Artificial intelligence is taking on a life of its own, and struggling technology companies are cutting jobs in preparation for a major shift aimed at the professional middle class.
Not so long ago, these jobs were Australia’s brave new workplace. The government urged universities to open technical courses to career-ready graduates, but students who chose to study degrees that emphasized critical evaluation, such as the humanities and social sciences, were actively discouraged by steep tuition increases.
But the workers who seized the glory at the height of the tech boom now face the terrifying prospect of suddenly finding themselves with a surplus of demand as AI spreads like wildfire and its proliferation eats away at profits as investors flee and stock prices plummet.
Last month, a domino effect began to fall, with Afterpay’s parent company Block costing more than 4,000 jobs. Australian logistics software company WiseTech, Amazon, Pinterest and Crowdstrike participated in the bloodletting.
Now Atlassian, an Australian-American software company known for its commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and specializing in collaboration tools designed primarily for software development and project management, has laid off 1,600 employees via email.
Atlassian should have been a litmus test for how big companies need to be transparent and honest about the impact of AI. It doesn’t come, it’s here.
But while CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes has told employees that “we’re not replacing humans with AI,” replacing employees with AI does nothing for trust between employees and employers.
Not that long ago, Australians were told that almost every business would be AI-driven in some way, from simple manufacturing processes and mining to retail, insurance and healthcare.
Now, as heraldElizabeth Knight noted that the scale of Atlassian’s cuts is sure to scare many in the already nervous labor market, who subscribe to dystopian predictions of the apocalypse in which AI replaces large numbers of workers.
AI is accelerating without guardrails, and its downsides are excused as teething problems. For example, the tendency for energy to burn out like a wildfire has become secondary to the attraction to new things. At the same time, little thought has been given to dealing with the large workforce that technology has made redundant.
But we’ve been here before. Australian manufacturing and the introduction of computers into the workplace since the 1980s demonstrate how other sectors have weathered and adapted to the arrival of new technology.
AI is a tool, not a replacement for human work. We need to better understand that creators, operators, and users are all on the same conveyor belt. People shouldn’t be afraid to use AI. In a world full of intelligent machines, broad intellectual curiosity will be the difference between being left behind and moving forward.
AI is expected to greatly benefit productivity and human progress, especially in science and medicine.
Either way, the genie never goes back into the bottle. The last great technological revolution, the Internet, was resisted before it was embraced, and now, for better or worse, life without it is unthinkable. The best way to move forward is to move forward, but with some caution and appropriate guardrails.
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