2026 Forum

AI Safety Forum 2026

7–8 July 2026 · Holme Building, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

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SPEAKERS

2026 speakers

Speakers at the AI Safety Forum 2026.

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Andrew Charlton

Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy, Australian Government

Kimberlee Weatherall

Professor of Law, The University of Sydney

Tiberio Caetano

Chief Scientist, Gradient Institute

Helen Toner

Executive Director, Center for Security and Emerging Technology

Liming Zhu

Research Director, CSIRO

Kate Conroy

General Manager, AI Safety Institute

Karl Berzins

Co-founder & President, FAR.AI

Johanna Weaver

Executive Director and Co-Founder, Tech Policy Design Institute

Toby Walsh

Chief Scientist, UNSW's AI Institute

Beba Cibralic

Professor of Policy Analysis, RAND School of Public Policy

Peter Lewis

Host and provocateur, Burning Platforms

Lizzie O'Shea

Founder and chair, Digital Rights Watch

Anton Leicht

Fellow, Carnegie Endowment’s Technology & International Affairs

Kate Chaney

Independent Member for Curtin, Australian Federal Parliament

Alexander Saeri

Director, AI Risk Initiative, MIT FutureTech

Emily Grundy

Senior Policy Analyst, Good Ancestors

Greg Sadler

CEO, Good Ancestors

Jason Schultz

Professor, NYU School of Law

Jisoo Kim

Director + Co-Founder, ClearAI

Joel Pearson

Neuroscientist & Neuro Futurist, UNSW

Luke Thorburn

Research Fellow, AI & Democracy Foundation

Rashina Hoda

Professor of Software Engineering, Director of HumanAISE Lab, Associate Dean Equity Diversity and Inclusion, Monash University

Henry Fraser

Lecturer, QUT School of Law

Erica Mealy

Discipline Lead, Technology & Senior Lecturer in Computer Science, University of the Sunshine Coast

Sharif Abuadbba

Team Lead, Distrubuted Systems Security, CSIRO

Liam Carroll

Researcher, Gradient Institute

Amanda Tay

Banking Executive, ING

Alistair Reid

Head of Research Engineering, Gradient Institute

Ming Ding

Group Leader, CSIRO

Guzyal Hill

Special Counsel | AI Governance Chair, HWLE Lawyers

Rohan Hitchcock

Research Scientist, Resolution

Sean Peters

Founder & Researcher, Lyptus Research

Bernadette Hyland-Wood

AI Researcher, Queensland University of Technology

Devon Whittle

Australia Director, Global Shield Australia

Austin Wyatt

Gemma Killen

Executive Director, Working with Women Alliance

Rajiv Shah

Jenine Beekhuyzen

Dr, Adroit Research

Dane Sherburn

Co-Founder and CEO, P-Zero Research

Rishabh Gupta

AI Safety Manager, Suncorp

Marina Yastreboff

President & Chair | General Counsel, AUSCL Australasian Society for Computers & Law | ServiceGen

Andrew Childs

Lecturer, Griffith University

Jack He

AI Policy Fellow, Institute for AI Policy and Strategy

Aaron Snoswell

Senior Research Fellow, AI Accountability, Queensland University of Technology GenAI Lab

Eunice Sari

Adj. Assoc. Professor and Director, UNSW | Western Australian AI Hub

Jamie Freestone

Independent researcher, Independent

Slava Chalnev

Technical Staff, Lyptus Research

Allan McCay

Co-director of The Sydney Institute of Criminology, Academic Fellow at the University of Sydney Law School and President of the Centre for Neurotechnology and Law, University of Sydney

Bernadette Harkin

Founder & Principal, Lucentis Advisory

Mohan Baruwal Chhetri

Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO

Jack Payne

Technical Staff, Lyptus Research

James Gauci

CEO & Founder, Cadent

Rebecca Johnson

Researcher, The University of Sydney

Chandra Thapa

Senior Research Scientist, CSIRO

Hugo O'Connor

R&D Software Engineer, Anuna Research

Peter Horniak

Director, PauseAI Australia

Angelica Chowdhury

Research Fellow - The Machine Intelligence and Normative Theory (MINT) Lab, Independent

Carie Vito

Strategic Account Leader, Public Sector - Federal Government, Datadog

Lachlan S

Michael Clark

Independent Researcher

Maddison Reynolds

Student, La Trobe University

Stephen Elliott

Research Director, Gigascale Laboratories

Carl Bufe

Director, GxPVigilance

Andrew McAlister

Public Officer, MapleTreeAI

Tori Foster

Student, La Trobe University

William Smith

Project Assistant, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research (ANU)

Avinash Singh

Senior Lecturer and Director, Human Augmentation Lab, University Of Technology Sydney

Rohan Sachdeva

Student, La Trobe University

Videos

Welcome and Opening Logistics

Liam Carroll

Opening Keynote from Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy

Andrew Charlton

Opening Keynote on International AI Safety Report

Liming Zhu

Opening Keynote on AI Science

Tiberio Caetano

Opening Keynote on AI Policy & Governance

Kimberlee Weatherall

Who Determines What Safe Is? Gender, Diversity and Power in the Future of AI

Johanna Weaver, Gemma Killen, Rashina Hoda

Embedding AI Impact Assessment into Undergraduate Education

Erica Mealy, James Gauci

The Case for Mandatory AI Monitoring & Incident Reporting

Devon Whittle

The Law Already Sees You: Govern AI Accordingly

Guzyal Hill

What are the top risks from AI?

Alexander Saeri

Towards higher confidence in alignment

Rohan Hitchcock

AI & National Security for Middle Powers

Austin Wyatt

Will the real FraudGPT please stand up? Dark AI and Cybercrime Markets

Andrew Childs

Building AI Data Centres: What's in it for Australia and for AI safety?

Emily Grundy

Near-term AI policy priorities for the Federal Government

Kate Chaney

Practical steps towards democracy fit for a world with AI

Luke Thorburn

Sovereign by Design: Ethics and Governance for Australia's National Health AI Infrastructure

Bernadette Hyland-Wood

Incoherent Values? Probing LLM Preferences Through Parametric Variation

Angelica Chowdhury

Multi-agent systems across organisational boundaries

Alistair Reid

AI safety should prioritise democracy

Jamie Freestone

Friend or Foe? AI's Double-Edged Impact on Cybersecurity

Sharif Abuadbba

Rethinking the AI Race: Why AI Policy Needs More China Expertise

Jack He

Australia's AI Safety Institute

Kate Conroy

A Formal Approach to Multi-Agent Communication Safety

Aaron Snoswell, Hugo O'Connor

Closing the Safety Gap: Lessons from FAR.AI, and Australia's Opportunities

Karl Berzins

AI Scribes in Primary Healthcare Settings

Lizzie O'Shea

AI Political Economy, Geopolitical Role of Middle Powers

Anton Leicht

Offensive Cybersecurity Time Horizons

Sean Peters

A Scientist, A Believer, a Sceptic and a Diplomat: What Should AI Safety Prioritise Now?

Johanna Weaver, Sean Peters, Lizzie O'Shea, Greg Sadler

Neurotechnology, neural democratisation and AI safety

Allan McCay, Avinash Singh, Michael Bain

Decoding the language AI Safety: What is being said to Australians?

Andrew McAlister

The Governance Gap: What the Safety Report Doesn't Tell Boards

Bernadette Harkin

AI Assurance in Clinical Contexts

Carl Bufe

Recursive Self-Improvement: When AI Builds Itself

Toby Walsh, Tiberio Caetano, Dane Sherburn, Anna Goldsworthy

Beyond the Model Boundary: A Systems Perspective on AI Safety

Chandra Thapa

Pausing the Frontier

Peter Horniak

Who Are We Actually Keeping Safe?

Eunice Sari

Safety for the First Billion Agents

Stephen Elliott

In conversation: Anna Goldsworthy on "The God We Made: The Threat and Promise of AI"

Anna Goldsworthy, Liam Carroll

Trusted Trade and the AI Stack

William Smith

Technical Advantages for Weak-to-Strong Oversight: Bets I'd Like Challenged

Michael Clark

AI Verification - A Role of Middle Powers

Zac Richardson

Industry Panel: Safe and Responsible AI Adoption

Jisoo Kim, Rajiv Shah, Rishabh Gupta, Amanda Tay

Societal Resilience & AI Change Management

Joel Pearson

AI Character Drift Under Automated R&D

Slava Chalnev, Jack Payne

Responsibility Across the AI Value Chain

Henry Fraser

AI on Trial: The US Copyright Fights

Jason Schultz

Responsible AI Adoption in Public Sector Auditing

Ming Ding

Tiberio Caetano, Greg Sadler, Kimberlee Weatherall, Peter Lewis, Johanna Weaver

Program

Browse the full 2026 schedule — every session, speaker and workshop.

View the 2026 program →

SUPPORT

Sponsors & partners

Funded by

The views expressed herein are not necessarily the views of the Commonwealth of Australia, and the Commonwealth of Australia does not accept responsibility for any information or advice contained herein.

ORGANISERS

Organising committee

Gradient Institute

Tiberio Caetano

Chief Scientist

Beba Cibralic

Policy Researcher

Daniel Murfet

Research Director

Greg Sadler

CEO

University of Sydney (Centre for AI, Trust and Governance)

Kimberlee Weatherall

Co-Director

Liming Zhu

Director