Professor Mary-Anne Williams
Professor
Stanford Executive Program (SEP), Stanford Graduate School of Business, 2016
Master听of Laws (LL.M.), Innovation, Law and Technology, University of Edinburgh, 2008
PhD, Artificial Intelligence, University of Sydney, 1994
Master of Science, Computer Science, 1991
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Business School
School of Management and Governance
Professor Mary-Anne Williams is Founder and Lead for the and Deputy Director of the . Her research area is decision-making with a focus on Human-Centred AI, Human-Aligned AI, Strategic Management of Human-AI Agent Collaboration and Innovation, multi-AI-agent orchestration, dynamic capabilities, AI innovation, design,听knowledge representation and reasoning, innovation management, innovation strategy, business model innovation and venture.听
She designs major programs of study such as the innovation, strategy and entrepreneurship major in the Bachelor of Commerce, MBA and postgraduate innovation courses and teaches corporate innovation at the AGSM (Australian Graduate School of Management). Mary-Anne designs and delivers innovation and AI MasterClasses to specialists and broad audiences.
Mary-Anne's national and international standing is evidenced by election in 2022 as a Fellow to , the听Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the international peak body for AI. Fellow status in AAAI is a rare international distinction with only six Australians AAAI Fellows alongside Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, and Yoshua Bengio, pioneers like John McCarthy, who coined the term 鈥淎rtificial Intelligence鈥 and founded the Stanford AI Lab (Mary-Anne has a joint publication with McCarthy), Marvin Minsky, early AI pioneer in neural nets at MIT, Edward Feigenbaum (inventor of Expert Systems, and Chief Scientist in the US Airforce).
Mary-Anne is also a Fellow of the (ATSE) and the . She has received major accolades and prizes including the Australasian AI Research Contribution Award and multiple competitive industry awards (3xGoogle Faculty Awards and an IBM Faculty Award), underscoring both scholarly excellence and real-world relevance.听chair the Digital Futures Forum at ATSE alongside incredibly inspiring leaders like David Thodey, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, Shazia Sadiq and others.
She has received major research accolades and prizes including the 听awarded by the听Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia (CORE),听, Human-AI interaction awards in 2017 and 2018, and multiple competitive industry awards including three Google Faculty Awards in 2019, 2021 and 2026 and an IBM Faculty Award, underscoring her scholarly excellence and real-world impact.
Mary-Anne lead more than a dozen research teams to success in international competitions, including winning scientific challenges, human-AI collaboration design awards, and the 2019 Social Robotics World Championships.听 Her industry and government partners included Roche, EY, IBM, Google, Disrupt, Linkedin,听听(previously Willow Garage), Amazon, Visual Risk, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Denmark's National Bank, Samsung, Sony, and Softbank.
Beyond academia, she guides and invests in startups globally and currently serves on advisory boards for through 15x Ventures and Cipherstash, an extraordinary Australian startup pioneering encryption in use. I am a Board Member of the , on the Advisory Board for the , and on the Innovation Reference Group for (SWSLHD).
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E-mail
Location
School of Management and Governance
91色情片 Business School
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AUSTRALIAN RESEARCH COUNCIL GRANTS
- Australia Research Council Discovery Project 2016 - 2018 $380,000;听Project Title: Robust Intelligence: Rational Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty; Chief Investigator: Mary-Anne Williams; Partners: Peter G盲rdenfors (Lund University, Sweden), Henri Prade (CNRS); Summary: Intelligent agents exercise profound and growing impact in business and society. However, significant problems arise in intelligent agent deployment as their theoretical underpinnings do not ensure rational decision making in complex real-world settings. This project will bridge the gap between theory and practice with an innovative framework for rational decision making under risk and uncertainty. It will open听the door to听transformational technologies that will drive new entrepreneurial opportunities in agent-based global services.
- Australia Research Council Linkage Project 2012 - 2014 $335,000 + significant in-kind support; Project Title: A Framework for Physical and Social Collaboration: Towards the Smarter Planet Vision; Chief Investigators: Mary-Anne Williams, and Benjamin Johnston; Partner: IBM Australia;听Summary: This project developed a new approach to intelligent collaborative technologies by advancing the theory of collaborative action and developing an innovative framework and practical methods which will allow intelligent systems to undertake the collaborative actions required for applications in transport, energy management, sustainability, and healthcare.
- Australia Research Council Discovery Project 2012 - 2014 $320,000; Project Title: Adaptive Cyber-Physical Technologies with Attention Driven Common-sense Behaviours; Chief Investigator: Mary-Anne Williams; Partner Investigator: Peter G盲rdenfors (Lund University, Sweden);听Summary: This project focused on intelligent cyber-physical systems for open, complex and changing environments presents enormous scientific challenges. It developed an innovative framework, methods and tools that provide cyber-physical technologies with attention based common-sense capabilities for adapting to new, unexpected and unforeseen situations.
- Australia Research Council Linkage Project 2011 - 2014 $280,000 + significant in kind support; Project Title: Establishing a Next Generation Framework to Determine the Influence of Intelligent Water Metering on Householder Attitudes and Behaviours;听Chief Investigators: Stuart B White, Rodney A Stewart, Mary-Anne Williams, Damien P Giurco, Kelvin R O'Hallora;听Partners: Mid Coast Water and the Institute of Sustainable Futures; Summary: This project tested competing theories on how householders respond to interactive water consumption data from smart meters. The outcome is a novel framework for intelligent water management; underpinned by innovative research into causal mechanisms linking data communication to knowledge, and the impact of knowledge on attitudes and behaviours.
- Australia Research Council Discovery Project 2008 - 2011 $270,000; Project Title: Developing and Managing Sustainable Technology-enabled Innovation Capabilities; Chief Investigators: Steve Elliot (University of Sydney) and Mary-Anne Williams;听Summary: This project helped organisations develop sustainable innovation capabilities using disruptive technologies.
- Australia Research Council Discovery Project 2007 - 2011 $340,000; Project Title: Planning, Communication, and Collaboration in Cognitive Systems; Chief Investigator: Mary-Anne Williams; Partner: Peter G盲rdenfors (Lund University, Sweden);听Summary: This project developed a better understanding of collaboration in complex environments.
- Australia Research Council Discovery Project 2004 鈥 2007 $150,000; Project Title: Intelligent Agent and Semantic Web empowered eFinance: A Knowledge Management Approach to enable and sustain Innovation; Chief Investigators: Mary-Anne Williams and Steve Elliot (University of Sydney) Partner: Dieter Fensel (University of Innsbruck, Austria); Summary: This research project made strong theoretical advances by developing an integrated and scalable knowledge engineering approach to the problems confronting Australian Industry.
- Australia Research Council Discovery Project 2002 鈥 2006 $200,000;听Project Title: Agent-Oriented Concept Management;听Chief Investigator: Mary-Anne Williams; Partner: Peter G盲rdenfors (Lund University, Sweden); Summary: In order for agents to communicate effectively they must share concepts, and attribute the same meaning to shared concepts. We developed a innovative approach to concept management a new area of research with important application to intelligent systems.
- Australia Research Council Project听2000 - 2003 $200,000;听Project Title: Information and Knowledge Integration; Chief Investigator: Mary-Anne Williams; Partner: Grigoris Antoniou (University of Crete, Greece);听Summary: One of the key issues in global information infrastructures like the World Wide Web and enterprise networks is the ability to combine information from different sources in meaningful ways.
- Australia Research Council Project 1998 - 2001 $180,000; Project Title: Exception-Tolerant Information Systems for Managing Uncertain Information; Chief Investigators: Mary-Anne Williams; Partners: Didier Dubois and Henri Prade (CNRS, France); Summary: This project designed and developed exception-tolerant techniques to allow business systems to perform effectively when using qualitatively uncertain information.
- Australia Research Council Project 1997 - 2000 $200,000; Project Title: Reasoning with Changing and Incomplete Information Project; Chief Investigators: Mary-Anne Williams and Grigoris Antoniou; Summary: Developed a decision making framework for handling decisions based on changing and incomplete information using techniques from Knowledge Representation and Reasoning.
- Australia Research Council Project 1996 - 1999 $170,000; Project Title: Entrenchment Based Reasoning about Action;听Chief Investigators: Norman Foo 91色情片, Pavlos Peppas and Mary-Anne Williams;听Summary: This project developed innovative algorithms for challenging planning problems that allowed for changing requirements.
听- AAAI is the international peak body for AI.
Most Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award, Enactus Australia 2022
Google International Faculty Award Machine Learning 2021-2022
Google International Faculty Award Machine Learning 2019 - 2020
2019
(ATSE), 2015
Fellow, Australian Computer Society (ACS), 2014
Pauli Fellowship, Austrian Ministry of Science and Research, 2008
,听2007
University of Edinburgh Law School Fellowship听Award 2006 - 2008
Commonwealth Fellowship Award, Australian Academy of Science 1996
British Council Fellowship Award听1996
Australasian Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation Award 1995 Comp Sc Association (CORE)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) that can enhance, improve and scale human expertise is dramatically changing and impacting our social and working lives, influencing how we perceive and interact with the physical and digital world.听
Society is rapidly moving into the AI-Age where individuals, citizens, societal groups, businesses, governments and the global economy increasingly rely on the perceptions, decisions and actions of AI.听
Human-Centred AI听is the study of how we might put humans at the centre of AI听
My听Human-Centred AI focuses on aligning Artificial Intelligence (AI) with human preferences and expectations.听The profound and rapid scientific advances in generative AI have led to a new generation of AI Agents that fundamentally change how humans can make discoveries, solve problems, complete tasks and innovate at scale. However, to deliver robust and dependable performance in real-world mission-critical innovation, trust is essential, and to realise the transformative benefits of AI, users want guarantees that AI outcomes align with their preferences and expectations.
AI agents can automate routine tasks and transform complex workflows, significantly improving productivity and innovation. However, AI agents, particularly generative AI agents, use unknown data, large complex statistical models and highly advanced software algorithms that are difficult for people to understand, even for their creators, who cannot fully explain decisions and actions. This lack of transparency and accountability creates significant risks with severe consequences for individuals, organisations, and society.
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Human-AI collaboration is the study of how humans and AI work together to accomplish tasks and shared goals.听
My research focuses on addressing the significant barriers and risks that prevent AI from delivering the extraordinary benefits it has the potential to generate. Today, AI can outperform humans in making predictions, but it cannot explain its predictions to humans. People are often unable to find the insights from black box AI technologies to fully realise the benefit of AI. Without insights and understanding, humans cannot demonstrate the extent to which AI algorithms are safe, fair and responsible. This is an urgent problem that needs to be solve. We need robust AI听solutions to unlock the benefits for business, society and humanity.
A related research focus is听explainable AI. Today, however, AI is not transparent or accountable, unable to explain perceptions, decisions and actions. AI that cannot explain its behaviour and decisions is a significant problem for business, government and society.听
People need explanations to develop trust and confidence in AI, execute AI recommendations, and accept AI actions and outcomes. Furthermore, regulators insist that business, industry and government demonstrate that their AI algorithms comply with the law. How will AI systems avoid discrimination against specific groups, and comply with anti-discrimination law?
My current focus is on developing new approaches to eXplainable AI (XAI) as a means of making AI more transparent, accountable, and trustworthy.听Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to have a profound impact on all aspects of business, government and civil society. To help bring more clarity and to explore potential solutions to the rapidly growing urgent issues, we launched the听听in 2018.
You can find one of my papers at the听听that outlines how Australia can lead in the new AI-driven world. It is provides a summary of a presentation to the four esteemed national academies at NSW Government House in Australia in November 2018.听
Expert in Residence, 听from 2024
Team Member, Sponsor and Judge, 听from 2023
Independent Board Member, (AusSRC) from 2023
Advisory Board, 听(Workforce, Innovation and Culture)听from 2023
Academic Advisory Board,
Advisory Board, 听from 2022
Advisory Board, 听with x15 Ventures from 2022
Deputy Director, 91色情片 AI Institute听from 2022
Chair, Digital Futures, (ATSE) from 2021
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My Research Supervision
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Alick Lui in the 91色情片 Business听School听on the topic of the impact of risk-averse decision-makers on innovation outcomes in organisations. 听 GRADUATED听PhD Students 2023
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My Teaching
2024
听 听 听听Corporate Innovation听(New Course Designer and Facilitator)
2023听 听 听
听 听 听听Corporate Innovation (Course Facilitator)
听 听 听听Business Innovation (New Course Designer) - launched in 2023
听 听 听听Leading Innovation Module (designed and delivered)听- available to alumni, staff and students online.
2022听 听 听
听 听 听听Innovation, Strategy and Entrepreneurship (Major Champion)
听 听 听听Strategy and Innovation Major (Management and Governance Lead)听- new Master of Commerce major designed and launched in 2022.
2021
听 听 听听Innovation, Strategy and Entrepreneurship (Major Champion)听- new Bachelor of Commerce听major designed and launched in 2021.