Sami Makelainen
Adjunct Senior Industry Fellow
Details
Department: College of Vocational Education
Campus: City Campus Australia
sami.makelainen@rmit.edu.au
About
Sami is a strategic foresight practitioner and AI advisor working with corporates, government, and educational institutions on futures thinking and responsible AI adoption. He founded Telstra's Strategic Foresight practice, was previously at Nokia, and holds a research affiliation with the Institute for the Future (Palo Alto). His work draws on aviation's hard-won lessons about automation dependency and skill degradation to examine what AI means for organisational cognition and societal resilience.
Research interests
- Strategic foresight and scenario planning
- Organisational and cognitive implications of AI adoption
- Automation dependency and human-machine teaming
- Aviation safety culture and its lessons for AI governance
- Futures of work, education, and regulated industries
- Critical infrastructure resilience and technology-driven geopolitical shifts
