This time is different. Why we must conquer AI before it conquers us

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Ten years ago, when I told people what I did – artificial intelligence – they’d reply, “What?” Five years ago, they’d say, “Cool!” Now it’s simply: “Scary! Are we f---ed?” And then invariably they’d ask me what their kids should study to future-proof them from the arrival of the robots.

They have good reason to ask that question. This week, Atlassian, one of the darlings of Australia’s tech sector, announced it was laying off 10 per cent of its staff. That’s nearly 500 people here in Australia without a job, among the 1600 positions Atlassian is cutting globally. This follows on from another Australian unicorn, WiseTech, announcing job losses of 2000 employees, 30 per cent of its workforce.

For years, we’ve been offering young people terrible advice. If you want to be safe, go get a job in IT. It turns out that one of the first jobs that AI came after was computer programmer. Large language models like ChatGPT and Claude are terribly good at one particular type of language – programming language.

And I have more bad news. Software is the canary in the jobs coal mine. AI will, in the longer term, come after many other jobs. Customer........

© Brisbane Times