Cam Wilson

They're worried about the companies in particular.

They're worried about things like how these companies are using their data, using their resources.

There is this broad feeling, which is kind of funny at the same time because Australians are also some of the highest users of AI in the world.

And all the time, Australians are trying it.

And the more we've been using it, polling suggests the more that we are distrustful of it and the more that we fear its risks outweigh its benefits.

Yeah, absolutely.

Look, you know, I think there's two things to separate out here.

The first one is the headlines.

We are seeing a lot about AI potentially taking people's jobs and replacing human work.

We are seeing companies lay off staff saying we are reshaping our workforce in response to the new challenges and benefits of AI.

That means that we are justifying making certain roles redundant.

We've seen that from WiseTech, ComBank, Atlassian, all of which have cited it as part of layoffs.

and at the same time you know like this is not a conspiracy you know this is not this idea that you know that this is being like muttered somewhere in corporate documents many of the promoters of these technologies the the ceos of some of the big american ai frontier labs your open ais your anthropics the big players are saying this technology that we have will replace human work that's one aspect of it

When you look at the kind of broader, you know, economy-wide data, it's a little bit weaker in terms of the evidence about what AI is doing in Australia to our workforce.

We've had a few reports come out that are looking at it and, you know, presenting some evidence saying, you know, there are these industries that we think are the most exposed to AI.

We think that they are the most vulnerable to parts of their job being replaced by it and automated.

So, for example, a lot of white-collar work, secretarial work, that kind of thing, we're saying this could be automated by this technology if it works well.

At the same time, there is still not widespread data showing that there is significant layoffs of staff.

to deal with this new technology.

What's kind of happening is there's some evidence suggesting that maybe there is a softening of new jobs in these AI exposed industries.