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Narration:

Chances are you have probably heard about the concept of ethical artificial intelligence. But should we first be thinking about ethical human intelligence?

AI and machine learning are already reshaping the way we live and work. But while these disruptive technologies can be taught to take the best of human thinking and multiply amplify it, they can also do the same with our worst biases.

And when prejudice on such a large scale is a real possibility, business leaders can’t afford to simply 'move fast and break things’ - and teach the machines to behave badly on the way.

Getting AI right is a scary prospect, but an exciting one too. How can leaders use AI in innovative and positive ways, recognise the inherent biases, and minimise harm?

In this episode, guest host Lamont Tang, Director of Industry Projects and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at AGSM @ »Ê¹Ú²ÊƱ Business School, is joined by Stela Solar, Director, National Artificial Intelligence Centre CSIRO's Data61. He’s also joined by »Ê¹Ú²ÊƱ’s Toby Walsh, Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence.

They discuss how organisations can work to get the best results from AI, while avoiding the worst ethical pitfalls.

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Lamont Tang:

Thank you for joining us today for this episode of the AGSM Business of AI Podcast, where we'll explore some of the intersections between the business of AI, innovation and ethics. My name is Dr. Lamont Tang, and I'm on the faculty of »Ê¹Ú²ÊƱ where I serve as the Director of Industry projects at the Australian Graduate School of Management and Business School. In this episode, we'll be discussing the business of AI and some of the natural tensions that are coming to the forefront between the increasing pace of innovation in the AI space, as well as providing the guardrails and ethics of AI as we build towards a better future. We'll look at some of the latest trends in AI and the steps that you can take as a leader to ensure that you're deploying AI in an ethical manner.

Today, I'm so honoured to have two amazing guests, we have Scientia Professor, Toby Walsh.

Toby's one of the world's experts in artificial intelligence, and while Toby's research is both broad and deep in AI, he's particularly known for advancing responsible and safe AI. We're also joined by Stela Solar, she’s a proud graduate of »Ê¹Ú²ÊƱ and is currently the Director of CSIRO's National Artificial Intelligence Centre. Prior to this, Stela was at Microsoft for over a decade in a variety of roles with her most recent role as a Global Director of Artificial Intelligence Solution Sales and Strategy. So with that, let's start with just telling us a little bit about yourself and, or your role.

Stela Solar:

Sure, and it's great to be here. Hello, everyone. So as Lamont mentioned, I lead the National AI Centre, and our mission is to activate positive AI adoption and innovation that benefits business and community. So for us, what's really important is helping more of the Australian SMEs get started with AI, and we're hearing by and large that SMEs are really needing that base level step one around what is the value of AI, what use cases are relevant for them and how to get started. But also we then want to help SMEs connect into the broader AI ecosystem across Australia, and so our ecosystem discoverability portal becomes one of the ways to do that. And then the third focus is to help uplift the practice of AI across Australia, really focusing in on responsible AI, so that's what we're doing, helping organisations get started, get connected, and then uplift their practice.

Lamont Tang:

Thank you, Stela. Toby, over to you.

Toby Walsh:

Sure. Well, it's wonderful to be back with AGSM. I have the honour of being the Chief Scientist at »Ê¹Ú²ÊƱ's AI Institute. This is a new institute that's been formed. It brings together about 300 academics across all of the faculties at »Ê¹Ú²ÊƱ and about 50 different research groups that have interest in researching and deploying AI. And the primary objectives of the institute are to develop AI in a responsible way to amplify all of the activities in AI going on in the university, and I think what's exciting when we set up the institute was to discover that actually there's far more AI going on outside of the Computer Science School than there is inside that actually AI has left the laboratory, it’s in every faculty, it's in the graduate school. It's in the Materials Science, it's in Medicine, of course. It's in the Art School, it's in the Law School, it's everywhere now, and we are trying to provide a front door to that. So one of our other important aims is to be a place where someone in some external organisation be that business or government has a problem, they think AI might be part of the solution. Where in a big university like »Ê¹Ú²ÊƱ do they come? Well, the AI Institute is that front door.

Lamont Tang:

Thank you, Toby, and thank you, Stela. So why don't we start off, let's broadly introduce to the audience what is AI? Where do you find value? And particularly for those SMEs and the layperson, what are some specific case studies that you might be able to provide for the audience to help them understand where the value is?

Stela Solar:

Maybe I can get started with a perspective which is, AI is just as much theoretical, creative, and philosophical as it is technological. And so my perspective comes from more of an industry centric perspective, which is about what AI can do today. And that generally is the field of AI called Narrow AI. That is the only