- Australian Combank announced that 45 workers would be replaced by AI
- However, the decision was now reversed after AI failed to live up to humans
- The workers received apologies from Commbank
The Australian Commonwealth Bank has provided a useful example of how not To introduce AI tools after being forced into an embarrassing climb.
The bank had recently announced that 45 customer service workers would be cut and replaced by a “vocal bot” powered by AI in order to reduce call volumes and automate less complex responses – leaving a small number of employees to manage the remaining more complex requests.
It turns out that these robots were not able to manage the tasks that workers could – and now these cut employees will now be rehired.
The “backflip”
The bank said that the “voice-votes” led to a reduction in calls, but the Syndicat du sector financial sector of Australia challenges this assertion, noting: “The members told us that it was a lie outright and did not reflect the reality of what was going on in the direct bank.
The bank has apologized to the staff who was assigned by the proposed job cuts and reversed the decision. A spokesman for the bank told Techradar Pro that his initial assessment “did not adequately consider all relevant commercial considerations and that this error meant that the roles were not redundant”.
“We apologized to the employees concerned and recognize that we should have been deeper in our evaluation of the required roles. We are currently supporting the employees affected and have provided them with the choice of their current roles, continuing to redeploy within the ABC or to leave by leaving the organization.”
That said, Commbank does not completely denounce technology, after recently announced a partnership with OpenAi to develop scam solutions and fraud detection, as well as “provide more personalized services” to its customers.
For months, the concerns concerning job losses in the hands of AI have been rejected, companies ensuring that only the most fundamental and banal administration tasks would be managed by bots, letting workers focus on the most creative aspects of their roles.
Those who occupy administrative positions that manage almost exclusively banal tasks have warned that these models, although sometimes useful, cannot replace human experience and understanding.
It is undeniable that AI replaces workers with hundreds of jobs in companies like IBM and Crowdstrike, as humans have been made more dispensable through technology.
But all of these cost reduction decisions do not work. In the United Kingdom, more than half of all the companies that have replaced workers with AI already regret their decision and are no less likely to believe that AI will replace human workers.
