Australian companies risk falling behind their global competitors in harnessing the benefits of AI unless they urgently bring more tech professionals into senior management roles according to a new paper published by the Actuaries Institute of Australia.
The 16-page dialogue paper Where Are Australia’s Data Science Leaders? The Case for Technical Career Pathways recommends companies that want to transform will need to have leadership teams with a deep understanding of what AI can – and cannot – achieve to be able to fully embed AI into their organisation.
Quantium executive AI transformation and author of the dialogue Victor Bajanov said Australian companies need to develop career pathways for employees with deep technical skills in AI and data science to help them take on senior leadership roles so critical decisions taken in the boardroom truly understand the AI frontier.
“AI is coming, whether it’s in banking, insurance, healthcare or retail. AI will prevail in those industries, and I want Australia to be at the crest of that wave surfing down it not paddling madly after it.”
Mr Bajanov said, “Companies need to take full advantage of the AI revolution and need people in the C-suite with backgrounds and knowhow in coding, building machine learning models, and managing hybrid teams that include people and AI agents – and the battle scars from doing that. Deep understanding comes from active practice.
“This will help companies across multiple sectors face the increasing challenge of developing
proprietary solutions rather than relying solely on buying standardised AI tools.”
According to the dialogue paper many Australian organisations are focused on implementing existing
AI and data science solutions rather than driving genuine technical innovation. It said only 18% (approximately A$650m) of Australia’s total AI investment is allocated to infrastructure and foundational capabilities, compared to competitor nations like Canada and Singapore which are investing A$2.7bn and A$5bn, respectively, in AI development and adoption.
The paper says that a technically led organisation could achieve with 10 people what traditionally
requires 100, while improving both quality and speed.
Mr Bajanov said although Australia has a wealth of talented tech professionals, a lack of career
pathways into leadership often results in them moving overseas to be at the cutting edge of innovation.
“Australia has a history of incredibly strong technical innovation with groundbreaking inventions such
as the multi-channel cochlear implant, polymer banknotes and black box flight recorder. But I fear that's going to flip, which would be very sad to see,” he said.
“What tends to happen in Australia is that after about seven to 10 years of professional experience,
many tech professionals face a critical decision point. They can either deepen their expertise in a
technical individual contributor role or transition into management to advance their career with limited opportunities to maintain technical development.”