Block, WiseTech, Atlassian job cuts raise questions about future of jobs as artificial intelligence use rises

The rapid rise and uptake of artificial intelligence has been blamed for job cuts in their thousands at big-name tech companies and big banks, raising major questions about how far the technology will go. Australian software giant Atlassian will sack 1600 staff, 500 at home, software logistics behemoth WiseTech will cull about 2000 employees, while Afterpay owner Block has swung the axe on 4000 jobs. Software companies face an existential threat from AI models like Anthropic’s Claude, which has been recognised for its ability to write software code to equal professional human coders, but at a faster rate — and investors are pulling back, sparking a dramatic sell-off in technology stocks. Investors have dubbed the sell-off, which has wiped almost $US1 trillion from software and services stocks, the “SaaS-pocalypse”. Meanwhile government departments, accountancies and consultancies and almost all other workplaces are grappling with how much to adopt AI — and whether it comes at the expense of existing staff. But Callam Pickering, senior APAC economist at online job marketplace Indeed, said though the recent announcements “have made the whole AI-related transformation of the Australian job market feel a little bit more real”, it was too early to tell just how broad the impact would be — and it raised plenty of potential. “Nobody truly knows what the overall impact of AI on the job market is going to be,” he said. “There’s obviously a lot of people who think that AI is going to lead to widespread job losses. “There is other research that suggest that these AI tools are more limited than I think many realise and the likelihood that they can replace entire jobs across the economy is relatively unlikely.” Corporate Australia has been scrambling to find ways to use AI to lift profits, develop new products or drive productivity gains. Telstra in May last year announced it had signed a $700 million joint venture with consultancy Accenture to use AI to grow sales and offer more services. Last month, the telco announced plans to axe about 650 jobs — including 209 from the AI joint venture with Accenture. A further 442 roles are set to be cut, with parts of its software engineering to be outsourced to Indian tech giant Infosys to accelerate automation. “In some cases, the impact has been a little bit more indirect,” Mr Pickering said. “Rather than AI stealing the jobs, it’s the fact that these businesses were investing heavily in AI and that is sort of squeezing out other costs, which ends up leading to layoffs.” Commonwealth Bank has also conceded it failed to read the room when it sacked 45 call centre staff last July in favour of “voice bots”, a decision it overturned the following month. CBA said the AI-enabled “voice bot” did not deliver the benefits it promised, sparking chaos at the bank. Call volumes surged and left “management scrambling to offer overtime and pull team leaders onto the phones”, CBA said at the time. Mr Pickering says it’s “difficult to replace entire workers” with AI. “The average job is comprised of dozens of different skills, interacting in quite complex ways and an existing AI tool replacing all of that is very, very difficult,” he said. Mr Pickering also reckons the tech workers that have been sacked won’t have too much of a problem finding other work. “There continues to be strong demand for workers in software development and data analytics,” he said, adding job advertisements in software development and data analytics were 9 per cent and 3.6 per cent higher than a year ago. “The question is whether they can achieve the same level of pay and benefits. These big tech firms do tend to pay very well traditionally. “And so if you are moving from, say, Atlassian to maybe a non-tech company you may find that your pay is taking a bit of step back.” University of NSW AI Institute chief scientist Toby Walsh suspects WA-founded Canva could be the next tech unicorn to slash jobs amid the AI push. “And then in the longer-term, I’m also fearful that you’re going to see other sectors — accountancy, lawyering — adopting (AI) and then also making similar reductions in headcount as a consequence of the productivity gains they get from the technology,” he said. He is optimistic AI is a technology that can do “the dirty, the dull, the difficult and the dangerous. Things that we shouldn’t get humans doing”.