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AI might be faster and cheaper than physical alternatives for certain tasks, but sometimes you need a human touch. Photo: Pharos University.<\/p>\n
Video didn\u2019t kill the radio star, e-books didn\u2019t kill the bookshop, and AI won\u2019t kill small business. But it will change the marketplace, and that will impact certain niche businesses in Canberra.<\/p>\n
AI is revolutionising medicine, assisting people with disabilities, transforming insurance and finance, but also threatening white-collar jobs (and aren\u2019t the unions terrified).<\/p>\n
It is also being embraced by the big end of the music industry as a way to make songs without having to deal with troublesome, pesky human beings. Where will that lead?<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s another, quieter disruption underway, one that will change the world of sole traders and niche consultants. The people who\u2019ve carved out a living in Canberra are doing things that machines are now learning to do faster and cheaper.<\/p>\n
Take the CV writer \u2013 a Canberra specialty. A good one doesn\u2019t just format your work history \u2013 they help you find confidence and translate your experiences into language that gets past the bots and into the hands of an interview committee or a human recruiter.<\/p>\n
But now, AI can churn out a decent r\u00e9sum\u00e9 in seconds. It won\u2019t ask you how you\u2019re feeling about your career change. It won\u2019t sense your uncertainty when you say, \u201cI haven\u2019t worked since I had kids\u201d. But it will be free, or close to it.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s both good news and a problem.<\/p>\n
There are also freelance copywriters, speechwriters and grant writing specialists. The people who, for a fee, help charities and not-for-profits win funding, or who write heartfelt speeches for nervous executives or those who have never spoken in public before.<\/p>\n
AI can do all of that now \u2026 sort of. It can mimic tone and structure and even throw in a joke.<\/p>\n
It cannot, however, sit with someone who\u2019s never written a word and help them find their voice. It can provide good wedding speeches, but it doesn\u2019t know your Dad\u2019s sense of humour. It certainly (hopefully) doesn\u2019t know about the family scandal that happened 10 years ago that must never, ever be alluded to, even accidentally.<\/p>\n
These aren\u2019t just jobs. They\u2019re relationships. They\u2019re trust-based services built on empathy, subtlety and nuance, or on forthrightness and confrontation and on lived experience.<\/p>\n
And they\u2019re under threat, not because they\u2019re obsolete, but because they\u2019re being undercut by tools that are \u201cgood enough\u201d for people who can\u2019t afford better.<\/p>\n
Another group are the Canberra scribes who sit silently in thousands of public sector interviews. Will they be replaced by recordings that are then AI\u2019d into a recommendation?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not anti-AI, quite the opposite. We do, however, still need to ask: who gets left behind when the market decides that \u201cgood enough\u201d is OK?<\/p>\n
Then again, while progress is often damaging for some, it may be beneficial for others. This is also a story of opportunity.<\/p>\n
History shows that predictions of technological doom are often premature. It\u2019s worth remembering that the ubiquitous phone camera didn\u2019t kill professional photography. There may not be as many photographers, but they still exist because they can\u2019t be matched for quality.<\/p>\n
I also recall when former senator Nick Sherry declared in 2011 that bookshops would disappear within five years; he was wrong. Independent bookshops didn\u2019t just survive, they adapted, specialised, and in many cases thrived. They became community hubs, visceral experiences and places of random discovery in a world of algorithmic predictability.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the same with AI.<\/p>\n
Many services will be automated, but others will become more valuable precisely because they are not automated.<\/p>\n
People will pay for authenticity, for human connection, for expertise that isn\u2019t scraped from the internet. For spontaneity.<\/p>\n
A good CV writer also coaches interview skills. A copywriter will understand local culture, politics and personalities. A grant writer will know how to navigate bureaucracy and build relationships with funders. A scribe will learn about and can interpret body language.<\/p>\n
And new businesses will emerge. There\u2019s a whole ecosystem waiting to be built.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s watch and listen to small business owners, especially the quiet achievers. Let\u2019s not make the same mistake we made with bookshops, writing them off before we\u2019ve even asked what they might become.<\/p>\n
Because in the end, the future of small business isn\u2019t about machines. It\u2019s about people. And people, thankfully, are still irreplaceable.<\/p>\n
Aren\u2019t they?<\/p>\n