Upcoming Events

Frontier practitioners community: AI Main branch

AI Main Branch is a monthly practitioner forum for the people actually building at the frontier - builders, entrepreneurs and technical leaders pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI right now.

This isn't a watch-and-learn event. It's a working session for people who ship things, break things, and form their own views before the consensus catches up. Each month, we gather to explore frontier ideas, learn from real attempts, and develop shared judgment on questions that haven't hardened into products, standards, or policy yet.

Format: Last Friday of the month, 5:00–7:00 PM

Led by: Jia Keatnuxsuo

Access: Invite-only. AITAI membership required.

Apply to attend.

Frontier practitioners community: AI Main branch

AI Main Branch is a monthly practitioner forum for the people actually building at the frontier - builders, entrepreneurs and technical leaders pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI right now.

This isn't a watch-and-learn event. It's a working session for people who ship things, break things, and form their own views before the consensus catches up. Each month, we gather to explore frontier ideas, learn from real attempts, and develop shared judgment on questions that haven't hardened into products, standards, or policy yet.

Format: Last Friday of the month, 5:00–7:00 PM

Led by: Jia Keatnuxsuo

Access: Invite-only. AITAI membership required.

Apply to attend.

Frontier practitioners community: AI Main branch

AI Main Branch is a monthly practitioner forum for the people actually building at the frontier - builders, entrepreneurs and technical leaders pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI right now.

This isn't a watch-and-learn event. It's a working session for people who ship things, break things, and form their own views before the consensus catches up. Each month, we gather to explore frontier ideas, learn from real attempts, and develop shared judgment on questions that haven't hardened into products, standards, or policy yet.

Format: Last Friday of the month, 5:00–7:00 PM

Led by: Jia Keatnuxsuo

Access: Invite-only. AITAI membership required.

Apply to attend.

Counterpoint AI: Inside the black box - What AI is actually doing when it reasons?

When an AI gives you a fluid, useful answer, what's actually happening underneath?

Calling it "reasoning like a human" overstates what we can verify. Calling it "just statistical pattern matching" might understate what's happening inside models whose internals we can only partially interpret. The honest answer is that nobody fully knows yet.

Here's where it gets interesting. How much of human intuition is itself pattern recognition, dressed up as judgment? When a clinician spots something off in a scan within seconds, or a lawyer senses a weak argument before they can articulate why, what is actually going on? If we can't cleanly define the human version, how confident can we really be about what's missing from the machine version?

These questions sit at the centre of real decisions. Whether we let AI decide or only assist. Where liability lands when it gets things wrong. How regulators approach systems they don't yet fully understand.

Professor Michael Small (Director, UWA Data Institute) and Jeroen van Dalen (Founder, AITAI) will sit with these open questions and see where they lead. Expect curiosity and sharper questions rather than tidy conclusions.

LaunchLAB Showcase

The LaunchLAB AI Showcase is the culmination of our 10-week accelerator program, a celebration of what each cohort has built and a launchpad for what comes next.

Participants take the stage to pitch their AI startups and share the progress they've made throughout the program, presenting to an audience of industry leaders, government representatives, academic partners, and potential investors.

The Showcase is designed to do more than mark a milestone. It connects early-stage AI founders with the stakeholders best positioned to support their growth, opening doors to funding, partnerships, mentorship, and market access.

It's a front-row look at the next wave of AI ventures being built in Western Australia.

Roundtable on AI Policy for Economic Impact

The Roundtable on AI Policy for Economic Impact convened senior leaders from government, industry, academia, and economics to address a practical question: how does Western Australia translate AI into productivity, better services, stronger capability, and lasting local value?

Co-hosted by AITAI and the WA Data Science Innovation Hub (WADSIH), and opened by AITAI Founder Jeroen van Dalen, the roundtable was MC'd by Hannah Fitzhardinge MAICD and brought together deep insights from Jeroen van Dalen (Founder, AITAI), Hon Dr Parwinder Kaur MLC, Sharath Sriram, Alex Jenkins, Jess Bukowski, Aidan Morgan, Nicole Lockwood, Alan Duncan, and representatives from the Department of Energy and Economic Diversification (DEED) and Treasury.

The conversation was set against a fast-moving global backdrop. AI investment is running at a scale the world hasn't seen before, firm-level productivity gains are beginning to show in the data, and capability continues to advance across reasoning, coding, and increasingly physical work. At the same time, adoption remains uneven and the broader economic picture is still coming into focus.

Western Australia brings genuine structural advantages to this moment - energy, land, and an industry mix where AI and robotics have direct application in mining, METS, agriculture, and logistics. Whether those advantages translate into outcomes depends on the foundations being built now: adoption readiness, institutional capability, talent pipelines, and the bridge between research and industry.

The discussion drew on a briefing note prepared by AITAI, AI Policy for Economic Impact, which sets out the evidence base, a 3×2 scenario framework for plausible AI futures, and the strategic positioning questions facing WA.

AI: Productivity, Power & Prosperity

AI: Productivity, Power & Prosperity

What happens when frontier models collide with hard industry problems? Compute, talent density, regulatory lag, how will these shape WA’s future? Two tech nerds go deep on the fears and the fantasies, pulling apart what’s hype, what’s real, and what choices we still have left to make.

Hear from two leaders in AI as they debate… well actually we don’t know what they will say:

• Jeroen Van Dalen Founder, technologist, chief tinkerer of all things AI. Back in December 2026 he made 14 AI predictions. How’d he do? ✓ 10 spot on 🟡 2 on the way ❌ 2 still loading Basically: the guy to listen to when the future is speeding toward us.

• Alex Jenkins Director at WA Data Science Innovation Hub, an advocate for Applied AI across Industry, Government Sectors, Academic Research, Health and Education.

Join the conversation shaping WA’s future. Because when it comes to AI, the questions matter just as much as the answers.

Architects of Our AI Future: AITAI Launch Dinner

On the evening of 11 March, leaders from academia, industry and the broader innovation community came together at St Catherine's College to mark a milestone: the official launch of AITAI - the Australian Institute of Transformation and AI.

The event, Architects of Our AI Future, was more than a celebration. It was a signal that Western Australia is ready to take an active role in shaping how AI is adopted - responsibly, productively, and with purpose.

A Night of Vision and Conversation

The evening was led by Fiona Crowe and AITAI Founder and Director Jeroen van Dalen, whose vision and leadership have been central to bringing the Institute to life.

We were honoured to have Hon Stephen Dawson MLC officially open the event, setting the tone for a night of ambitious and grounded conversation about the future we want to build together.

Keynote addresses followed from three distinguished voices in science and policy. Hon Dr Parwinder Kaur MLC spoke to the intersection of technology, policy and community. Professor Sharath Sriram, Chief Scientist of Western Australia, shared his perspective on the state's role in the national AI landscape. Professor Zachary Aman explored the practical challenges and opportunities of AI adoption across sectors.

Each speaker brought a different lens, but a shared conviction: that WA has a meaningful role to play in Australia's AI future, and that now is the time to act.

From the Floor

One of the highlights of the evening was the quality of discussion from the floor. We thank Alex Jenkins, Cara Fugill, Elizabeth Knight, Hannah Fitzhardinge MAICD, Mark Stickells AM, Josh Snow and Caitlin McKeown for their thoughtful remarks and questions, which reflected the depth and diversity of the AITAI community.

The conversation ranged widely, from how organisations actually adopt AI, to the role of education, research and industry collaboration in building WA's capability. It was exactly the kind of exchange AITAI was created to foster.

What AITAI Is Building

AITAI has been growing at pace. Since establishing our home at St Catherine's College, we've launched a series of programs designed to move AI adoption from conversation into action: an AI Adoption Research Program studying how organisations actually adopt AI; an AITAI Fellows Program engaging academics and industry professionals in applied AI leadership; LaunchLAB AI, Australia's first AI incubator supporting early-stage AI builders; and a Frontier Community bringing together practitioners, researchers and leaders working at the edge of what's possible with AI.

We're also building meaningful collaborations with The University of Western Australia, Curtin University and North Metropolitan TAFE, partnerships that will help ensure AI capability grows across the ecosystem.

Thank You

None of this would have been possible without St Catherine's College, Fiona Crowe and the St Catherine's College Board, whose belief in AITAI's mission has given the Institute the foundation it needed to launch.

Thank you to every person who joined us on the night, and to all those whose support, encouragement and hard work have helped bring AITAI to life.

We're just getting started.

AI Research Roundtable

AITAI hosted a research-focused AI roundtable at St Catherine’s College, Perth, bringing together academic researchers and industry representatives to strengthen Western Australia’s AI ecosystem. The session focused on developing a common voice for the state’s research community and sharing updates on ongoing AI projects.

Participants discussed collaboration opportunities, alignment on priorities, and ways to strengthen collective representation at national and international levels, with a strong emphasis on translating research into real-world impact.

We thank the following research leaders for their valuable contributions: Paul Maginn, Melanie Johnston-Hollitt, Renee Hallam, Alex Jenkins, Tom Ridsdill-Smith, Justin Strharsky, Sonny Pham, Zachary Aman, and Michael Small.

San Francisco AI Mission Roundtable – WA Leaders Briefing

AITAI brought together Western Australian AI leaders at St Catherine’s College for the second San Francisco AI Mission roundtable. The session focused on preparing WA representatives for the AI Engineer World’s Fair in June, strengthening international connections, and aligning on how to showcase the state’s AI ecosystem globally. Participants discussed building long-term partnerships, capturing market insights, and returning with opportunities to support WA’s future AI growth.