Chris Ashton, the chief executive of the $7 billion, ASX-listed global engineering group Worley, recently took an example of an artificial intelligence calculation to the board to explain how his 45,000 staff could do the work of 90,000 employees.

“We showed this to our board, an engineer doing a calculation to understand what thickness a wall should be if it’s carrying a product of a particular pressure,” Ashton tells BOSS from the business centre at Melbourne’s Grand Hyatt during a visit from his US home in Houston.