Is AI going to cause a job wipeout in the future?

ALYSIA THOMAS-SAM, REPORTER: Artificial intelligence is faster and better at some jobs than we are and it’s now replacing us.

DONALD KING, FORMER PWC EMPLOYEE:   If you’re not using AI, then you should be worried. You should definitely be worried.

ALYSIA THOMAS-SAM: Atlassian cut 1600 jobs, Amazon laid off 14,000 people and there are reports META is planning to reduce its workforce by 20 per cent to make way for AI. 

SHAON DIWAKAR, FORMER META EMPLOYEE:  I think some businesses may be using it as an excuse to lay off more people because they over-hired. There is a certain amount of, oh, we don’t need as many humans as we used to associated with these cuts, which is really sad.

ALYSIA THOMAS-SAM:  Software engineer Shaon Diwakar witnessed the rapid rise of AI. For six years he worked for META in Sydney. When he first started in 2018, he says the AI was like an unreliable assistant.

SHAON DIWAKAR:  In the early days, it was sort of gimmicky. It would hallucinate a lot. It would make a lot of really trivial mistakes that were easy to pick up for even a novice engineer. But over time, certainly in the last two years, it’s become exceptionally good. 

ALYSIA THOMAS-SAM:  He resigned in 2024 and launched a start-up called ‘Inbox API’ which generates an email address that can be controlled by AI enabling it to send and receive emails automatically. 

Currently he has no human employees. Every facet of his work is AI-generated. 

SHAON DIWAKAR:  I use Claude code to write code. I’m using chatGPT for marketing. I’m using Gemini to create videos. I use Perplexity to do really deep research or competitor analysis.

ALYSIA THOMAS-SAM:  It costs him about $2000 a month in AI subscriptions to run his company.

SHAON DIWAKAR:  I’m really using every single tool available because the truth is, it’s cheaper than hiring a human, if I’m being frank.

ALYSIA THOMAS-SAM:  He says every company should be considering AI tools to automate operations, and if they’re not, they’ll fall behind.

SHAON DIWAKAR:  I think if a small business or any medium-sized business is not thinking about AI right now, they will be replaced or overtaken by businesses that are augmenting humans with AI by the end of this year.

ALYSIA THOMAS-SAM:  Professor Clinton Free mapped Australian job listings and potential AI use and found statisticians, business analysts and software engineers were most at risk. Whereas the safest jobs were rubbish collectors and gardeners. 

PROF. CLINTON FREE, THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY:  I think going forward we’re likely to continue to see the layering of middle management jobs and jobs in white collar professions continue to erode. And I think by 2028, 2030, we’ll start to see autonomous workflows and agentic models really go mainstream.

ALYSIA THOMAS-SAM: For years, companies have been trying to harness AI to improve efficiency and productivity.

Former PwC employee Donald King worked in the consultancy firm’s ‘AI Factory’ which was responsible for building AI agents for companies.

DONALD KING:  The whole focus of the AI factory and the sort of tasks we worked on was to basically enable teams to do more with less. And so, it was all around automating human tasks.

ALYSIA THOMAS-SAM:  Do you know if any of these companies were able to shrink their teams or reduce their numbers because they were able to get AI to automate tasks?

DONALD KING: Definitely some of the clients that we were working with, which was kind of a moral dilemma for me at the time, definitely shrunk their teams. 

ALYSIA THOMAS-SAM:  He says more companies are choosing to invest in AI, rather than hiring staff.

DONALD KING:  If you’re using AI, you’re going to 10x your output. If you’re not using AI, you’re falling behind. And that applies for the businesses as well. So, if the business is using AI, they’re going to have much higher margins, they’re going to have better profit margins, they’re going to have better earnings. If you’re not, you’re going to die. So it really is adopt AI or die.

ALYSIA THOMAS-SAM: Graphic designer Woo Ju Kim says AI is replacing her. 

WOO JU KIM, GRAPHIC DESIGNER:  I felt a bit bitter, because I’ve put a lot of time and effort into learning the skills, photoshop skills, but AI can do everything right now, so it can feel like all that work becomes useless.

ALYSIA THOMAS-SAM:  She’s now at university learning how to use AI.  

WOO JU KIM:  My first goal which was like working in Melbourne, working as a graphic designer in Melbourne is one of my goals. Yeah, so I’m just doing my best. 

CLINTON FREE:  As a parent I think about this a lot. What are the types of roles which are more resilient against AI? And I think human centred roles and jobs, which involve the real world, physical touch, like work in, some work in trades and construction, physiotherapy, human connectedness jobs.

ALYSIA THOMAS-SAM: The legal fraternity has been an early adopter of AI to submit filings to the court, but some lawyers have been caught out submitting unreviewed AI-generated documents with fake quotes and citations.

BEN SCHORR, FORMER MICROSOFT EMPLOYEE:  I’ve got my little hand printed sign. “Never show the output of an AI to a client or the court without reviewing it first.”

ALYSIA THOMAS-SAM: Ben Schorr teaches law firms how to use AI. He has more than three decades of experience in tech and worked at Microsoft for nine years.

BEN SCHORR:  So on the business side, we certainly see firms that are using AI to triage email, to draught memos and letters to clients, to do analysis of their own financials, things like that, to create presentations. And then on the practise of law side, we see them using AI for research. We see them using AI to brainstorm legal issues.

ALYSIA THOMAS-SAM:  He says none of his legal clients have laid off staff because of AI, but he is concerned firms will hire fewer people in the future 

BEN SCHORR:  What I’m seeing is firms who are saying things like, well, we plan to hire 10 paralegals next year, but we’re probably only going to hire four, or we plan to hire X number of associated attorneys, we’re going to hire fewer. That kind of thing. 

ALYSIA THOMAS-SAM: Shaon Diwakar warns a job wipeout is coming and Australians aren’t prepared.

SHAON DIWAKAR:  I don’t think we have the policy or infrastructure in place to support mass redundancies or displacement of jobs. I don’t think our policy makers have really thought through it. And yeah, I fear for what happens when AI comes for our jobs.