)
)
Scaling AI: What Mining Can Learn from Big Tech
Mining is not the first industry to deploy AI at scale — healthcare, financial services and others are further down the road, and the working question for the room is what mining should be borrowing, what it should be designing differently, and what it looks like when AI actually lands inside an operator. This fireside brings three lenses to that question. Microsoft, through Richard Lee, brings the cross-industry view from a hyperscaler with customers on every part of the AI maturity curve — what is really working, what isn’t, and the learnings from real deployments. Rio Tinto, through Katie Hilless, brings a deliberately different view: not the headline programmes, but the Frontline Digital team’s work landing AI with the Pilbara workforce — anchored in Rio’s “care” value as “AI with empathy,” and the deliberate choice of a people-first, not technology-first, implementation. Accenture, through Brian Lewkowicz, facilitates from the integrator’s vantage point — “people in the lead, not people in the loop with AI” — and surfaces where the platform view and the workforce view sharpen each other.
What you'll leave with: A clearer picture of the obstacles standing between your organisation and AI at scale, and a practical framework for closing that gap — fast.
