Canberra trusts its local companies to advise on how to adopt artificial intelligence but favours international tech giants when it comes to buying the actual systems, according to a new analysis of federal contracts.
New data has revealed local start-ups were confined to lower-value consulting and training contracts while the larger foreign firms were awarded larger multimillion-dollar platform deals.
Since 2015, foreign firms have secured about $38 million across 47 core artificial intelligence (AI) contracts, while local firms have earned $31 million despite winning more than double the volume (108 contracts).