AI is becoming autonomous. That changes more than the technology.
Cory Alpert is a writer and researcher focused on AI, autonomy, and the future of decision-making. His work looks at the shift towards autonomous systems that can decide and act on their own, and what that means for markets, power, and the law.
Cory has worked inside government in the Executive Office of the President in the White House. He researches technology and democracy at the University of Melbourne. He has reported from Ukraine about autonomous systems, battlefield data, and the emerging autonomy economy.
His work also looks across the Pacific, where technological sovereignty and dependence and strategic competition are shaping the choices facing companies and governments.
Cory's writing has appeared in major outlets like the Sydney Morning Herald, Straits Times, and Japan Times - where he writes regular columns. He has also written for the MIT Technology Review, Boston Globe, Haaretz, Kyiv Independent, the Guardian, and more. He is also a frequent analyst for the Lowy Institute, Australia's leading foreign policy think tank.
He speaks to corporate, government, and defence audiences about what happens when machines move from advising humans to acting on our behalf - and how leaders should think about the authority and capability they are beginning to delegate.
Talking Points
Leadership, Power, & Responsibility in the Age of Autonomous Systems
AI is doing much more than generating information. Organizations are giving machines the authority to act with less direct human involvement. Leadership, Power, & Responsibility in the Age of Autonomous Systems
That changes the questions leaders need to ask. They now need to ask themselves what authority they should delegate. What human authority should remain? Who is responsible when an autonomous system produces an outcome that nobody explicitly chose? And how does leadership change when consequential decisions are now distributed between people and machines.
This talk shows why the next stage of AI will be defined by what machines can do, and what we allow them to do on our behalf.
The Autonomy Economy: how autonomous systems are changing where power and value reside
AI is reorganizing markets around systems that can decide and act on their own. The Autonomy Economy: how autonomous systems are changing where power and value reside
From AI agents to frontline drones gathering millions of hours of real-world data, new sources of economic value are emerging around the ability to train and deploy autonomous systems. The consequences extend from corporate strategy to national security: data acquired for one purpose can create capabilities somewhere else. Private companies increasingly control important infrastructure, and the line between civilian and military hardware is becoming harder to maintain.
This talk examines the autonomy economy, and what it means for companies deciding where future competitive advantage, dependency, and power will lie.
Geopolitics of AI
Both the United States and China are using their dominance over the AI industry to build alliances and dependencies across the world. This is happening while autonomous systems are able to create consequential effects without corresponding political decisions. The nature of geopolitical power is changing when capability, action, and intention no longer hold together, and when private companies now have as much power as countries in some places.
Geopolitics of AI
The New Economics of War
Modern wars are producing something previous generations of conflict could not: vast quantities of machine-readable data capable of training the next generation of autonomous systems. The New Economics of War
Ukraine already provides the clearest view of what this will be. Drones generate data from conditions that would be massively expensive or impossible to reproduce in the lab. These data have value far beyond the battlefield, while many of the technologies learning from them move between civilian and military markets.
This talk examines what happens when a conflict becomes part of the supply chain for the AI economy: who captures the resulting value, how dual-use technology changes the relationship between defence and industry, and why the economics of autonomy may become as consequential as the weapons themselves.
AI, Sovereignty, & the Pacific
The world's most important AI systems are concentrated in just a handful of companies in two countries on either side of the Pacific. That creates a new strategic problem for their neighbors: how much autonomy can governments and businesses retain when increasingly consequential capabilities are built elsewhere. AI, Sovereignty, & the Pacific
This talk explores the emerging politics of technological dependence across the region. It explains how governments are pursuing sovereign AI capabilities, how US-China competition is reshaping those commercial choices, and what happens when private technology companies possess capabilities once associated solely with nations.
For companies operating in the region, these aren't abstract academic questions. They affect investment, infrastructure, regulation, supply chains, and the technologies that organizations can rely on.
America in the Indo-Pacific
Building on Cory's experience at the highest levels of the US Government across the region, this keynote covers the changing nature of state relationships in the region. Relationships are changing - from only working in relation to Washington, countries in the Indo-Pacific are increasingly working together as they face China's rise. Economics and alliance management are increasingly the same thing in that environment. Uncertainty around American power is driving massive changes in how publics and markets are adapting as the Pacific emerges as the world's economic center.
America in the Indo-Pacific
What Should we Never Delegate to AI?
AI systems are increasingly capable of acting independently. Organizations now face the question of which decisions should remain human. What Should we Never Delegate to AI?
Companies are beginning to delegate consequential work to autonomous systems. But the boundary between useful automation and genuine authority is rarely explicit. Who can commit the organization? Who can make an irrevocable decision? When should efficiency give way to human responsibility?
This talk guides how leaders can think about the boundary between human and machine agency and why deciding where that line sits is one of the defining questions of leadership in the modern age.
Video
A new way to think about the role of AI and technology in society | System Error: a late night show
What if a public lecture felt more like a late-night talk show? We set out to rethink the format, bringing together academic insight, humour, audience participation and live music to ask big questions about the role of technology in our society. Hosted by social psychologist, writer, and PhD candidate Corey Alpert, this thought-provoking conversation unpacks new ways of thinking about AI and the role it’s playing in our democracy.
