We are entering an AI fog as the automation arms race begins

Towards the end of my interview for That’s Business on Friday with Craig Scroggie, CEO of fast-growing Australian data center company NextDC, we discussed the potential risks of artificial intelligence, which is proving to be a huge boon for his company.

I asked him whether he thought the massive investments he was making with other data center and AI companies around the world would be paid for solely by productivity improvements, or whether there would also be massive staff cuts.

Scroggie’s response: “I think… there won’t be an immediate role shift.”

So not immediately – that’s something.

He continued: “AI will not replace you tomorrow. What AI certainly will do, and we’re doing this in our company, and I know a lot of other CEOs I talk to, is adopting large language models to improve the quality of their customer relationships, to reduce tasks that would otherwise have been done, or to reduce the time it takes to create information, to be able to just do more of…