Frequently Asked Questions
Honest, research-backed answers to the questions Australians are actually asking about AI and their careers.
Short answer: probably not. Long answer: AI will change your job, but full replacement is unlikely for the vast majority of workers.
Research from multiple sources including McKinsey, the OECD and Australia's National AI Centre consistently shows:
The key distinction: AI replaces tasks, not jobs. Your role will evolve. Some tasks will disappear, new ones will emerge and the people who adapt will be more productive and valuable than ever.
Jobs with the highest automation risk share common traits: they are repetitive, rule-based and involve minimal human interaction. Specific examples include:
Important context: many of these roles are already hard to fill in Australia. AI is filling gaps in the workforce, not displacing workers who want these jobs.
The safest jobs require skills AI fundamentally cannot replicate:
The single best thing you can do: learn to use AI as a tool in your current role. Workers who use AI are not competing with AI; they are supercharged by it. Beyond that:
The workers who will struggle are not those in "at-risk" industries. They are the ones in any industry who refuse to learn how AI can help them.
Yes. Every major technological shift in history, the printing press, the industrial revolution, the internet, created more jobs than it destroyed. AI is following the same pattern.
New roles already emerging include: AI trainers, prompt engineers, automation consultants, AI ethics officers, data curators, AI safety researchers and AI-augmented specialists in every industry. The World Economic Forum estimates AI will create 97 million new jobs globally by 2030.
Yes. Key initiatives include:
In most cases, no. Complete career changes are expensive, stressful and usually unnecessary. A far better strategy is to learn how to use AI within your current profession.
An accountant who learns AI tools is more effective than an accountant who retrains as a nurse. A marketer who learns AI content tools produces better work faster. Your existing expertise plus AI skills is almost always more valuable than starting from scratch in a "safe" industry.
The change is gradual, not overnight. Most experts estimate a 5 to 15 year transition period where AI progressively automates specific tasks within roles. This is not a sudden wave of unemployment; it is a slow reshaping of what work looks like.
But the earlier you start learning, the bigger your advantage. Workers who are AI-proficient now have a significant head start over those who wait.
Research shows a widening gap between AI-skilled and non-AI-skilled workers. Multiple studies from 2024 and 2025 show that workers who learn to use AI effectively earn 20 to 40% more than peers who do not.
The wage premium for AI skills is growing in virtually every industry. Learning to use AI is one of the highest-ROI career investments you can make right now.
Absolutely not. Many AI tools are designed to be as user-friendly as a search engine. You do not need programming skills. You need curiosity and a willingness to try.
Your decades of domain expertise are your superpower. A 55-year-old accountant with 30 years of experience who learns to use AI tools is incredibly valuable, far more so than a 25-year-old who knows AI but lacks the professional judgement. Experience plus AI is a winning combination at any age.
Start here:
The best way to learn AI is to use it. Pick a task you do every day and try doing it with an AI tool. Start small and build from there.
No. Teaching requires empathy, mentorship, classroom management, the ability to inspire curiosity and complex interpersonal skills that AI cannot replicate. Australia has a teacher shortage, not a surplus.
AI will assist educators with lesson planning, grading, personalised learning paths and administrative tasks. This frees teachers to focus on what they do best: connecting with students and inspiring learning. AI makes good teachers even better.
Flowtivity helps Australian businesses and their teams prepare for the AI era. Practical training, real implementations and a focus on making AI work for you.
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