![\"Defence](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/ImageResizer.ashx.png\")
<\/p>\nKey points<\/p>\n
Defence has seen an absolute acceleration in AI application and adoption over the past three months, says chief AI and information officer Chris Crozier.
\nCrozier, appointed chief AI officer about 12 weeks ago, has interviewed over 60 Defence representatives actively engaged in applying artificial intelligence.
\nDefence currently relies on the Australian Signals Directorate to broker access to frontier AI models, though Crozier says a good open-source model plus an excellent harness can deliver a tremendous outcome.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Defence is three months into an \u201cabsolute acceleration\u201d in its adoption of artificial intelligence, coinciding with better internal coordination and early work under its AI chief.<\/p>\n
Speaking at a joint select committee hearing on AI on Friday, Defence\u2019s chief AI and information officer Chris Crozier indicated the department is seeing early results from an improved understanding of its AI work.<\/p>\n
Crozier, who was appointed CIO in mid-2023, is now also the department\u2019s chief AI officer, a shared responsibility he has held for about 12 weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn recognition of my role and it being a direct appointment from the [Defence] secretary as well as CDF [Chief of the Defence Force], and the absolute alignment that we have now across our entire leadership org around the impact of AI, we have seen an absolute acceleration in the last three months in terms of our application and adoption of AI technologies within the Defence organisation,\u201d Crozier said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNot to say that we were not working at pace, but it is very clear that we absolutely need to be working within the organisation and with the best organisations and our Five Eyes partners for offensive and defensive elements of this [technology].\u201d<\/p>\n
Crozier said that in his first three months as AI chief, he – alongside others within the department – had \u201cinterviewed over 60 representatives within Defence that are actively engaged in the application of artificial intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a comprehensive portfolio now of our engagements around that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy role is to ensure that we have coherence, that we understand from a warfighting perspective as well as a business productivity perspective the elements associated with the technology we\u2019re utilising, the architecture, the capabilities we\u2019re developing and how we\u2019re then generating the results that can then scale.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crozier said that Defence is presently relying on the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) to broker access to frontier AI models.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are exquisite capabilities within frontier models that are absolutely essential to maintain the sovereignty of this nation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s imperative that we maintain our relationships with those organisations that provide frontier models.<\/p>\n
\u201cASD has that clear pathway at this point in time, [and] Defence will leverage the models.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, he noted that they \u201care not the be-all and end-all\u201d when it comes to achieving good outcomes from AI.<\/p>\n
\u201cA good [open-source, open weight] model plus an excellent \u2018harness\u2019 [the software scaffolding connecting the model to an organisation\u2019s systems and data] will give you a tremendous outcome,\u201d he said, adding that \u201cat an aggregate level that\u2019s where we\u2019re focusing within Defence.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Key points Defence has seen an absolute acceleration in AI application and adoption over the past three months,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":949446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-949445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=949445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/949446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}