Australian universities not preparing students for AI world

In most fundamental community changes, there is a trigger point that alerts the community that it must start adapting.

The artificial intelligence revolution will rank with all the major changes in history, but so far Australia’s large corporations have lagged the world.

The re-election of the Albanese government, followed quickly by a rise in union militarism armed with the industrial relations legislation, has blown the starter’s gun on what will be massive introduction of AI.

First major off the blocks was Westpac with a declaration that would target a cost-to-income ratio below its major bank rivals in four years. That starts an inter-bank cost reduction competition.

Westpac is set to cut costs using AI. Picture: William West/AFP

That competition will soon spread, and the consequent revolution will impact surprising places such as universities.

Students at universities, and to a lesser extent schools, will wake up to see that many of the courses they are doing now offer little hope of a worthwhile career, and yet they will be saddled with debt.

The anti-Semitic thrust in Sydney and other universities underlines just how distracted these bodies have become. They are not paying attention to the fundamental change that is about to hit them.

At the moment, medium-sized companies are scaling back their research posts, call centres and other tasks that can be done by AI. The larger organisations are now in the race, so corporations like banks, large accounting firms, institutions, energy and telecommunications companies plus many more are set to be transformed.

Among the people most impacted will be students trying to gain a starting position. The initial starting tasks they currently perform are going to be replaced by AI. I am afraid that areas of journalism will also be affected by this phenomenon.

What the universities around the world will need to do is to prepare their students with the knowledge of how to take advantage of AI in ways that older executives have not thought of.

But to do that requires universities to stop being distracted by racial issues and get down to working out how to raise the skills of their staff so that they can prepare their students for this new life.

They will need different boards and vice-chancellors.

In the corporate area at the moment, staff are demanding to work from home and regard it as an entitlement. In many situations the flexibility makes a lot of sense for both the company and the staff member, particularly if a person’s skill is important to the business, But many see it as an entitlement and do not realise the danger.

If a large enterprise is planning to reduce its workforce by, say, 10 per cent because of AI then those that were once needed in the office, and did not want to be there, will be the first to go.

Companies are set to exploit AI to save money.

But the lowering of costs and increases in productivity will enable enterprises like banks to increase their staff in the areas that are actually producing the revenue.

With the closure of branches, banks reduced their business interaction skills base, particularly in the medium-sized enterprise area.

The housing market has been a bonanza, but home loans are now commodity products with low margins. In the business area, banks are being replaced by private lenders who have business lending skills. Banks need people with selling skills on the ground, and they need to campaign for better capital rules in the business loan market.

What is happening in the banks will be duplicated across the nation as employment growth is concentrated on the people who do things and generate revenue rather than those who are administrative and analytical.

But while the above scenarios apply to the private sector they are not necessarily going to be initially applied to government public servants.

The reason Australian employment has held up so well is that massive amounts of government money is being injected into the community and many of those activities are being managed in the most labour-intensive way.

A great many more Australians are waking up to the fact that their income (and payments on their mortgage) depend on government spending up big and employing as many people as possible.

And they will be joined by an increasingly frustrated younger generation who no longer have the ability to have a career path or buy a house. They live from day to day.

They will form a voting force that simply doesn’t care that it is all being done on borrowed money. But eventually the borrowed money to fund the over spending is turned off. Those who have experienced previous severe downturns know what that means, but the current generation has had no experience of a severe downturn.

Meanwhile, full marks to the Albanese government for its policies to increase the training of tradies and other occupations where people are actually doing things.

It is that group in society that are going to have the money to buy their houses and pay their mortgages with reliability. But not everybody has the physical ability to undertake many of these tasks.