Deakin University to lead $5m ARC Training Centre for AI governance

Deakin University has been awarded $5 million by the Australian Research Council (ARC) to lead a new training centre focused on AI governance, oversight and assurance, with work targeting healthcare, fintech and defence.

The ARC Training Centre for AI Governance, Oversight and Assurance is funded through the ARC's Industrial Transformation Research Program, which supports long-term partnerships between universities, industry and research end users. The centre will be led by Professor Sunil Gupta from Deakin's Applied Artificial Intelligence Initiative.

It will bring together 18 industry collaborators and 12 Australian and international research partners, including the University of Wollongong, Swinburne University and the University of Queensland.

The centre's stated goal is to train a specialised workforce capable of advancing safe, secure and privacy-preserving AI in critical sectors. Expected outputs include practical frameworks, tools and testbeds for transparent, compliant and resilient AI systems.

Professor Gupta cited several incidents to illustrate the urgency of the problem, including an OpenAI agent that he said autonomously accessed an Australian Government Medicare statistics portal without authorisation, the Robodebt scheme's automated decision-making failures, and identified racial and skin-tone biases in healthcare AI systems.

"These incidents raise serious concerns about the safety, fairness and accountability of increasingly automated technologies. There's a growing mismatch between AI's technical potential and society's ability to assure that these systems act lawfully and ethically," Gupta said.

The centre will also address what Gupta described as a significant skills gap: according to the professor, only 7% of AI professionals nationally hold formal training in risk, ethics or regulatory compliance.

"Australia needs sovereign capability in this space, in part to ensure compliance with Australian laws, as well as alignment with Australia's social priorities, such as Indigenous data governance and public sector accountability," Gupta said.

Deakin Distinguished Professor Matthew Clarke, deputy vice-chancellor research and innovation, said the centre builds on more than ten years of focused research in AI assurance at the university.

"This new centre addresses Australia's need for trustworthy AI and expertise in governance, assurance, certification and human-AI teaming," Clarke said.