‘I never gave consent’: The Australians being replaced with copies of themselves
High-flying executives from across the world jetted in to the AI inquiry but the most startling revelations came from ordinary Australians.
“What happens to the 45-year-old woman working in accounts receivable who is made redundant as AI takes her role?” Beer asked. Workers like her, he told this masthead, “move down the workforce hierarchy – lower pay, less buoyant industry – aiming to make do, rather than get ahead.”
None of this changes unless parliament acts. In November 2024, the Senate committee on adopting AI that Sheldon chaired made 13 recommendations, including extending workplace safety protections to cover AI. On Tuesday, Sheldon was still pushing for workplace safety law to cover AI.
This committee has at least dragged some commitments onto the record. Anthropic said whether it tells governments about incidents is “probably controlled by Anthropic internal policy right now”, and both it and OpenAI said they would back laws forcing disclosure. Assistant minister Andrew Charlton said on Thursday the Medicare incident would shape the national AI standards the government has promised to legislate.
The voice actors have been lobbying Canberra for years. Politicians, Kennedy told the committee, are “very good at nodding”. “I don’t mean that in a cynical way. I mean that they hear what we say and they’re like, ‘That makes plenty of sense’.” Then he added: “Of course, then action is required.”
