Big lesson from 60 years ago about how technology could change jobs

Topic:AI

Four Corners journalist Jim Downes described early versions of the computer as "metal boxes". (ABC: Four Corners)

In March 1968, in a rich, British accent typical of Australian news reporters of the time, Four Corners journalist Jim Downes asked the country: "When this circuit learns your job, what are you going to do?"

By "circuit", Mr Downes was referring to the computer — a technological innovation at once revered and feared by a 1960s Australian society already living through massive social, political and cultural change.

Mr Downes, a brilliant wordsmith, described computers as "metal boxes of salmon-pink, beige or deep blue, trimmed in stainless steel or aluminium", which "promise or threaten the mind with what the industrial revolution did to the muscles".

"Computers fracture time into billions of a second — nanoseconds — the time taken for a calculation," he explained, over slightly grainy black-and-white video of men dressed in white lab coats working in rooms filled with bulky machinery and flashing buttons.

"The human operator is one bottle-neck, another is translation of the machine's work into language we can understand.

"To a computer, a man is a number, a pattern of holes in a punch card, a recorded symbol on magnetic tape or disk."

In 1968, there were fewer than 600 computers in Australia. (ABC: Four Corners)

The Four Corners report, unearthed from the ABC's vast digitised archive, aired at a tipping point in the computer's rapid evolution in Australia.

There were fewer than 600 computers in the country at the time, but already the machines had advanced from huge contraptions built in universities, to, as Mr Downes put it, "new models, many times smaller, many times cheaper, and a thousand times more efficient".

"The disciples of the computer can see the prospect that a man's rise to the top may depend on his ability to commune with a machine, to turn computer power to personal power, and not the meek, but the systems analyst shall inherit the earth," he stated.

"With near religious fervour, some promote their machines as the cure for the world's ills, economic liberator of the impoverished, even bringer of international peace.

"But they don't say how."

In 1968, then University of Adelaide professor John Ovenstone said the rise of the computer would ultimately benefit humanity. (ABC: Four Corners)

Almost six decades later, a similar conversation is being had about the computer's protégé, artificial intelligence.

Inquiries — at both a state and federal level — are underway, new laws have been introduced, and unions keep a watchful gaze, as the AI horse bolts through Australian workplaces and homes, influencing the way people think, learn and go about their everyday lives.

"The use of artificial intelligence is an exciting opportunity to advance the cause of humanity," South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas said last month, when announcing a royal commission into the technology.

"It is also true that, unchecked, artificial intelligence does represent a material risk to the way our society operates and a risk to the future of work if not thought through carefully."

Disrupting the workforce

Months before Four Corners aired its report, South Australian high school students started to learn how to use computers.

The lessons were an experiment orchestrated by University of Adelaide professor John Ovenstone, a leading computer scientist of his time.

Asked by Mr Downes why he felt it necessary to teach teenagers computing, Mr Ovenstone replied: "If we don't educate our people so that they can use computers properly, our standards of living will have to drop".

"We're faced with a situation and there's no way out of it."

South Australian school students started to learn how to use computers in the late 1960s. (ABC: Four Corners)

While Mr Ovenstone considered the rise of the computer as an inevitability that would ultimately benefit humanity, others interviewed by Four Corners in 1968 were more cautious.

Computing lecturer Frank Linton-Simpkins predicted computers could wipe out entire professions.

"Most clerk officers are practically unskilled labourers who can read and write and this is about it," he (rather bluntly) said.

"Their jobs are in danger and they have about five years to run at the most."

Council of Salaried and Professional Associations Victorian secretary John Sanders was equally concerned about workforce disruption.

"In certain overseas countries and the United States for instance, it's been formulated that possibly by the year 1980, only 10 per cent of the present workforce would be required to maintain the output of goods and services for the community," he said.

"But, in a developing country like Australia, this is much further ahead I would say."

Leading computer scientist Trevor Pearcey offered (arguably) the most accurate prediction.

"Although some people will become redundant, I feel pretty certain that there will always be new things they can do, even if it means a certain amount of re-training," he said.

"I think the real future lies not so much in the application of computers to automation of industry, but of computers being applied to what are currently semi-intelligent functions of the human brain."

Professor Toby Walsh says the impact AI might take longer than predicted. (ABC News: Greg Bigelow)

'The conversation seems to be repeating itself'

Watching the Four Corners report in the present day, University of New South Wales AI Institute chief scientist Toby Walsh was struck by how similar the debate was to today's discussion on artificial intelligence.

"Strangely enough, what they [the people interviewed by Four Corners] were saying seems very topical for today as much as it was back then," Professor Walsh said.

"The conversation seems to be repeating itself."

Public anxiety about AI and employment has reached a crescendo in recent times.

Earlier this year, thousands of Australian tech workers were laid off in cuts linked to the technology.

But a first-of-its-kind report from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations found Australia's job market remains strong, despite some early signs of weakening around jobs predicted to be most affected by AI, such as telemarketers.

Asked what Australians could learn from past debates on how new technologies could impact the workforce, Professor Walsh replied: "I think the heartening news is that it often takes longer for a technology to have the impact it can because it has to deal with human institutions".

"Many of the changes that they were talking about in that Four Corners piece back in 1968 took a bit longer to happen than I think the experts were predicting back then," he said.

Professor Justin Zobel says a really sudden change could be tremendously disruptive. (ABC News: Nathan O’Brien )

University of Melbourne computer science Justin Zobel said there was "no doubt" that the way in which people work would change with the rise of AI, but there was also "no line of sight of what the new possibilities are".

"There were very serious reports three years ago now, characterising how a whole range of professions were going to be washed away or diminished by use of AI and how quickly that was going to happen," Professor Zobel said.

"That report has largely has not borne out, but this sense, I think for the first time, that difficult knowledge work could be done by a machine, has really set out the kinds of things that might change."

Professor Zobel said the "big lesson" to be taken from earlier debates was an understanding of the speed at which technology could result in workplace changes.

"The internet really took a long time to arrive — we connected in 1989 and broadband didn't become widespread until the late-2000s, nearly 20 years later," he said.

"But a really sudden change could be tremendously disruptive."

In 2026, the time could be overdue for Australia to consider, as a national question, when AI learns your job, what are you going to do?

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