Session 2.6b Conference Product Brief: Establishing Trust in AI: Why Control and Verification Is Essential to Adopting AI to Achieve Asymmetric Advantage
Tracks
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| Wednesday, November 18, 2026 |
| 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM |
| Bradman Theatre |
Sponsored by
Presentation Outline
For Defence, the promise of generative AI is not simply faster content generation or better search; it is the ability to compress decision cycles, augment expert teams, and unlock new forms of operational advantage.
In mission-critical environments, trust in AI cannot be assumed. Trust must be earned through consistency, proof, and control. This presentation will present Mistral's view on how configurable components of a holistic AI system contribute to Defence building trusted & controlled AI capability. We will discuss how AI systems can be designed so their outputs are inspectable, tested, accurate, consistent, and aligned with mission requirements; rather than blindly accepted on faith. The result is a path to AI-enabled decision advantage that is fast enough for operational relevance, controlled enough for Defence use, and verifiable enough to support trust in high-consequence settings.
Speaker
Mr Nick Pettigrew
Deployment Strategist
Mistral AI
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Biography
Nick Pettigrew is a Deployment Strategist at Mistral AI, based in Sydney, where he partners with enterprise and government customers across Australia and APAC to turn frontier AI capability into production systems that deliver measurable business outcomes. He specialises in zero-to-one deployments; working with C-level executives to identify high-value use cases, prove ROI, and scale from initial pilots to enterprise-wide adoption.
Previously a Deployment Strategist and Chief Security Officer at Palantir Australia, Nick led platform deployments across Defence, federal and state government, and commercial segments, combining technical delivery with strategic customer engagement. Before moving into AI deployment at Mistral, he spent close to a decade in technology delivery and cyber security roles as both a public servant and consultant.
Nick holds a Bachelor of IT (Information Systems) from Queensland University of Technology and an MBA from Charles Sturt University, and is a CISSP.
Previously a Deployment Strategist and Chief Security Officer at Palantir Australia, Nick led platform deployments across Defence, federal and state government, and commercial segments, combining technical delivery with strategic customer engagement. Before moving into AI deployment at Mistral, he spent close to a decade in technology delivery and cyber security roles as both a public servant and consultant.
Nick holds a Bachelor of IT (Information Systems) from Queensland University of Technology and an MBA from Charles Sturt University, and is a CISSP.
