AI will make us all richer and catapult Australia back to prosperity, CEOs say
The much hyped technology is one of the few levers chiefs can pull to dramatically increase output as the economy slows in the face of higher interest rates.
The bosses of Australia’s biggest companies are turning to artificial intelligence to jump-start flatlining productivity, bring products faster to market and bolster cybersecurity as they face a perfect storm of higher costs and regulation.
The Australian’s 2024 CEO Survey revealed the much hyped technology is one of the few levers chief executives can pull to dramatically increase output as the economy is set to slow next year in the face of higher interest rates.
Hot on the heels of the launch of Open AI’s ChatGPT – which unleashed the potential of generative AI – Australia’s biggest businesses from banks to miners have quickly adopted the technology.
It has been touted as one of the biggest workplace transformations, with the scale of the disruption set to surpass the launch of personal computers, the internet and social media.
Crucially, Seven Group chief executive Ryan Stokes said AI will unlock the next wave of productivity growth as existing output triggers wane.
“Over the last two to three decades, the rapid uptake and advancements in digital technologies, particularly connectivity related, have been one of the few sources of sustained productivity growth. As the existing wave starts to mature, the relative benefits reduce,” Mr Stokes said.
“The next stage of that growth is going to be AI and advancements in robotics. The pace of the growth in supercomputing means we are only at the very beginning of this trend and the capability of what GenAI and AI in all its forms can do. The speed of the uptake is going to have dramatic impacts on business and society.”
The federal government’s latest mid-year economic forecast, released this week, revealed the Treasury was benefiting from higher than expected revenues of $67bn over the four-year forward estimates period, which could result in another surplus this financial year.
But underneath the upbeat forecast are the combined strains of higher costs and more regulation across the board – including the Albanese government’s strict new industrial relations laws. This will play out for a much tougher year for business as the economy slows in 2024.
It has therefore never been more important to extract more value from workers, hence the rapid adoption of AI models, which also include Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Gemini.
The benefits of the technology – which allows people to create a raft of content using basic verbal prompts – have so far included eradicating menial or grunt work. This includes drafting corporate policy documents and presentations, performing research for legal and accounting advice, and producing photorealistic imagery for marketing campaigns. Delegating AI to such tasks has freed up staff to focus on more value-added work.
But it is more than a white collar perk. Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady said AI could protect customers from scams – which are costing Australians more than $3bn a year – as cyber criminals become more sophisticated.
“The projects that excite me the most are where we can see tangible benefits for our customers,” Ms Brady said,
“We are applying AI and machine learning to identify scam texts, calls, emails and websites through our Cleaner Pipes initiative.
“Currently we are blocking on average every month 11 million texts, 9 million calls, 280 million incoming scam and unwanted Bigpond emails and tens of millions of malicious domains. AI is playing a critical role in helping us to protect more Australians from scams reaching them.”
Rio Tinto chief executive Jakob Stausholm said AI would help “us get even better at providing customers with the right product, right when they need it”. “For example, you can see a world where we use data to connect international customers’ needs with the orebody and how it is being mined at that point in time,” he said.
CSL chief executive Paul McKenzie said it would also accelerate the development of lifesaving drugs and vaccines.
“The biggest area of opportunity for us is in R & D. Artificial intelligence can help eliminate some of the guesswork from the process and increases the probability of success of R & D projects,” Mr McKenzie said.
“This has the potential to ultimately help us get medicines and vaccines to market faster and achieve better patient outcomes.”
David Koczkar – chief executive of Australia’s biggest health insurer Medibank – agrees, saying there are “big opportunities for AI in healthcare – particularly when it comes to tailored health advice, telehealth and health data analysis and diagnoses”.
Most companies, however, have been wary of unleashing the technology directly on customers, keeping the lines clear between human and machine. But that is changing as more high quality data is fed into AI models and the technology becomes more natural and effortless to use.
So much so that Matt Comyn – chief executive of CBA, Australia’s biggest bank – is overseeing the development of more than 50 AI use cases, including launching a personalised “AI-powered assistant” for every customer, effectively creating digital bankers.
“Generative AI is proving to be transformative in both improving our customers’ experience and simplifying core operational processes,” Mr Comyn said.
“Our Customer Engagement Engine, which we launched in 2016, now uses 1,400 machine learning models analysing 157 billion different data points to deliver the best and most personalised services to our customers, particularly through our CommBank App which is now being used by eight million digitally active customers.”
But Macquarie Group chief executive Shemara Wikramanayake said “appropriate risk guardrails” need to be installed. Once that happens, she said “our aim is that everyone in Macquarie has access to these tools to streamline everyday tasks, deliver on the insights from data and create more capacity to innovate for our clients”.
Financial services have been one of the biggest adopters of AI. HSBC Australia chief executive Antony Shaw said it has become a “fundamental pillar of our strategy for digitising at scale”.
“It is playing a role in improving operational efficiency, strengthening risk management, software engineering acceleration and enhancing customer experience,” he said.
“One specific use case in Australia is in our Markets and Security Services business. AI Markets is a digital service that allows users to generate bespoke financial market analytics, gain access to HSBC’s real-time and historic cross-asset data sets, and browse the latest market insights.”
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