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What is AI Agency?

AI agency is a country’s power to shape its AI future. It’s the capacity to steer outcomes, protect and promote national interests, and capture value in a globally connected technological system.

What is the AI Agency Tool?

This is the first comprehensive, independent, expert-led assessment of Australia’s AI capabilities, created with a new global benchmarking methodology – the AI Agency Tool.

Video explainers

Quick explainer: the AI Agency Tool
Insiders: On Background – Johanna Weaver with David Speers
Tech Mirror: Johanna Weaver & Zoe Jay Hawkins on the AI Agency Tool

Step 1: Define

AI Typology

The AI typology defines the AI ecosystem as a system of 103 capabilities across 6 layers:

  • 3 technical layers that form the AI stack (infrastructure and resources; data assets and lifecycle management; and models and applications)
  • 3 enabling layers that encircle it (innovation and adoption; skills; and governance).

See the AI Agency Tool Process flow chart below.

Step 2: Assess today

National Stocktake

The AI Agency Tool starts by conducting a national stocktake to produce a maturity rating for all 103 AI capabilities in the AI typology.

Sovereignty Spectrum

It then situates the traditional binary objective of sovereign control over those capabilities within an expanded spectrum that is fit for purpose in today’s strategic landscape. The spectrum covers access to world leading capabilities (access); domestic ownership of key capabilities (sovereign control); the importance of resilience (choice); and pursuit of international competitive advantage (export leverage). We call this the sovereignty spectrum. An assessment of each element of the spectrum produces a sovereignty rating.

Agency score

The maturity and sovereignty ratings, and an assessment of a capability’s global scarcity, are then combined into a single view to produce an AI agency score – a measure of national competitive advantage for each AI capability.

Step 3: Prioritise tomorrow

Recommended Actions

The final step of the Tool produces recommended actions by combining maturity, sovereignty, scarcity and subjective considerations of public interest importance. This enables leaders to prioritise next steps and maximise international leverage where agency is high, or to close critical gaps in the public interest.

AI Agency Tool Process

AI Agency Tool methodology flow chart

Want to learn more about the methodology? Read the full report.

Download the Report