Monash expert: National AI Plan
Monash University
Monash University AI and machine learning experts are available to discuss the National AI Plan and how we need to progress with building sovereign AI through upskilling the Australian workforce.
Australian Laureate Fellow Professor Geoff Webb, Department of Data Science and AI, Faculty of Information Technology
Contact via: +61 450 501 248 or [email protected]
Read more of Professor Webb’s commentary on Monash Lens
*NOTE: Professor Webb is available for interviews only until 1pm this afternoon.
- Fundamentals of AI
- Machine learning
- Data mining
The following can be attributed to Professor Webb:
“The Government is overall striking a sensible balance by holding off on potentially stifling legislation before the true gaps in existing laws are properly understood.
“Australia is sleep walking toward a potential economic cliff. In the worst case scenario, AI services provided by international corporations will replace Australian workers, greatly decreasing the number of Australians bringing incomes to Australian households. Instead, Australian businesses will send fees for services offshore.
“Australia needs to invest now in upskilling its workforce. Sectors of the economy where Australia has competitive advantage need to develop leaders with deep understanding of the true opportunities and limitations of AI in order for us to develop new products and services that we can sell to the world.
“That needs to be underpinned by the development of a highly skilled workforce that can develop the leading edge technologies that those new products and services will require.”
Professor Shonali Krishnaswamy, Director Monash AI Institute, Faculty of Information Technology
Contact via: +61 450 501 248 or [email protected]
- AI scalability for organisations
- Deep tech entrepreneurship
The following can be attributed to Professor Krishnaswamy:
“The National AI Plan is very timely. It is excellent to see that the Federal Government is hearing the voices from the Productivity Commission. We live in the Age of AI, and this technology has tremendous potential to supercharge the Australian economy if harnessed carefully and responsibly, but without over-regulation.
“There is a real demand for an AI skilled workforce. Increasingly, we will need ‘AI bilingualists’, people who are fluent and conversational in AI and fluent and conversational in their own domain, for example finance, logistics or healthcare. Australia will need to invest in formal education, micro skills and on the job training to create this workforce rapidly.
“Australian adoption of AI needs to pick up pace to catch up with other countries internationally and in the region. For example, Singapore has set up 50 AI innovation labs led by different companies and research institutions in just over a year, which creates high value jobs in the local economy.
“I welcome the creation of the AI Safety Institute announced earlier. This is long overdue. Many countries have already established such centres.
“Australia has excellent AI research and innovation that is world leading in many areas. For example, our researchers have developed one of the largest open source deepfake detection benchmarking datasets, with well over 1 million deepfake images used by over 100 organisations globally.
“The hope is that the AI Safety Institute will connect and collaborate with the world leading researchers and experts in this area in universities across the country, and bring cutting edge sovereign capability in AI to Australian industry, government and public sector organisations.”
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For any other topics on which you may be seeking expert comment, contact the Monash University Media Unit on +61 3 9903 4840 or [email protected].