10 big ideas shaping Australia’s AI ambitions from CommBank Accelerate AI

The national dialogue around Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the fastest moving in Australia. Businesses, policymakers and everyday Australians are exploring its potential and impact, moving the conversation beyond hype towards practical questions about how AI can scale securely and responsibly, while creating value for organisations, customers and communities.

At CommBank Accelerate AI, a recurring theme was that AI is moving out of experimentation and further into the real world, prompting leaders to rethink their capabilities and how they maintain trust during a period promising major change.

These are 10 ideas that emerged from CommBank Accelerate AI.

1.     AI is moving fast, but it’s still early for enterprise adoption

The pace of AI development is challenging assumptions about how quickly the technology will reshape industries and businesses, with implications for how companies operate and think about value creation.

Sam Altman, CEO and Co-founder of OpenAI, in conversation with CommBank CEO, Matt Comyn, said we are “reasonably advanced on the actual technology side and the real capability and then still quite early on the deployment into enterprise”.

Altman offered some guidance to executives: “This is the thing that I’ve observed the best companies do. Rather than try and rigidly set every possible policy, they allow a small amount of adoption,” he said.

2.     Working out the best hybrid model is still playing out

Altman noted that we will need people to decide what we should optimise AI for, and that there are more pedestrian tasks that people won’t be comfortable with AI doing. It’s this realisation that led him to update his view on AI’s impact on jobs, which he says doesn’t appear to eb as severe as he first feared it might be.

Discussing the big questions that are still to be figured out as AI adoption accelerates, Altman said, “The thing that’s most on my mind is what it’s going to take to integrate this into people’s lives and into our companies, so that we get the acceleration we deserve and so that people can work on the things that people are uniquely good at and enjoy.”

3.     Scale of proprietary data is a new source of competitive advantage

Leah Weckert, CEO, Coles and Sam Nickless, CEO, Gilbert + Tobin were aligned in their view that in the AI era, data is crucial to competitive advantage.

Weckert explained that traditionally in the grocery business, one of the ways you develop competitive advantage is through the scale of your physical network, and as a result, your buying power. “What we’re moving to in the future is the competitive advantage we’ll actually derive from the scale and usability of your data.”

Nickless added that for legal services, “I still believe there will be a premium that clients will want to pay for judgement, but it will be for the very best judgement. Average judgement will be automated.”

4.     New skills key to AI-led productivity

While AI has the potential to boost productivity and speed up decision-making, people need permission as well as support, which is a whole-of-organisation issue. With people adopting what they understand and conscious of the work that AI can now do, there are workforce skilling and confidence issues to address.

CommBank CEO Matt Comyn said transparency, being prepared to communicate on the topic and report externally on how we use the technology is important. “Trust is really the permission to be able to scale,” Comyn said.

5.     AI can be a leadership and team performance multiplier

AI tools can be a powerful way to augment executive tasks, leaving more time to focus on the higher order work. As an example, Ben Chan from Quantium said that a digital twin, “can help you be you on your best day.”

He shared Benbot, a digital twin created with Anthropic’s Claude, that has codified his writing style and leadership beliefs. It provides feedback to his team in the same way he would, allowing them to iterate.

Sam Hemphill, Executive General Manager, Customer Channel and Data has developed his own digital twin. “I’m enjoying both the holding the mirror up of the exercise but also the fact it can keep things moving without me being the bottleneck.” Chan then demonstrated how the two digital twins can interact.

6.     With great power comes great responsibility

Whether Australia seizes an opportunity to take a global leadership role in AI will depend on the infrastructure and capacity the nation can build. Craig Scroggie, CEO, NEXTDC echoed Altman’s comments that Australia is very well positioned.

Discussing the digital infrastructure rollout, Scroggie, said, “this is unquestionably the most significant industrial transformation in modern history”, noting that well in excess of $1 trillion in capital will be allocated globally in 2026.

Angus Dawson, Partner, McKinsey, said “we shouldn’t forget that an infrastructure boom is an economic boom. For Australia, we had some of our biggest improvements in productivity through the infrastructure boom that happened in iron ore, and happened in LNG.”

7.     A thriving start-up ecosystem is essential to the future of jobs

Australia has a strong foundation of small businesses, research and development capabilities and investors willing to back breakout innovations. However, Paul Bassat said that every lever must be in place to produce the next generation of SMBs and start-ups.

Bassat said that historically companies five years old or younger have created jobs in Australia, and a strong cohort of new businesses will be needed to maintain well paid, productive, rewarding jobs. “That proposition is 10 times more important right now because of what we know is going to happen with AI and a lot of jobs disappearing because of efficiency,” Bassat said.

8.     Trust remains the cornerstone of both adoption and safety

Building and maintaining trust is a prerequisite for AI adoption, whether among the workforce or customers. Dr Nicole Gillespie, Chair in Trust and Professor of Management, The University of Melbourne, discussed three drivers of trust: digital literacy, governance and shared benefits.

“The more that customers and also employees are seeing the benefits directly to them, the more they’re willing to accept and adopt these technologies,” Dr Gillespie said.

Melanie Silva, Managing Director Australia and New Zealand, Google, agreed adding that in terms of trust and adoption, “usability and usefulness is always at the core, knowing that there are guardrails and principles in place from the organisation that’s using it.”

9.     AI can both be a cyber threat and a defence  

AI has many benefits, but malicious actors also harness the technology to improve their efforts. The rising incidence of scams, aided by more realistic impersonation and deepfake content means that ‘seeing is believing’ no longer holds true.

Stephanie Crowe, Head Australian Cyber Security Centre, said, “we’ve seen a lot of cyber criminal activity really aided by large language models in particular. You used to be able to identify spear phishing emails by looking for spelling mistakes, by looking for abnormal language in some of those emails. That is getting more and more difficult to do because of AI.”

Andrew Hinchcliff, Chief Risk Officer, CommBank, noted that in terms of cyber, financial crime, fraud and scams, AI is giving bad actors “greater tools than they’ve ever had before, but equally, it’s giving us potentially greater defences than we’ve ever before.”

10.  Achieving scale means backing your best ideas

As one of Australia’s global technology success stories, Canva has been through its own AI transformation. However, for many leaders seeking to replicate Canva’s growth path, scaling outcomes can be challenging. In response, Obrecht says there are so many valuable projects that get 80 per cent to completion but don’t get the necessary support to continue.

“Let a thousand flowers bloom, but don’t let a thousand flowers die. Let 10 of those thousand flowers that have proved the right to exist, and improve your processes and your business, grow,” Obrecht, said.