and…
I often share missed or surprising observations in my talks. Here are five of them, summarised as food for thought. ๐ ๐๐๐ต ๐ญ: ๐ข๐๐ฒ๐ฟ๐๐ฒ๐ฎ๐-๐๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ถ๐ป๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐๐ ๐๐ผ๐ปโ๐ ๐ฎ๐น๐ถ๐ด๐ป ๐๐ถ๐๐ต ๐๐๐๐๐ฟ๐ฎ๐น๐ถ๐ฎ๐ป ๐๐ฎ๐น๐๐ฒ๐.Itโs intuitive to think globally trained models canโt reflect our norms. Yet when frontier models answer the same cultural questions posed to national cohorts, they align most…
Every confidential message youโve sent may already be stored โ waiting to be unlocked. This is the essence of the โ๐ต๐ฎ๐ฟ๐๐ฒ๐๐-๐ป๐ผ๐, ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ฐ๐ฟ๐๐ฝ๐-๐น๐ฎ๐๐ฒ๐ฟโ problem: data intercepted today could be decrypted once quantum computers mature. This week CSIRO’s Data61 released our new report, ๐๐ช๐๐ฃ๐ฉ๐ช๐ข ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ง๐๐ฃ๐จ๐๐ฉ๐๐ค๐ฃ: ๐๐๐๐ก๐๐ฉ๐ฎ, ๐๐ช๐ง๐๐ก๐๐จ ๐๐ฃ๐ ๐๐๐ฉ๐๐ฌ๐๐ฎ๐จ, mapping the scale of the challenge and…
What counts as a ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ฐ๐ถ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป, really? From the strict sense in ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐บ๐ถ๐ป๐ถ๐๐๐ฟ๐ฎ๐๐ถ๐๐ฒ ๐น๐ฎ๐โwhere a decision formally alters someoneโs rights or entitlementsโto the everyday sense where almost everything, from selecting a movie to choosing a candidate, feels like a decision. Yet across these very different contexts, the underlying anatomy looks surprisingly similar. In CSIRO’s Data61 new…
New paper alert (working draft)! โWhen you really understand what AI is doing, itโs no longer AI โ itโs just boring automation.โ That old AI community joke captures the paradox of human oversight. We trust calculators and complex business process engines with millions of ifโelse rules, running hundreds of steps, responding to environmental changes, and…
After my slightly controversial talk on ๐ฅ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ถ๐ป ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ด๐ฒ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐๐, I delivered another talk at APS Learn series on ๐ช๐ฟ๐ถ๐๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ถ๐ป ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ด๐ฒ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐๐. ๐ ๐ ๐ฐ๐ผ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐๐ต๐ฒ๐๐ถ๐: ๐๐ฟ๐ถ๐๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ถ๐ ๐๐ต๐ถ๐ป๐ธ๐ถ๐ป๐ด. We write first for self-understanding, then for audience understanding. AI cannot replace that understanding, but it can be a strong discussion partner.…
Director/Head of CSIRO’s Data61
Conjoint Professor, CSE UNSW
For other roles, see LinkedIn & Professional activities.
If you’d like to invite me to give a talk, please see here & email liming.zhu@data61.csiro.au