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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming jobs at a pace not seen since the rise of the internet, stirring anxiety across Australia’s workforce about who will be replaced — and who might benefit.
Throughout the past three decades, the internet has reshaped the way Australians work. Before that, offices transitioned from typewriters to computers, and earlier still came the transformative arrival of electricity.
Every technological leap brought unease, and the rapid rise of AI is now prompting a fresh wave of concern.

Experts in cyber technology and workforce dynamics spoke with SBS News to shed light on the rising caution surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and the promising opportunities it could bring to Australian workers.

Just a few years back, AI was a concept mostly confined to the imagination, with many people’s understanding limited to portrayals like those in the 1984 film “Terminator.”

“These systems are essentially sophisticated prediction engines,” an expert explained to SBS News. “They analyze data to deduce what actions to take based on your instructions.”

However, since the launch of ChatGPT (GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) in late 2022, AI has suddenly become a reality.
Chatbots now appear routinely on websites, search engines are increasingly driven by AI, and tasks once completed manually are being automated.
David Tuffley, a senior lecturer in applied ethics and cybersecurity at Griffith University, explained that when we talk about AI in the workforce, “we are talking about large language models like ChatGPT”.

AI technology facilitates the automation of routine business activities that were once reliant on manual labor, transforming how industries operate.

Hands on the keyboard of a laptop, with an artificial intelligence interface open on the screen.

Artificial intelligence enables the automation of standard business processes that have previously been performed manually. Source: Getty / NurPhoto

Tuffley said businesses had started automating standard operating processes that had previously been done manually, using agentic AI.

“That is using AI as an agent to do things, involves the cobbling together, a bit like Lego, of individual components of AI so that you get a workflow happening, and it’s clever enough to make expert judgement depending on circumstances,” he said.

So, which workers could be impacted by AI?

Experts say the impact of AI on jobs is complex, with both potential disruptions and opportunities.
New research from the Australian HR Institute (AHRI) paints a nuanced picture. According to the research, entry-level roles in the Australian workforce have increased in the short term due to AI.
AHRI CEO Sarah McCann-Bartlett said the institute’s latest Australian Work Outlook for the December 2025 quarter found four in 10 organisations (41 per cent) reported an increase in entry-level roles due to AI, compared with just 19 per cent reporting a decline.
She said this trend aligns with Jobs and Skills Australia’s recent Generative AI Capacity Study and a Technology Council of Australia report, both of which indicate AI is more likely to augment jobs than replace them.

“The survey data suggest that the future trajectory of the Australian jobs market is nuanced and uncertain,” McCann-Bartlett said.

Professor Greg Bamber from Monash University’s Business School and the Monash AI Institute shared a different view, stating “clerical, entry-level, and administrative roles” are among the jobs most exposed to AI and automation.
Tuffley also noted that as more routine business processes are automated, he expects “grassroots level employees, junior employees, will probably be made redundant” as AI becomes more widespread.
Janine Dixon, director of the Centre for Policy Studies at Victoria University, said Jobs and Skills Australia estimated 55 per cent of workplace tasks could be performed by people using AI, with another 15 per cent of tasks that could be entirely replaced.
The centre used these figures in modelling work to explore what the future Australian economy might look like.
She outlined two broad possibilities.
“If we can do a whole lot of things without using human input, that means we can have a whole lot more things; it means that we have economic growth and growth in incomes,” Dixon told SBS News.
“The other thing is if there’s a whole lot of things that can be done without humans, then there aren’t jobs for humans in those areas.”
The modelling suggests this could lead to a temporary rise in unemployment, although much depends on “the speed of adoption of AI, which is quite unknown”.

Dixon also noted the modelling assumed the government would take a passive approach to how AI is adopted.

Identifying job losses caused directly by AI is challenging, experts say. But one high-profile case emerged in July, when 45 Commonwealth Bank customer service employees were made redundant due to the impact of AI.
That decision, however, was reversed after the Finance Sector Union took the matter to the Fair Work Commission.
Jobs and Skills Australia’s report listed five occupation types most likely to experience job losses due to AI.

These were general clerks, receptionists, accounting clerks and bookkeepers, sales, marketing and public relations professionals, as well as business and systems analysts, and programmers.

A graphic showing occupations and industries that could lose the most employment by 2050.

Jobs and Skills Australia’s report listed five occupation types most likely to experience job losses due to AI. Source: SBS News

In terms of industries that may lose the most jobs, the report highlighted retail trade, public administration and safety, financial and insurance services, professional, scientific and technical, and rental, hiring, and real estate.

Looking ahead, Tuffley said the real risk may lie with workers who don’t adapt to using AI.

“The kind of Luddites who just refuse to engage with the technology, they won’t lose their jobs immediately, but over time they’ll become less and less useful employees,” he said.

Turning AI into opportunity

Dixon said potential job losses could open doors in industries desperate for workers.
“The release of those humans from those jobs that underpins a whole lot of income growth in the sense of having more people available to do other things, you get this sort of redistribution of jobs away from the jobs where there’s a lot of automation potential for AI and into jobs where there isn’t,” she said.

She said the modelling suggested “potential expansions in areas such as a lot of the trades, a lot of the caring occupations, those hands-on and face-to-face occupations”.

A graphic listing occupations and industries that could gain the most employment by 2050.

The Jobs and Skills Australia report forecast employment growth in the construction industry, as well as accommodation and food services, manufacturing, education and training, and agriculture, forestry and fishing. Source: SBS News

The Jobs and Skills Australia report forecast employment growth in the construction industry, as well as accommodation and food services, manufacturing, education and training, and agriculture, forestry and fishing.

Roles such as cleaners and laundry workers, midwives and nurses, business administration managers, construction and mining labourers, and hospitality workers were listed as those that would “gain the most employment”.
Tuffley said workers who would adopt AI tools and utilise them to enhance their productivity would become more valuable to employers.
“It basically leverages their output sometimes, by, you know, 10 times,” he said.

“To put it bluntly, it is going to make people redundant, but it is going to make existing businesses more efficient and therefore more profitable.”

Tuffley said the “hype around agentic AI exceeds the ability of most organisations to take full advantage of it”.
“They know it exists, and they’d like to be using it to good effect, but they’re not quite sure how to do it,” he said.

The Jobs and Skills Australia report urged the government to take the lead in steering the transition to a Gen AI-enabled labour market and to enhance AI capability across the entire population.

Unions warn AI could threaten workers

As AI threatens to replace jobs across industries, the federal government has released its long-awaited National AI Plan, describing it as “a whole-of-government framework that ensures technology works for people, not the other way around”.
The plan aims to create an inclusive AI economy that protects workers, fills service gaps, and supports local AI development.

In a significant shift, it confirms Australia will not introduce mandatory guardrails for high-risk AI, instead relying on existing laws and minor adjustments where needed, supported by a new $30 million AI Safety Institute within the Department of Industry.

A phone screen displaying the words Artificial Intelligence is lying on a keyboard.

The Jobs and Skills Australia report urged the federal government to take the lead in steering the transition to a Gen AI-enabled labour market. Source: NurPhoto / NurPhoto via Getty Images

Australian Council of Trade Unions assistant secretary Joseph Mitchell welcomed parts of the plan but warned workers remain wary of AI’s impact on jobs.

“Workers aren’t afraid of AI but are rightly sceptical about letting it go unchecked, especially when the technology has already been used by big business to undermine wages, conditions, and to wipe out jobs,” he said in a media release.

“Workers are tired of being told by large tech companies that AI will bring improvements in the far distant future, when our rights and our jobs are under threat right now,” Mitchell said.

The AI era: Jobs we can’t yet imagine

Bamber said the rapid pace of AI development means roles that feel secure today could face new pressures in the future.
“Tasks previously considered impossible for AI might become possible as hardware, sensors, robotics, etc are improved,” Bamber said.
Tuffley said predicting the impact of AI on workplaces is tricky.

“You don’t know exactly what these new industries are going to look like, but what we do know is that in the history of technology, every new step forward like this, like the industrial revolution, which created a lot of new jobs that only 10 years earlier, no-one could have predicted what they would be,” he said.

“AI is a lot like electricity was 100 or so years ago. Electricity made possible all sorts of things. It was an enabling technology,” Tuffley said.
“People realised that you could create an electric refrigerator or an electric water pump, or an electric whatever, and it created a whole new set of industries creating electrical appliances, devices driven by electricity.”
He said change had created a lot of wealth.

“So what I am sure will see is, in the coming decade or more, we’ll see AI being used to create whole new categories of products that don’t exist yet and I can’t really say what they’ll be, because that’ll be the brainchild of some clever entrepreneur,” he said.

What workers can do to prepare

Kai Riemer, a professor of information technology and organisation at the University of Sydney, suggested workers learn and experiment with AI to get the most out of it.

“Upskill yourself with free videos online or a microcredential, and experiment with different AI tools,” Riemer told SBS News.
Riemer said some people made the mistake of using AI chatbots as if they were Google.
“Don’t use AI chatbots like a search engine, they’re not. Instead, try reversing roles, have the AI ask you questions, give you feedback on your work,” he said.
He said people could get the most out of AI by using it to “build your skills, ask for explanations, not answers, and make sure you don’t outsource your thinking”.
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