--- title: "CBA names AI researcher Professor Mary-Anne Williams as Chief AI Scientist" url: https://daily.dev/posts/cba-names-ai-researcher-professor-mary-anne-williams-as-chief-ai-scientist-ksh28qlex source_url: https://thenextweb.com/news/cba-mary-anne-williams-chief-ai-scientist type: article source: "The Next Web" published: 2026-05-18T09:47:12.211Z updated: 2026-05-18T09:47:32.271Z tags: ["ai", "genai", "ai-agents", "fintech", "responsible-ai"] reading_time: 4 upvotes: 0 comments: 0 language: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # CBA names AI researcher Professor Mary-Anne Williams as Chief AI Scientist **[The Next Web](https://daily.dev/sources/tnw)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Commonwealth Bank of Australia has appointed Professor Mary-Anne Williams, a UNSW AI researcher and AAAI Fellow, as its first Chief AI Scientist. Williams will lead CBA's team of Distinguished AI Scientists focusing on machine learning, responsible AI, AI security, and generative AI. Her recent research centers on orchestrating fleets of generative AI agents at scale — precisely the challenge CBA wants her to tackle internally. The appointment is part of a broader AI buildout that includes a $90m workforce programme, a San Francisco tech hub, and direct partnerships with Anthropic, AWS, Microsoft, and OpenAI. CBA ranked fourth globally on the 2025 Evident AI Index for bank AI maturity. The hiring follows a trend of major financial institutions recruiting senior AI leaders directly from academia rather than from peer banks, as regulators including Australia's ASIC increasingly monitor frontier AI risks to the banking system. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Bank built its own AI threat hunter because vendors can’t](https://daily.dev/posts/bank-built-its-own-ai-threat-hunter-because-vendors-can-t-uoms87v8d) · The Register · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Sanlam appoints group chief AI officer](https://daily.dev/posts/sanlam-appoints-group-chief-ai-officer-iakwqjdx4) · TechCentral · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Australia sets up a national Office of AI](https://daily.dev/posts/australia-sets-up-a-national-office-of-ai-1hokcc2bw) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Australia’s biggest bank says corporate AI is racking up bigger bills and producing ‘work slop’](https://daily.dev/posts/australia-s-biggest-bank-says-corporate-ai-is-racking-up-bigger-bills-and-producing-work-slop--p2v5qvdm4) · The Next Web · 1 upvotes · 2 comments --- Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#genai](https://daily.dev/tags/genai), [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents), [#fintech](https://daily.dev/tags/fintech), [#responsible-ai](https://daily.dev/tags/responsible-ai) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/cba-names-ai-researcher-professor-mary-anne-williams-as-chief-ai-scientist-ksh28qlex)