Australia’s AI leaders are closing the gap between what AI can do and what they’ll let it do
News summary
- New Cisco research with 25 Australian AI leaders, including AustralianSuper, Flight Centre Travel Group, Culture Amp and Funlab, finds trust, not capability, decides how far organisations let AI go.
- Leading adopters build calibrated trust: people know when to rely on AI, when to check it and when a person must decide.
- Readiness is lagging autonomy. Fewer than half of respondents are very or extremely confident their foundations are ready for more autonomous AI.
AUSTRALIA, 10 November 2026 – AI can already do more than many organisations are prepared to let it. New Cisco research, Permission to Scale: The Critical Role of Trust in Successful AI Adoption, finds the businesses closing that gap aren’t waiting for more capable AI. They’re building the evidence their people, boards and customers need before giving it more responsibility: Ensuring it works reliably, that data is protected, and that people stay in control of the outcome.
Australia sets a high bar for trusting AI. Half of Australians use AI regularly, yet only 30 per cent believe its benefits outweigh its risks, the lowest of 47 countries surveyed in research from University of Melbourne and KPMG. That makes the organisations scaling AI all the more interesting, and worth investigation. Developed through consultation with 25 of Australia’s leading AI-enabled businesses including Flight Centre, AustralianSuper, CultureAmp and FunLab, the report shows trust has become the operating system that enables AI-driven transformation. As organisations realise value from initial deployments, trust creates the confidence and permission to scale AI further across the business. Their industries differ, but the pattern holds: what organisations let AI do depends on the trust build behind it.
Cisco Australia and New Zealand’s Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Australia and New Zealand, Stefan Leitl, said “Trust isn’t a hurdle that the organisations in the Cisco study clear once. What we’ve learned from Australia’s AI leaders in the study is that trust is an essential foundation for the change AI will bring. They start where AI’s value can be proven, make their safeguards visible and expand as the evidence builds. That’s how they’re turning AI investment into real returns. It’s a playbook that travels well beyond Australia, for any business looking to build new services and business models on AI.”
Proof beats persuasion
Leaders found trust grows from results, not mandates. Asked how trust and AI adoption relate, respondents’ top answer was that each continuously reinforces the other.
Flight Centre Travel Group Chief Technology Officer Chris Locke said “Training, usage, and successful outcomes start to build a flywheel of trust. By training your people, getting them to use AI, and seeing good outcomes, you create the confidence for them to keep going.”
At Culture Amp, that evidence came in hard numbers. Culture Amp Vice President of Engineering Paul Keen said “We could see that the people using the tools were three times faster, while error rates were exactly the same. That gave us statistical evidence to back up the benefits, and that built trust around the adoption of AI.”
Peers help propagate it further. Funlab’s “AI Super Squad” brings representatives from across the business together every four weeks to share what works, raise concerns and take lessons back to their teams. These community learnings help validate and advocate for the new ways of working that AI offers.
The right amount of trust, not the most
Importantly, the most mature adopters don’t want blind faith in AI. They build calibrated trust, where reliance matches the risk of each task.
AustralianSuper Head of Artificial Intelligence, Sarah Carney said “Blindly trusting these systems and their outputs is a huge risk. Trust has to include knowing when to challenge, when to check and when judgement still needs to sit with a person.”
That changes what leaders measure. Log-ins show usage, not trust. The report instead recommends tracking how often people challenge or override AI outputs, or whether they choose approved tools over unsanctioned ones.
Autonomy raises the bar
As AI moves from drafting answers to taking actions, the question shifts from “Is this output right?” to “will this system stay within its limits?” Respondents named privacy and security breaches as the biggest risk to trust in AI, with legacy infrastructure also among the top five. More than half said their infrastructure needs upgrading to support the next generation of AI.
Lendi Group Chief Technology Officer Devesh Maheshwari said “Trust determines the autonomy you are prepared to give AI. The aim is bounded autonomy, where the agent can act on your behalf but cannot go beyond the boundaries you have established.”
The control gap is already visible. Cisco’s 2026 Relentless Defense Report found just 36 per cent of Australian respondents apply consistent controls to AI agents and non-human identities. The report recommends strengthening controls before increasing autonomy, with monitoring that operates at machine speed.
Trust, together with skills and confidence ensures AI success
Cisco’s Chief Technology Officer, Cisco Australia and New Zealand, Carl Solder, said: “The leaders in our research aren’t scaling AI first. They’re scaling trust. That means data they can stand behind, clear boundaries for every agent and people who know when to step in. Built into the network and security underneath, control stops being the brake and becomes the permission to move faster.”
Permission to Scale: The Critical Role of Trust in Successful AI Adoption is available today at
https://cisco.com/au/ai-trust-report
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References and Resources
- Report: Permission to Scale: The Critical Role of Trust in Successful AI Adoption (Cisco,
November 2026) - Report: Relentless Defense, a Global Report of Cyberdefense in the AI era (Cisco, October
2026) - Trust, attitudes and use of artificial intelligence: A global study 2025 (University of
Melbourne and KPMG, 2025)
About the Report
Authored for Cisco by independent researcher Brad Howarth, “Permission to Scale” draws on consultations with 25 Australian organisations to identify trends and explore trust’s role in enabling AI transformation. Named contributors include ARM Hub, AustralianSuper, Culture Amp, ELMO Software, Finder, Flight Centre Travel Group, Funlab, HBF Health Insurance, Hicksons, HivePix, Lendi Group, Nation Partners, ORCA Opti, Portable and TBWA Australia.
The qualitative study builds on Cisco’s 2025 AI risk research with the Governance Institute of Australia, Turning Hesitation Into Action: How Risk Leaders can Unlock AI’s Potential.
About Cisco
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