Australian bank rehires workers replaced by AI after "lying" about chatbot success

Commonwealth Bank of Australiamust rehire 45 workers it fired and replaced with an AI chatbotA financial services union there describes the result as a "massive win" and a warning about misuse of the technology. The bank had announced that its new AI chatbot had reduced call volumes by 2,000 a week, allowing it to make the workers redundant, but this turned out to be untrue: "an outright lie," said the workers.

Instead, call volumes had been increasing at the time they were dismissed, with CBA supposedly "scrambling" - offering staff overtime and redirecting management to join workers answering phones to keep up.

To uncover the truth, FSU escalated the dispute to a fair work tribunal, where the union accused CBA of failing to explain how workers' roles were ruled redundant. The union also alleged that CBA was hiring for similar roles in India, Bloomberg noted, which made it appear that CBA had perhaps used the chatbot to cover up a shady shift towards outsourcing jobs.

The CBA admitted that the roles were not redundant once brought to a tribunal, and it has apologized to those it fired. They can return to their jobs or accept exit payments. "We have apologized to the employees concerned and acknowledge we should have been more thorough in our assessment of the roles required,"The CBA's spokesperson told Bloomberg.

"AI" typically refers to chatbots and image generators built using large language models and isreportedly a multi-trillion-dollar industry. However, people have recently been closely examining the portion of the economy actually accounted for by the creative roles it can replace - mall caricaturists, furry porn artists, the editorial staff at national magazines, etc., and it'sjust not adding up.

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