Shadow employment minister Tim Wilson has sounded the alarm on artificial intelligence (AI) being on track to upturn Australia’s workforce.
Mr Wilson, who oversees the Coalition’s industrial relations, employment and small business portfolios, said the Albanese government had “outdated thinking” which risked Australia becoming “uncompetitive” if it fails to adapt to the unstoppable force of AI.
Speaking to Sky News Sunday Agenda, Mr Wilson expressed concern about “emergent challenges” surrounding industrial relations, particularly the advent of AI.
“A classic example (of future IR challenges)… is going to be the emergence of artificial intelligence and how it’s going to change the structure of the workplace,” he said.
“If we don’t actually grapple with this and lean into this challenge, we might as a nation find ourselves very much in a position of being uncompetitive.”
Mr Wilson said the employment uptake of US graduates into industries exposed to AI had declined and warned the same challenge was “coming at us”.
“It’s real. It’s fast, and it’s going to be one that we have to start to lean into as a country,” he said.
“A lot of Labor’s outdated thinking around industrial relations is based on the legacy of 19th century thinking. It is not based on where my focus is, which is building an employment environment for the 21st century.”
Last week, Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg told Sky News that Mr Wilson made a “good point” by highlighting the Australian education system was not keeping up with the demand for AI in the workforce.
Mr Bragg said Australia needed to prepare for the “massive disruption” AI would have.
“Right now, what you see is a huge war between China and the US on who can best develop and deploy AI in their economy,” he said.
“I don’t think we had the opportunity to talk to the Australian people about the great opportunities that can be found in these disruptive technologies like AI.
“But the good news is we still have time to do it over the next few years, and that’s what we’re looking to do alongside our other economic colleagues, Ted O’Brien, James Paterson, Tim Wilson.”
