Karina Collins

Deloitte has been caught blatantly using AI to generate reports for commissioned consulting projects and will now repay the Albanese government after using AI in a $440,000 report, a fact uncovered by a professor on the government committee.It’s not about one firm or one government. Governments across the world should be cautious about blindly trusting consultants who are often not subject-matter experts, but rather glorified salespeople.

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Deloitte will issue a partial refund to the Australian Federal Government after admitting that AI had been used in the creation of a $440,000 report littered with errors, including three non-existent academic references and a fabricated quote from a Federal Court judgment. It’s a headline that lands right at the heart of the transformation happening across the Professional Services industry. AI can now analyse summarise and even simulate insight at scale. But what it can’t yet do is know when to stop. When to question. When to say: ‘this doesn’t seem right.’ For all the talk of automation, this story is a reminder that the value of human advisors isn’t disappearing, it’s being redefined. AI will take thousands of junior roles in Professional Services firms, but senior judgement and quality assurance remain the last line of defence. In an era where a single model can generate a thousand pages of analysis almost instantly, the firms that win won’t just be those that move faster, they’ll be the ones that still think deeply. And this is exactly where the next generation of Partners will earn their keep. The best will become orchestrators, pairing technology’s scale with human discernment. They’ll know how to deploy AI inside the workflow without losing control of the narrative. Because when the model does the work, but the human still owns the outcome, that’s where trust, and value, still live.

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Federal Roundtable Risks Missing the $116 Billion AI Prize The Australian Treasurer’s Economic Reform Roundtable begins today, and it’s already overlooking the single biggest lever for productivity this century: Artificial Intelligence. From the steam engine to the internet, every major leap in productivity has been driven by technology. AI is the next, and perhaps the most transformative, step. The Productivity Commission estimates Australia could gain $116 billion if we accelerate AI adoption. Yet when Treasurer Jim Chalmers gathers a star-studded guest list in Canberra, few in the room will have the expertise to speak with authority on the AI challenge. This is not a minor omission. And I will find it particularly ironic if the 900 submissions have been summarised by Generative AI, instead of having a credible resource in the room. Australia’s problem is not that we lack access to AI tools, it’s that we don’t trust them. Not as individuals, not as consumers, and certainly not in the C-suite. The evidence is stark. A recent KPMG and University of Melbourne study of 48,000 people across 47 countries found Australia ranked dead last in believing AI’s benefits outweigh its risks - just 30 per cent of Australians agreed. Without trust, adoption (and productivity) will stall. Trust rests on two pillars: transparency and data sovereignty. Transparency means knowing what data an AI model was trained on, how it was obtained, and what biases are embedded. That’s not information we will get from a US mega-tech provider - not now, not ever. Data sovereignty means ensuring Australian data stays under Australian control, from storage to processing. Many “onshore” AI services quietly send your information offshore for processing on GPUs located in the US, Brazil or beyond. Most Australians have no idea this is happening. If we want teachers, doctors, lawyers - anyone in critical roles - to embrace AI, they must know the systems they use are trained on Australian-relevant data and their inputs never leave our jurisdiction. This is achievable through sovereign models and federated learning, where data is used for training without ever leaving the state in which it resides. Tesla chair Robyn Denholm is right to warn that we are still in “inning zero” of the AI game and that if we only adopt AI, we might see a $115 billion benefit, but if we build and own the technology, the returns could be ten times greater. That future won’t happen without urgent action now. Yet none of this will reach the Treasurer’s ears if the right voices aren’t in the room. By ignoring AI trust, the roundtable risks squandering the $116 billion productivity prize. If we fail to act now, Australia will fall further behind and no amount of post-summit spin will disguise that failure.

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At the AFR Business Summit earlier this year, I spoke about the value of starting small with AI, building momentum and delivering impact with measurable outcomes. That same approach was front and centre in our discussion with SAP at Government Innovation Day, featured in The Mandarin’s latest article on agentic AI in the public sector. The opportunity for governments is clear: modernise without major disruption, integrate AI into existing systems, and focus on practical results - from aligning budgets with sustainability goals to improving citizen services through faster and more transparent decisions. Thanks to Ryan van Leent, Dr. Chris Nokkentved and Denise Lucero for the meaningful discussion that affirms how small steps in AI adoption can lead to big change. Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/gminiuF6 DXC Technology Richard James #WeAreDXC

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