Martin Conlon strides to the stage of the Mayfair Ballroom in Melbourne’s Grand Hyatt Hotel – and immediately opens his presentation with a pointed dig at Chanticleer.

In the audience, I’m trying not to take it too personally. The head of Australian equities at Schroders is recalling the recent prediction given at The Australian Financial Review’s AI Summit by Adam Driussi, founder and chief executive of data company Quantium, who suggested 30 per cent of executives could find themselves out of a job in two years if they failed to get on board the AI revolution.