Dr Sue Keay never expected to end up in robotics. It was a 2014 conversation with her sister, Andra Keay, a Silicon Valley-based robotics entrepreneur, that made her realise robotics was a way to have a greater impact on society. “I saw the potential and I was hooked,” Keay told The Brilliant.
Since then, Keay has created Australia’s first robotics roadmap, brought The Grace Hopper Celebration, the world’s largest gathering of women technologists, to Australia, and is the inaugural CEO of the Queensland AI hub.
Not bad for a trained geochemist who swapped the male-dominated field of geology for another, AI and robotics. Now, Keay is on a mission to convince other people of how important AI and robotics is – she believes it’s vital for Australia’s national interest, as well as being a way that ordinary people can push back against the tech giants.
A roadmap to AI
Keay sees an enormous opportunity for Australia to become a powerhouse in AI. The most critical first step in this journey? Federal government investment and leadership.
“Right now our federal government investment in AI is minuscule. In the most recent budget, more than AU$24 million per year was earmarked for AI initiatives. Compare this to Finland, which has allocated more than A$300 million per year and has one fifth the population of Australia,” she says. “The magnitude of difference is just astounding.”
Keay argues that this lack of serious government funding is harming the economy, pointing to countries such as the US and Canada, where government funding goes on to spur private investment.
“Government investment signals to the rest of the world that AI is important in Australia and that we support companies who are wanting to develop these technologies and deploy them,” says Keay. “Lack of government investment makes it hard to convince people to move or invest here.”
Keay also believes that the early adopter model put forward in 2020 by the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, whose aim is to have Australians adopting technology rather than creating it, will undermine Australia’s sovereignty.
“It’s like being a renter rather than an owner of a house,” she says. “We will forever be paying other countries to be able to access technology; they not only get the benefits of the application of that technology, and the known productivity benefits, but they’re also making a factor of 10 times more money, because they’re also selling those technologies. That’s what we’re missing out on.”
And the stakes are high. According to the CSIRO, the AI sector is estimated to be worth AU$22.17 trillion to the global economy by 2030.
“I don’t understand why every government department isn’t concerned that we’re not supporting the development of sovereign capability and technology because, arguably, these are the companies of the future.” Keay points to car companies and General Electric, which are now driven by AI. “We need to develop more companies like Atlassian and Canva. We need to get serious, because these companies will be launched and homed elsewhere.”
She adds that too many Australian companies are forced to raise money from the US, because the Americans recognise the benefits of AI. “In Brisbane just a few weeks ago, a company called Octopus Deploy got $172 million dollars in investment from the US.” The problem with that, she says, is that such companies often then relocate to the US and become US companies, not Australian ones.
Keay also thinks it’s crucial for the government itself to come to grips with AI. “What we’re typically seeing in other countries that have more developed national AI strategies are policies such as mandatory training in artificial intelligence in schools, the public service and the military,” she says.
Keay also believes that there should be someone in every government agency responsible for reporting on the AI technologies that are being used in that agency, and making that knowledge public, unless there are national security implications. ”The virtue of doing that is that people can then see how these technologies are being used and, in some cases, start fast tracking the development of these technologies in their own agencies,” she says. “There are some agencies leading and others that aren’t employing the technology at all.”
Keay argues that the education and deployment would go a long way towards dispelling some of the myths about artificial intelligence. They would also highlight the opportunities.
Shaping the future
Thanks to both her current role at CEO of the Queensland AI hub, and her work developing the second iteration of the Australian Robotics Roadmap, Keay has a unique perspective on the AI landscape. She sees that investment in AI offers opportunities for both regional and city-based communities. “You only have to look at farms to see a range of AI technologies being deployed. There are very few farms nowadays that don’t deploy sensors and sensing technology to monitor their crops and livestock, to control when spraying is done, and when to plant and when to harvest,” she says. “The farms of the future will use drones, AI and robotic technologies to make farming more profitable and sustainable. Given the size of our farms, this will be essential.”
Keay also believes that the small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that dominate the Australian business landscape need support. “Ninety percent of Queenslanders are employed by companies that have 20 people or less, which means that they have limited innovation capacity. We need more programs to make it easier for SMEs to adapt these new technologies,” she says.
She also believes that Australia has a key advantage when it comes to developing AI – it’s a free and open democracy. “Technology is developed according to the values and standards of the community which is developing them,” she says. “AI technology is really useful, but it can also be used to surveil people. In Australia, people feel comfortable shopping on Amazon but they don’t want that information and their other movements linked to their identity and fed to police without their knowledge. That happens in other countries. Australia is not creating technologies that unreasonably surveil people.” Instead, Australia could create AI that would improve lives.
Not only that, but she argues that Australia developing its own software and technology is a key way to redress the power imbalance between the tech giants and the general public. She adds that Australia also needs to work with other countries to regulate the big tech companies, which too often deploy software and technologies without sufficient regulation. “The European Union (EU) has been able to make significant changes in the way big tech operates in their jurisdiction to protect consumer privacy and information. Australia may be small but we can piggyback off some of the regulations that the EU is creating around technology,” says Keay.
In short, Keay believes Australia needs to completely rethink its current investment in AI – and needs to do it soon.
“Australia should be asking itself why other countries like the US are investing such enormous amounts of money specifically to AI,” she says, saying that Australia is making the mistake of investing in “the bare minimum, such as making sure everyone’s got a website. It’s tinkering around the edges.”
What’s required is much bigger, more strategic thinking. “We really need to get to the heart of this, and actually ask ourselves what are we missing out on if we’re not investing at similar levels to other countries. And what are going to be the long term impacts of those decisions?”
The stakes are high and Australia is already behind, but Keay believes that with enough political will, the country can become an AI powerhouse – to the benefit of everyone.
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Article by Kylie Ahern
Photo Credit: Photo supplied
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