AI is no longer a distant threat to workers. Bendigo Bank’s latest announcement signals the era of AI-driven job cuts has begun. Is this the start of workforce transformation?
Bendigo Bank is jumping on the AI gravy train and is set to unload ‘passengers’ in the workplace, who once were called valued employees. But the technological promise of ‘someone’ called Claude and others like ‘him’ is set to redefine who has a job and who hasn’t.
While this puts pressure on unions to manage the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into companies, the battle is set to be fought, unless workers show they are, in fact, valuable.
Before going further, who in the hell is Claude? This is the name of the AI agent from US company Anthropic. This ‘guy’ recently showed a colleague of mine how to prepare a legal document in minutes that might have taken a lawyer or their associate a day to produce. Sure, while the work needed to be checked (just as a senior lawyer might do with something produced by a junior lawyer), the message left behind is clear: plenty of jobs and employees are threatened by Claude and his ‘buddies’ hailing from the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s CoPilot.
Even Meta launched Meta Spark this week, which is set to be another threat to workers’ jobs.
According to the SMH‘s respected business columnist Elizabeth Knight, while Bendigo Bank hasn’t put a number on how many workers will be shown the door, the number crunchers at the bank expect to see costs fall by $70 million – or 10% of its staff costs.
The chart below shows that the smarties on the stock market liked the news, with the bank’s share price spiking 8.41% yesterday on a day when the overall market was up only 0.24%!
That’s a ringing endorsement of what the stock market thinks AI can do to a company’s bottom line, even if it proves too optimistic. And you can bet other CEOs are looking at not only their own workforce, but that surge in the share price – thinking about what AI can do for their profit level, share price and reputation.
Bendigo Bank (BEN)
In contrast, CBA was up only 1.29% yesterday, which shows what an AI-driven reworking of a company’s workforce can do.
In recent months we’ve seen Atlassian, WiseTech and all four big banks cut their workforces. While there hasn’t been any public recognition that it was AI taking these jobs, you don’t have to be Warren Buffett to work out what’s going on. As Knight observed: “The banking sector is a huge user of technology, and the adoption of AI in some of its operations to trim costs represents low-hanging fruit.”
Bendigo also announced it had forged new working partnerships with IT businesses Infosys and Genpact for efficiency purposes and risk management. But this is code for: if AI and other technology can reduce costs and raise productivity, then let’s sign up for it. This sentiment is bound to be the same MO for many companies going forward.
Knight also pointed to the efforts of OpenAI’s chief executive Sam Altman, who’s on the public relations front foot – suggesting governments look at a super-profit tax on AI-benefiting companies that will kill jobs, and even a sovereign wealth fund to look after those thrown on the dole queue.
Clearly, this is going to be an election issue that the Albanese Government will be all over ahead of the next election, due in May 2028. That said, it could come earlier if AI is cancelling workers’ employment tickets and the Coalition doesn’t know how to reconcile its close relationship with businesses – which will be jumping on board this AI gravy train and losing ‘passengers’ at a rate of knots.
AI could be the political windfall Albo had to have.
