How to Engage in Australia's AI Ecosystem as an Entrepreneur

I was reading the latest publication on AI by CSIRO titled "Australia’s AI ecosystem momentum" from their National AI Centre. I have made several observations about how an entrepreneur can engage in AI development in Australia. Here are my thoughts on this subject.

Understanding the AI Ecosystem: The Australian AI ecosystem is rapidly maturing - as it is all around the rest of the world - and many businesses are already equipped to take advantage of AI-related solutions. Still, they may simply not yet know it. However, these capabilities are often presented as siloed elements - use AI for this, use ML for that. To maximize the potential of AI-related technologies, Australian businesses should get familiar with their overall information architecture. They should look to operationalise tools across different business functions and actively identify solutions that conjoin these functions in a way that can derive more value than point solutions. This fitting together will ultimately drive multiple outcomes (referring to Page 13 of the CSIRO text).

Engaging AI Providers: Australian businesses, especially small-to-medium enterprises, can engage with a rich ecosystem of AI providers - all they need to do is look. Providers range from AI-related services companies offering ideation, strategy, and design to full-blown AI-related technology and developer companies supplying pre-built or custom platforms, components, and often finished solutions.

It's important to identify partners with robust delivery acumen and end-to-end delivery experience (CSIRO document reference on Page 8).

Collaboration and Teamwork: Collaboration is essential to respond to the growing need for more creativity, trust, and delivery of the capabilities a national AI ecosystem needs to fully harness the potential for AI transformation of Australia’s technology landscape (Page 3 of the CSIRO document). The main issue is trust, how can you validate the capability of a new company in an emerging technology area since trusting this company could have myriad implications for the future successes or even failure of your business? Looking for references and employing good solutions architecture practices will ensure at least the outcomes are defined well, so you can test the delivery model against what you need.

Investing in AI Technologies: AI-related technologies are key in helping Australian businesses achieve growth objectives. Businesses invest in product/service innovation, improve customer experience, and drive greater sales to achieve organisational priorities. These initiatives are technology-driven, and AI-related technologies play an increasingly critical role in bringing these initiatives to fruition (CSIRO reference on Page 5).

Relying on AI Providers: Australian businesses rely heavily on AI providers across all stages of implementation, especially around data. There is significant demand from Australian businesses for finished solutions and machine learning (ML) training data sets alongside data science resources to support implementation (CSIRO Page 7).

To ensure that the products and services fit with the national strategy, entrepreneurs should align their AI development efforts with the growth strategies of Australian businesses, which include improving how they differentiate themselves in the market, accelerating their responsiveness to market changes, and reducing costs. They should also consider the ethical and governance aspects of implementing AI, as understanding these aspects is often lacking across organizations globally.

This is the time to explore what AI and ML can mean for your business. Still, caution is needed to ensure you focus on what matters - the business opportunities the investment will surface for you if the solution is the right one for your needs.