A fascinating forum was held by Maddocks in Canberra on 16 March 2018 in which an eminent panel discussed the convergence of different elements in the digital domain, from cyber security and data to artificial intelligence (AI), and what that means for us personally and professionally.

The panel discussion was facilitated by Maddocks special counsel Russell Wilson. The panel consisted of:

• Professor Genevieve Bell, cultural anthropologist, technologist and futurist who has worked on the intersection of cultural practice and technology development. Prof. Bell delivered the 2017 Boyer Lectures on ‘Fast, Smart and Connected: What it is to be Human, and Australian, in a digital world.’ She is currently a Distinguished Professor at the ANU, Director of the 3A Institute and Senior Fellow at Intel.
• Lieutenant General John Frewen AM, a career infantry officer who has had significant operational command in Rwanda, the Solomon Islands and the Middle East before recently taking up duty as the Principal Deputy Director of the Australian Signals Directorate.
• Professor Roger Bradbury, a complex systems scientist who trained as a zoologist and now researches and writes on statecraft and strategy in cyberspace at the ANU’s National Security College.

Some of the issues discussed at the forum were:

• the importance of data to the development of AI, and the potential of data monopolies;
• the role of government in helping to ‘join the dots’ for its citizens and leading by example;
• the treatment of data protection and privacy globally;
• the notion of active cyber defence by government to help protect its institutions and the public;
• what is cyberspace, what (if any) are the rules and how do states behave in this new domain compared to how they have behaved in relation to each other in other domains such as land, sea and air;
• how culture shapes our vision of technology, particularly the rise of AI;
• how does Government make decisions, particularly in a crisis, in an age of deliberate disinformation.

The key message is that whilst the future may look uncertain it is manageable (and optimistic), given that we have dealt with such disruption in the past, though not at this pace.