Australia is chasing the wrong kind of AI

Writing in InnovationAus, ARM Hub founder and CEO Professor Cori Stewart welcomed the Prime Minister's move to put AI at the centre of economic policy, then argued that the new Office of AI must prioritise industrial AI. The biggest gains will come from how Australia makes medicines, processes critical minerals, grows food and builds defence capability, not from helping office workers write faster emails.

Stewart wrote that sovereignty is not settled by where servers sit. It is settled when Australian businesses own the industrial data, engineering expertise and manufacturing capability that AI depends on. She set five tests for the Office of AI: make industrial AI a national priority, invest in sovereign industrial data infrastructure, create place-based adoption programs, connect AI policy to manufacturing, and measure success through productivity, exports and sovereign capability.