By Millie Muroi, Shane Wright and David Swan
Tech billionaire Scott Farquhar has defended widespread adoption of artificial intelligence, saying it presents an opportunity for Australia to make “megabucks” through data centres, after the tech giant he co-founded slashed 150 jobs in customer services roles exposed to the new technology.
Farquhar, who is chair of the Tech Council of Australia and co-founded the $80 billion company Atlassian, spoke to the National Press Club on Wednesday to argue the country should reform copyright law to let AI companies mine data more freely as part of a productivity blueprint.
Atlassian co-founders Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes at the National Press Club on Wednesday.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Farquhar, who stepped down as co-chief executive of Atlassian but remains on its board, would not say whether he was aware the company planned to cut 150 jobs this week in an announcement that was delivered by chief executive Mike Cannon-Brookes via video call.
“If we make call centre staff more productive, people aren’t going to call more [and] we’ll probably need less call centre staff,” Farquhar said. “Some parts of our economy will grow significantly as AI makes them more productive, and some parts of our economy will shrink as we do that.”
While Farquhar said affected employees needed help to transition jobs, “both at a company level and as a country”, he said putting the burden of retraining on companies could put them at a comparative disadvantage to other places in the world.
An Atlassian spokeswoman pointed to comments on an internal blog saying the company had made investments over the past two years aimed at improving customer experience with the platform’s tools.
“For us to be successful, two things have to be true: our customers must be successful, and our business has to be fortified to succeed within the extremely fast industry that we’re in,” it said. “Our value of ‘Build with Heart and Balance’ is about making the hard, right decisions with passion, empathy, and care.”
A study from Microsoft, another tech giant that has invested heavily in AI, found that customer service workers were among those most exposed to losing their jobs to artificial intelligence.
In his speech, Farquhar said the country needed to change its copyright laws to let AI tools train on Australian content such as books and articles, noting that both the US and Europe have rules which are likely to allow such so-called data mining.
Farquhar also called for Australia to increase investment in data centres.
Australia could be the data provider of choice for every government in the region, Farquhar said, and “scores well” in most metrics that tech giants such as Amazon, Google or Facebook consider when choosing where to build their data centres.
“We are surprisingly cost competitive [for] building data centres,” he will say. “We have the talent density and attractively priced green power.”
Farquhar, who has been invited to Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ productivity roundtable in August, also urged the government to open up bureaucratic processes, such as housing approvals, to third parties.
“Interacting with the courts, renewing a license, applying for a passport, claiming the childcare subsidy, should all be possible electronically and embedded in third-party applications,” he said.
“Politicians, ministers, heads of government departments need to be using AI on a daily basis to understand what is possible,” he said.
In an interview, Farquhar told this masthead that former industry and science minister Ed Husic’s axing from federal cabinet was a significant loss for the local sector.
Husic was dropped from Albanese’s second ministry in May amid factional jostling.
“Ed has been one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the technology industry well before it was cool, sexy, large or meaningful. He had a belief out there, and when you’re a start-up, the biggest thing you need is belief,” Farquhar said. “Across more than a decade Ed always advocated on our behalf.”
He backed the appointment of Andrew Charlton and Tim Ayres to the portfolio, however, and said they understood tech policy.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.