AI is changing jobs fast — and Australians are beginning to wonder how they’ll stay relevant
Cassy Polimeni says the emergence of AI coincided with a decrease in her freelance editing work. (ABC News: Gillian Aeria)
For Cassy Polimeni, a career living by the pen has always involved adapting.
After deciding on writing as her profession, she kept honing her skills and pivoted to freelance editing work after print magazine jobs started to decline.
But the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has brought another disruption to her working life over the past couple of years.
AI tools are making career planning harder and have already replaced jobs. (ABC: Jarrod Fankhauser)
"Those freelance roles [disappeared] with my major clients, and I started looking for work again," Cassy says.
The online job alerts she set up for editing work were not encouraging.
"I was finding that 80 per cent of the roles that were coming back … were [for] correcting mistakes made by [AI] language models," she says.
"To me that's like, why would you train yourself out of relevance?"
She is one of hundreds of people who responded to an ABC call-out last month asking readers to share how AI was impacting their work.
Respondents at different career stages — from university students to workers nearing retirement — shared their concerns about AI's ability to replicate their hard-earned skills.
They included students and workers pursuing careers in white-collar professions that were considered future-proof just a couple of years ago.
While some people were enthusiastic about the ways AI could shoulder some of the burden of time-consuming, repetitive tasks, others were worried it was contributing to a decline in entry-level roles for new starters.
Other respondents were either looking for new jobs or considering a career change as employers adopted AI.
And many were still trying to understand the impact of AI on their careers.
Cassy is adapting as her writing career undergoes more change. (ABC News: Gillian Aeria)
While Cassy is not completely sure her former clients replaced her work with AI, what she does know is that the work began disappearing at the same time AI began sweeping through businesses.
And her doubts and questions echo those of many people who contacted the ABC.
"We've worked on these [skills] our whole lives. How can we use them? And are they still going to be needed in this new world?" Cassy says.
Hallucinations, translations and AI 'slop'
AI is rapidly becoming ubiquitous in workplaces throughout Australia.
The federal government's National AI Centre says 40 per cent of small and medium businesses are adopting AI.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's Work Trend Index found 84 per cent of Australian "knowledge workers" — those who typically work at desks — already use generative AI on the job.
"Many are 'BYO-AI' users, adopting ahead of formal organisational rollouts," says Greg Bamber, a Monash University Business School professor studying AI and the future of work.
Some workers experimenting with AI told the ABC it made parts of their job easier.
Andy (not his real name), from Tasmania, says it helps him strike the right tone when writing an email.
"It may have been a bit 'heated', and [AI tool] Copilot is excellent at helping me stay out of an HR meeting," he says.
But others expressed frustration with the technology, saying it had even added to their workloads.
Some say their jobs now involve correcting AI errors, as well as false information known as "hallucinations", or working with bland, low-quality AI summaries known as "slop".
"I now spend hours each week answering, editing, reworking AI outputs provided to me by others in the organisation, like a French teacher marking Google Translate essays in 2008," Thomas, from Victoria, says.
Artificial intelligence and large language models are increasingly being integrated into workplaces and critical infrastructure. (ABC: Jarrod Fankhauser)
Other workers feared AI-automation could degrade their roles by replacing tasks.
"Not looking forward to future job hunting," Catriona from New South Wales says.
"Given how pretty much every industry is trying desperately to squeeze out the unpredictable chaotic human factor and replace it with more agreeable, if hallucination-prone, chatbots."
While AI is known to regurgitate erroneous responses at times, there are a number of tasks it can undoubtedly perform accurately and faster than humans.
And employers are looking for ways to harness its ability to rapidly summarise large volumes of information, draft emails, reports, and job ads, fill out forms, and do repetitive work.
It means AI could do tasks long performed by white-collar workers — including in legal research, copywriting, software development and customer support, Professor Bamber says.
"The professions and jobs that are most replacement-prone are those that are routine, screen-based [and] text/number heavy," he says.
Among professions exposed to AI are some commonly held by Australia's migrants, including in IT and accounting.
Meanwhile, experts also say AI could replace jobs like basic translation.
Rana, a highly certified Arabic translator, predicts that translating work will be "abolished" in a matter of years and replaced with AI and machine translation tools, which people like her will just have to sense check or review.
"Job offers and income [these days] are so little, it's pushing me to focus on interpreting work [live translations], while exploring something new to do," she says.
'My $40,000 degree is worthless now'
High-profile employers such as Amazon have announced large job cuts as they increase spending on AI.
But Professor Bamber says while AI had slowed hiring for administrative roles, or led to the jobs being redesigned, it had yet to bring on a broad shock.
"Overall employment levels at AI-adopting firms have largely held up so far," he says.
"The employment effects depend on how employers reorganise work around AI."
Many respondents working in or hoping to enter Australia's creative industries also told the ABC they feared AI's ability to generate images, video and text could leave them out of work.
Melbourne-based Taylor Leslie is studying animation, inspired by the TV shows of her childhood to make cartoons that help kids express their emotions.
Taylor Leslie hopes to begin a career as an animator, but says AI has created uncertainty. (Supplied: Taylor Leslie)
But she now questions whether she can even get started in the industry.
"I've started to think about roles that I would like that won't be affected by [AI], and unfortunately, in the arts industry, that's practically zero," she says.
"I'm going to finish my degree. I'll try as hard as I can to get a job in the industry — or even make my own way somehow."
Taylor is concerned children could grow up watching cartoons generated by AI, not created by people. (Supplied: Taylor Leslie)
As a back-up plan, she is considering studying to become a school support officer.
"I never thought I'd be doing this halfway through study: looking at other things I should be studying," she says.
Other people responding to the ABC said AI was leaving fewer entry-level jobs in industries including software development, where the technology is useful for coding.
One respondent says he felt "scammed" after studying IT during the COVID pandemic to open up more job opportunities, only to find text-producing AI "coming of age" during his studies.
"My $40,000 degree (with distinction) is worthless now. I'll be lucky to get a job at Bunnings and avoid being homeless," Tom (not his real name), from New South Wales, says.
'Mind the AI training gap'
Loading...AI landed with a crashing thud for medical typist Trudy Schulte, from Western Australia.
She says the technology coincided with a drastic loss of work, only seven years before her planned retirement.
Trudy, 60, had spent 13 years typing for doctors when they began using AI transcription software i-scribe this year.
Trudy Schulte does not plan to retire for another seven years and has to find new work. (Supplied: Trudy Schulte)
In the space of a few weeks, Ms Schulte saw her weekly working hours drop from 24 to about one.
"I had no complaints about my work, and I was accurate," she says.
"I offered to [check the AI transcripts] and no-one's taken me up on it … Now I've been applying for other jobs. But it's been hard."
Professor Bamber says employers, governments and workers each have roles to play in managing AI's impact on jobs.
Employers should commit to "redeploying before replacing" workers, guarantee interviews for displaced workers for newly created AI-augmented roles, and adapt apprenticeships and internships to AI so juniors still learn, he says.
"Redesign jobs, don't just delete tasks … commit part of the efficiency gains to smaller caseloads or deeper/better client service, not only headcount cuts."
Governments should also establish "pay-loss insurance pilots" — topping up a portion of pay for displaced workers accepting lower-paid roles while they upskill — and give every adult an annual training credit to use with vetted providers, Professor Bamber says.
And he says the best "defensive move" for workers is to build AI skills relevant to their roles before considering a full career jump.
"Mind the 'training gap'. If your employer isn't investing [in training], you may need self-directed learning," Professor Bamber says.
But for some workers, the decision to embrace AI is also a moral one.
Cassy has again recently pivoted by applying for work writing grant bids — work that may be too sensitive for AI — and already makes income from both her children's books and reading workshops for kids.
Cassy Polimeni has other sources of income, including her work writing children's books. (ABC News: Gillian Aeria)
She plans to keep writing rather than apply for AI editing roles, saying she does not want to earn money in a way that "devalues" her profession.
"If you're on the breadline, you take what there is, but to me I would rather do a million [other] things first," she says.
"I'd go and do something with my hands, because it just seems too dystopian to me."