The “con” of artificial intelligence is that companies are sacking workers to build more tech, while saying AI will not replace jobs, a Tasmanian senator said.
Tasmanian Labor senator Josh Dolega fired a few questions at Atlassian’s head of regulation on Thursday, at the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence.
Earlier this year, the Sydney-founded tech company sacked 1500 workers, including 500 in Australia, to fund its AI advancements.
“You’re part of what we have been hearing, that workers and the AI is going to create all these opportunities for people, but you’re directly attributed that you have cut the livelihoods of 1500 workers, including 500 Australians, to invest into AI,” Mr Dolega said.
“This is part of the con that I’m seeing, where workers are bearing the unfair burden of artificial intelligence in workplaces. Please try and change my mind.”
The question was directed at Atlassian’s regulatory affairs and responsible AI head, Anna Jaffe.
“I want to take a step back and just address the lay-offs themselves. Specifically, I want to be super clear that was one of the toughest decisions that Atlassian has ever had to make as a company, and that was in response to a real shift in the environment at the time,” Ms Jaffe said.
“We were really clear at the time, that those actions were taken specifically to self-fund our investment in AI and in enterprise sales and strengthen our overall financial profile when it comes to what that means for roles in the future.”
“Those core beliefs that I mentioned earlier, in terms of AI, will ultimately create more jobs. We do not believe that AI replaces jobs,” Ms Jaffe said.
The senator was not impressed.
“I think the people who lost their jobs would probably disagree with you there,” he said.
‘Strikingly little trust in the technology’
A peak union leader told the committee Australians by and large are having no say in how their employers begin using artificial intelligence.
“The reality us, so far, working people have had strikingly little say in how AI is transforming our working lives,” Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Melissa Donnelly said.
“Strikingly little say in the big decisions being made on how AI is developed and deployed.
“Unions agree, there are many potential benefits if this technology, as there is with all technologies, if it is safe, if it is used to elevate the quality of work, and if its benefits are fairly shared.
“But we have to be honest about the reality – that has not been the experience of working people with AI so far,” she said.
Ms Donnelly pointed to the 2500 NAB lay-offs just this week. She highlighted creatives having their work stolen, retail workers being surveyed and held to “inhuman standards”, aged care workers being directed by algorithms, and teachers’ images being turned into deepfake porn.
“Too many employers are treating workers as robots – not as human beings. The reality of working people who are already experiencing the harms of AI.”
National Australia Bank was in damage control trying to say the job cuts were not related to automation, Ms Donnelly said.
“Workers were told of the cuts at the same time the stock market was told.
“NAB management refused to confirm with the union if the cuts were associated with AI. This is a perfect example of the lack of transparency around these … Despite NAB and other banks saying we need to grow and develop tech skills in Australia, they are slashing tech and engineering jobs in these cuts.”
The peak union group sees the OpenAI agent hack of Medicare as a “watershed” moment.
“OpenAI keeps telling us what we have to do to make it easier for them to develop their products here,” Ms Donnelly said.
“We know they have knocked down doors to lobby for their changes when it suited them.
“But when the risk was to us, to Australians, they couldn’t even be bothered to send an email to the right address. It is not good enough.”
The ACTU is calling for a licensing regime as a precondition for frontier AI training to take place in Australia.
The giant US tech companies could not be making Australia’s economic decisions, she said.
As well as a licensing regime under a regulator, the ACTU wants modern workers’ rights to be updated for the “AI age”.
But the union wants AI investment in Australia bolstered, so Australia is not dependent on other countries – and advancements can be tailored to positively augment jobs, and create well-paying, safe jobs.
“The tech bros want us to believe that we as a country are powerless. But we are not,” Ms Donnelly said.
“As we have heard from leading experts throughout this inquiry, we absolutely can be an AI maker and not a taker.”
Schoolgirls targeted by AI deepfakes
Australian schoolgirls and female teachers are being targeted by AI-generated sexualised deepfakes, education unions have warned, calling for tougher protections as schools struggle to keep pace with rapidly developing technology.
The Australian Education Union (AEU) told a federal parliamentary inquiry in Melbourne on Thursday that reports of deepfake image abuse involving school-aged children had doubled in 18 months, with at least one school-related incident reported each week.
The union said artificial intelligence (AI) was making it easier to produce explicit manipulated images of female students and teachers, creating new safety risks for schools.
AEU federal secretary Nicole Calnan said teachers were also being targeted by the technology, with some incidents potentially driving staff out of the profession.
The union called for stronger legal protections for both students and staff, arguing that a proposed digital duty of care should extend beyond children to cover all Australians.
Independent Education Union federal secretary Brad Hayes said schools were increasingly being forced to manage the consequences of AI adoption before adequate safeguards had been established.
“We should not have to wait until girls or female teachers are harmed before protections are put in place,” Mr Hayes said.
He said AI-generated abuse had become a serious safety and wellbeing issue across public and private schools.
The unions also raised concerns about the rapid introduction of AI platforms without adequate consultation with teachers.
The AEU said education departments were making decisions about AI procurement before teachers were involved, leaving staff to adapt to systems they had little say in selecting.
Ms Calnan said teachers were struggling to keep pace with constantly changing technology.
“Teachers are feeling like they’re flailing really, because they’re playing catch up,” she said.
Despite government promises that artificial intelligence could reduce teacher workloads, the union said its members were not experiencing those benefits.
Instead, teachers were spending additional time checking and correcting AI-generated material.
Mr Hayes described contrasting experiences in non-government schools, including one employer that introduced AI through extensive trials and paid professional development.
Another employer had mandated a new AI system without prior consultation, leaving teachers to complete training on top of their existing duties, he said.
The unions also warned that students could become increasingly reliant on artificial intelligence to complete schoolwork rather than develop their own critical thinking skills.
Mr Hayes said teachers were confronting growing challenges involving plagiarism, academic integrity and students outsourcing their thinking to generative AI.
Schools were redesigning assessments to preserve authentic learning, but the changes were adding pressure to already overstretched staff, he said.
The National Tertiary Education Union raised similar concerns about universities, warning that academic staff had not been given sufficient time to redesign assessments or consider the effects of AI on student learning.
NTEU representative Gabe Gooding said the uncontrolled adoption of artificial intelligence could have long-term consequences for education and research.
The union also warned that AI-generated academic papers containing fabricated information threatened the reliability of research.
The AEU called for binding education-specific AI standards, compulsory consultation before systems were purchased and greater investment in digital infrastructure and teacher training.
It also proposed a levy on commercial data centre operators to help fund TAFE infrastructure and AI skills training.
The unions gave evidence as the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence examined the implications of the technology for Australian workers and institutions.