Following on from Jobs and Skills Australia’s recent report on the impact of artificial intelligence on the Australian labour market come two other similar reports which reach quite different conclusions.
Firstly research from the Tech Council of Australia looking at perceptions towards AI and technology changes in the labour market, Future Ready: Australians and AI Workplace Tech. In summary it turns out we are an optimistic bunch.
The report finds that:
- “72% of workers consider that technology has had a positive or very positive impact on their lives over the past 10 years.
- 73% of workers agree that they can keep up with the pace of technology change at work.
- 74% of workers feel empowered to improve their working lives over the next 5 to 10 years; and
- 93% of Australian workers think that AI will impact jobs by augmenting them, not fully automating them by 2030.”
By contrast, research by investment bank Barranjoey “found only one in 1,000 Australian jobs will likely remain untouched by technology and artificial intelligence, marking the ‘most comprehensive workforce transformation’ in modern history.”
The Barranjoey research found that one in two jobs “face medium-to-high augmentation” and one in three “face the risk of being replaced by technology.”
The report is not publicly available but a report on it by SBS shows it found:
- Lower-skilled occupational roles like labourers, machine operators, sales workers and general clerks are the jobs most at risk of “substitution and obsoletion”
- Retail is the industry with the highest substitution risk “ with more than 125,000 checkout operators and 560,000 sales assistants nationwide still performing tasks that could be automated.”
- “Commercial cleaners, sales assistants in broadline retail and specialty stores, kitchen-hands, couriers and postal carriers, truck drivers, and structural steel and welding trades workers are the next groups most at risk.”
- The ‘diversified consumer services sector’, which includes “jobs such as tax preparation, legal advice, education, and home security, had the lowest substitution rating” although many of these jobs are already being augmented by AI.
The top five industries for augmentation ‘potential’ by AI tools according to Barranjoey include:
- Insurance
- Health care technology
- Software
- Interactive media and services
- IT services.
