Blog | Generative AI
Australia Doesn’t Need More AI Drama, We Need a Game Plan
15 May 2025
Tony Butler
Managing Director, Decision Inc. Australia
As the world moves ahead at full speed with AI, Australia is hesitating at the starting line.
The US is focused now on removing barriers to innovation, delegating many regulatory decisions to States. The result? A complex environment that will be difficult to navigate and even more difficult to govern.
China, on the other hand, is instituting regulated “AI data exchanges”, national AI ethical guidelines and principles, and by 2028 plans to establish more than 100 “trusted data spaces” with the intent to encourage data sharing across industry sectors—even as questions swirl about data transparency and privacy risks.
And Australia? Still debating.
The government’s National AI Capability Plan promises investment, skills-building, and sovereign AI infrastructure, but a recent parliamentary inquiry report made one thing clear: AI is moving faster than Australia’s ability to regulate it.
Here’s the reality: waiting isn’t a strategy. AI is already shaping hiring decisions, customer interactions, financial models, and compliance risks. The businesses making moves now get to set the board. The rest just get to play by someone else’s rules.
The AI Questions That Actually Matter
Forget the global chess match. Forget the hype cycles. For Australian businesses, only three AI questions actually matter: Is your AI aligned? Can you keep up? And how much is it really costing you?
AI isn’t neutral. It absorbs biases, automates decisions, and if left unchecked, it will take your business places you never intended to go. That’s why it’s so important to regularly understand and assess customer, employee, and stakeholder sentiment relating to AI and adoption in your products and services. If AI isn’t aligned with your businesses values, governance, and compliance frameworks, you won’t just get a regulatory slap on the wrist—you’ll be facing lawsuits, PR disasters, and broken customer trust.
Robodebt is proof of what happens when automation lacks oversight. It wasn’t just an algorithm failure—it was a failure of alignment and accountability. Businesses rolling out AI need to ask: who owns the decision-making when things go wrong? Can AI-driven decisions be explained, challenged, and corrected?
AI needs constant monitoring, transparency, and built-in safeguards. Set it and forget it? That’s a liability waiting to happen.
How do you compete when AI evolves every week?
AI isn’t just advancing—it’s accelerating. New models drop every single week, each claiming to be faster, smarter, and more cost-effective. Earlier this year, DeepSeek blew apart the assumption that AI requires billion-dollar funds.
So where does that leave businesses locked into expensive, slow-moving AI ecosystems? Stuck.
The real question isn’t how good is your AI today—it’s how adaptable is your AI for tomorrow. If you’re locked into a single vendor or model, you’re betting your entire AI strategy on tech that could be outdated in six months.
The best AI strategy isn’t just investing in the best model—it’s designing AI systems that can evolve without burning everything down.
Cheap AI isn’t always good AI
AI pricing is all over the place. OpenAI is weighing up whether to charge $20,000 a month for its top-tier research agents, while DeepSeek is offering free, open-source models. The rise of open AI ecosystems means businesses no longer need deep pockets to get cutting-edge AI. But here’s the catch—cheap AI isn’t always the best AI.
DeepSeek’s data breach exposed millions of user records, plaintext chat logs, and API keys. How many businesses rushed to integrate its models without fully understanding the risks? The real cost of AI isn’t just the subscription fee—it’s the security failures, compliance nightmares, and reputational damage when things go wrong.
Australian businesses can’t afford to chase cost savings at the expense of governance. AI security, ethical use, and regulatory compliance aren’t optional extras—they’re the difference between a competitive advantage and a corporate crisis.
This isn’t about throwing money at the latest AI tool and hoping it sticks. It’s about building AI into business strategy with the same scrutiny as any other investment. It means putting alignment, capability, and cost under the microscope—ensuring AI decisions don’t just work today but hold up when the next wave of disruption hits. It means having full visibility into the models, vendors, and risks so that businesses aren’t blindsided when AI makes a mistake.
Most importantly, it means understanding that AI isn’t optional anymore. It’s already transforming industries. The game is already in play. Either control AI, or be controlled by it.