AI Australia Podcast

Everyone's convinced AI is coming for engineering jobs. Tom Goerke, National President of Engineers Australia, thinks that fear is almost exactly backwards, and he's got 19th-century coal miners to prove it. In this episode, Tom unpacks Jevons' paradox: the counterintuitive economic pattern where making something more efficient doesn't reduce demand for it, it explodes it. He walks through what th...

Lee Hickin has spent 30 years at the frontier of technology, from IBM and AWS to serving as CTO of Microsoft Australia. Now, as Executive Director of the National AI Centre, he's asking a confronting question of every boardroom in Australia: when the risk and the opportunity depends on AI, who in the room is actually the expert? In this episode, Lee breaks down why AI governance is failing in most...

Before ChatGPT changed everything, Arvind Jain was already four years deep into solving a problem every knowledge worker knows but no one had fixed: why is it so impossible to find anything at work? In this episode, the CEO of Glean, the enterprise AI platform used by some of the world's most iconic companies, takes us inside the founding story that started not in a garage, but in the wreckage of...

Why are the world's most powerful executives "resting and vesting" in the corner instead of innovating? Dom Price joins the podcast to discuss the psychological warfare happening inside modern boardrooms. He breaks down his "Minus 1, 0, plus 1" framework, a strategic ladder for moving from fixing broken processes to discovering "net new" value that didn't exist two years ago. From the importance o...

What if the knowledge locked inside the heads of the world's most elite scientists could be downloaded into a "nervous system" for everyone? Craig Rayner spent decades watching life-saving drugs fail simply because the right person wasn't in the room. Now, he's built a Peer Review Agent that mimics a full development committee with 95% accuracy. We discuss the white-knuckle ride of leaving a high-...

Can AI truly understand the nuances of a busy commercial kitchen or a retail floor? Ciaran and Deepesh from Deputy join the podcast to discuss the journey of launching Deputy AI , an agentic framework designed specifically for the mobile-first, fast-paced world of frontline work . We delve into the Deputy's unique approach to early testing with customers, the challenges of driving AI literacy amon...

In the world of FinTech, there are those who talk about AI, and those who ship it. Tracy Moore, GM of AI and Data at MYOB, is firmly in the latter camp. In this episode, Tracy reveals how one of Australia's leading tech innovators is leveraging the latest in generative tech to solve the most enduring challenges for small businesses: time and cash flow. We explore the "AI Sandwich" —a framework for...

We change things up in today's episode and grill two Mantel Leaders, Samuel Irvine Casey and Vihan Patel, who have been in the trenches over the past 12 months building AI and Agentic Solutions. They help us unpack 2025 and predict what 2026 will bring including: The ROI Reality Check: As the hype of 2025 settles, 2026 is framed as the year of accountability, where organisations must prove the eco...

Forget building dashboards! The CEO of ThoughtSpot reveals how conversational AI is killing traditional business intelligence and putting a personal, 24/7 data analyst on every employee's desktop. Are you ready to fire your dashboard and start talking to your data and can you trust the answer when you do? In this episode, we talk to Ketan Karkhanis the CEO of Thoughtspot, a former Salesforce and C...

Discover how Swimming Australia is diving deep into data and AI to secure Olympic gold! Today we chat to Jess Coronas, Head of Performance Insights at Swimming Australia , and discuss the digital transformation journey of Swimming Australia. From the initial ideation and data driven insights to the development of the groundbreaking Training Insights platform , powered by cutting edge computer visi...

What does factory floorplan design during the Industrial Revolution have to do with re-imagining user experiences in the ages of AI? In today's episode, we chat to  Dr. Haijun Xia , an assistant professor at UC San Diego and Director of the Foundation Interface Lab, discussing the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) . Dr. Xia, whose work focuses on dev...

Join us for a conversation with Sharryn Napier , Vice President for APAC at GitHub , as she discusses leading the company's strategic direction and business growth across the region. Sharryn talks to GitHub's evolution from a code storage platform to the world's leading platform for  building software with AI , now supporting over 150 million developers. The episode explores the democratising powe...

In this episode, we talk with David Hyman, CEO and co-founder of Lendi Group, the company behind Australia's leading digital mortgage brand, Lendi, and the iconic Aussie franchise. David shares his journey from founding Lendi in 2013 with a vision for digital-first mortgages, to the acquisition of Aussie Home Loans, and the launch of the company's "find, buy, and own" property ecosystem. We chat t...

In this episode of the AI Australia podcast, hosts Kat and Emma speak with David Brudenell, Executive Director of Decidr, an Australian AI software company. David, a veteran of the tech and venture capital sectors, shares his journey into AI, beginning with a "human-in-the-loop" product he co-founded in 2012. The conversation covers the state of AI today, with David likening the current landscape...

In a world where nearly half of Australians have adopted generative AI, traditional marketing is being reshaped. This episode features Celia Harding, an expert in Language Engine Optimisation (LEO), who explains why brands must adapt their strategies to be visible in AI-generated answers. We discuss the differences between LEO and SEO, how various AI models like Gemini and ChatGPT have unique "per...

In this episode, we chat with Professor Wil van der Aalst, the "Godfather of Process Mining ." He's the brains behind a multi-billion dollar industry that started 25 years ago in his quest to understand what organisations are  actually  doing, not just what they  think  they're doing. Wil dives into why he believes companies need to use process mining to get their houses in order before throwing A...

In this episode, May Lam, Chief Information Officer at Australian Payments Plus, shares her incredible journey from a software engineer tackling Y2K bugs to a leading voice in payments and AI. Drawing on her extensive experience across banking, FinTech, and the public sector, May unpacks the transformative power of AI in the financial industry. She outlines three key pillars of opportunity: the  "...

Highlights from Databricks Data and AI Summit 2025   In this special episode of the AI Australia podcast, Kathryn Collier and Emma Bromet report live from the Databricks Data and AI Summit 2025 in San Francisco. The summit which attracts 22,000 attendees to the city and 65,000 in total making it one of the largest Data and AI conferences globally.  The pervasive theme this year was "Data Intellige...

How AI is Reshaping Customer Expectations & Driving Business Value with Sandy Iyer (General Manager, Data Science at Sportsbet) Join your hosts Emma Bromet and Kathryn Collier as they chat with Sandy Iyer, a leading data and analytics executive, currently General Manager of Data Science at Sportsbet. With a career spanning energy retail, financial services, and wagering, Sandy brings a wealth of e...

Because we loved talking to Roo and Danielle SO much in our last episode, we are delighted to bring you another installment of that conversation. In this episode of the A.I. Australia podcast, Kobi and Nat host Roo Harris from Scale Investors and Danielle Haj-Moussa from Main Sequence Ventures to continue our discussion on responsible AI investment in startups.   We explore critical topics such as...

In this episode of This Week in AI brought to you by the AI Australia podcast, Kobi and Natalie dive into wide-ranging discussions covering recent political events, traversing: The implications of the French and UK election outcomes, and their relation to technology. AI's role in the U.S. presidential elections Tech sector developments like Meta's Llama models, and the economic and environmental i...

This episode of AI Australia features a discussion with Danielle Haj-Moussa, a deep-tech investor at Main Sequence Ventures, and Roo Harris, a partner at Scale Investors. The conversation spans the different investment types, the importance of inclusive and ethical AI, and the differences between deep tech and general tech. Danielle shares insights into Main Sequence's focus on decarbonisation, in...

We're back after a bit of hiatus, and a rebrand - the AI Australia podcast is now brought to you by Mantel Group (formerly a house of brands including eliiza). This was recorded a couple of weeks ago, which is a lifetime in this age of AI, but hopefully you still enjoy the conversation as much as Nat & Kobi enjoyed having it. In this episode of 'This Week in AI', we discuss the continued rapid dev...

We have rebranded! The AI Australia is now brought to you by Mantel Group (Eliiza's parent company).  Please join us this week as we discuss AI in education with Professor Andrew Maynard from the Arizona State University. Andrew's fascinating takes from the front line of educating in the age of AI show a vision of the future and interrogates some of the common misconceptions of AI in education.

Welcome back to the AI Australia podcast for 2024, with your hosts Natalie Rouse and Kobi Leins. We are joined by two experts in the field of cybersecurity - "The Voice of Cyber" multimedia journalist Karissa Breen and internationally recognised cyber law expert Emma (EJ) Wise. We start off learning about Aboriginal Birthing Trees, then talk about the ethics of self-driving cars, international reg...