By Heath Parkes-Hupton
Publication Date: 2026-03-11 02:12:00
The mass adoption of AI across Australia could undermine our economy as huge amounts of money flow to big overseas tech companies, the chairman of the country’s biggest bank has warned.
Commonwealth Bank Chairman Paul O’Malley told a summit in Sydney on Tuesday that Australian companies were at risk of becoming “passive consumers of value created elsewhere”.
He said AI had “the potential to offshore the economy, concentrate risks and weaken the domestic institutions on which Australia relies.”
“Artificial intelligence has the potential to increase productivity across the economy, but only if Australia harnesses the value,” O’Malley said.
“To put the scale in perspective, the annual capital expenditure of the ASX300 (Australia’s 300 largest listed companies) is roughly on a par with the combined capital expenditure of just three US tech giants.
“That tells you something important about the extent of competition for performance, data, energy and security…
