“AI is coming for your job.”
You’ve probably been hearing this for months, or even years, but now it’s happening.
Many questions remain unanswered: How will it happen?
And what are the jobs AI is already taking?
An associate professor of employment law at the University of Technology Sydney, Giuseppe Carabetta, has already seen firsthand jobs across all levels of the service industries in Australia offloaded to AI.
It’s a shift that he says has become the “new outsourcing.”
“From massage therapists’ to physios’ administrative staff who respond to queries, to large retailers using ‘chat lines’ run by AI … to other businesses, including smaller ones, replacing or reducing staff with a ‘bot’ which responds instantaneously when you call to make an appointment.
“At this level, we’ve had AI for some time without necessarily realizing it.”
“At best, the argument is obviously that it makes things more efficient (except when there is a ‘communication’ or technology breakdown).
“But at worse, it can simply be about cost-cutting or trying to compete not on the basis of technologically driven productivity but savings on the wages bill. In these sectors, it has become, or will become the new outsourcing.”
