Bank Forced To Rehire Workers After Lying About Chatbot Productivity, Union Says 37
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As banks around the world prepare to replace many thousands of workers with AI, Australia's biggest bank is scrambling to rehire 45 workers after allegedly lying about chatbots besting staff by handling higher call volumes. In a statement Thursday flagged by Bloomberg, Australia's main financial services union, the Finance Sector Union (FSU), claimed a "massive win" for 45 union members whom the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) had replaced with an AI-powered "voice bot."
The FSU noted that some of these workers had been with CBA for decades. Those workers in particular were shocked when CBA announced last month that their jobs had become redundant. At that time, CBA claimed that launching the chatbot supposedly "led to a reduction in call volumes" by 2,000 a week, FSU said. But "this was an outright lie," fired workers told FSU. Instead, call volumes had been increasing at the time they were dismissed, with CBA supposedly "scrambling" -- offering staff overtime and redirecting management to join workers answering phones to keep up.
To uncover the truth, FSU escalated the dispute to a fair work tribunal, where the union accused CBA of failing to explain how workers' roles were ruled redundant. The union also alleged that CBA was hiring for similar roles in India, Bloomberg noted, which made it appear that CBA had perhaps used the chatbot to cover up a shady pivot to outsource jobs. While the dispute was being weighed, CBA admitted that "they didn't properly consider that an increase in calls" happening while staff was being fired "would continue over a number of months," FSU said. "This error meant the roles were not redundant," CBA confirmed at the tribunal. Now, CBA has apologized to the fired workers. A spokesperson told Bloomberg that they can choose to come back to their prior roles, seek another position, or leave the firm with an exit payment. "We have apologized to the employees concerned and acknowledge we should have been more thorough in our assessment of the roles required," CBA's spokesperson told Bloomberg.
The FSU said that "the damage has already been done." These employees "have had to endure the stress and worry of facing redundancy" and were "suddenly confronted with the prospect of being unable to pay their bills." FSU warned that CBA's flip-flopping on AI serves as a "stark reminder to all of us that we can never trust employers to do the right thing by workers, and change can happen at any time and impact any one of us."
The FSU noted that some of these workers had been with CBA for decades. Those workers in particular were shocked when CBA announced last month that their jobs had become redundant. At that time, CBA claimed that launching the chatbot supposedly "led to a reduction in call volumes" by 2,000 a week, FSU said. But "this was an outright lie," fired workers told FSU. Instead, call volumes had been increasing at the time they were dismissed, with CBA supposedly "scrambling" -- offering staff overtime and redirecting management to join workers answering phones to keep up.
To uncover the truth, FSU escalated the dispute to a fair work tribunal, where the union accused CBA of failing to explain how workers' roles were ruled redundant. The union also alleged that CBA was hiring for similar roles in India, Bloomberg noted, which made it appear that CBA had perhaps used the chatbot to cover up a shady pivot to outsource jobs. While the dispute was being weighed, CBA admitted that "they didn't properly consider that an increase in calls" happening while staff was being fired "would continue over a number of months," FSU said. "This error meant the roles were not redundant," CBA confirmed at the tribunal. Now, CBA has apologized to the fired workers. A spokesperson told Bloomberg that they can choose to come back to their prior roles, seek another position, or leave the firm with an exit payment. "We have apologized to the employees concerned and acknowledge we should have been more thorough in our assessment of the roles required," CBA's spokesperson told Bloomberg.
The FSU said that "the damage has already been done." These employees "have had to endure the stress and worry of facing redundancy" and were "suddenly confronted with the prospect of being unable to pay their bills." FSU warned that CBA's flip-flopping on AI serves as a "stark reminder to all of us that we can never trust employers to do the right thing by workers, and change can happen at any time and impact any one of us."
Not unexpected (Score:5, Insightful)
I am expecting more of these stories in the next few months, where organizations find out that the current "AI"-promises are pretty empty, after all. Also reminds me of the DOGE fiasco.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
For comparison, the F-35 program has an annual budget of $12 billion. That means, 11.7% of the annual F-35 program was saved as a one-time reduction in overall contract expenditures.
Fascinating.
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Yep. The most grand promises and announcements, followed by ... essentially nothing. Who falls for these fraudsters?
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I mean, the hype was discussed in all mainstream media. The end result is being discussed on slashdot. Could we say 99.99% of the population (verified by the OMUS)?
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Who falls for these fraudsters?
Registered voters.
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Don't worry, Trump is working hard to spend it all on ballrooms, gold toilets, masked thugs, and God knows what else. It's looking like a negative net savings.
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For comparison, the F-35 program has an annual budget of $12 billion. That means, 11.7% of the annual F-35 program was saved as a one-time reduction in overall contract expenditures.
So your argument is the F-35 program is very expensive, so let's not bother cutting waste anywhere else in the government? If you aren't a politician or part of the bureaucracy you're missing your calling.
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Mr Wombat, you forgot to add "*across the ENTIRETY of the federal government of 1 million+ workers*"
Proof positive that any and all outlandish claims of waste and fraud in the federal government are utterly false.
When one of the most ruthless and successful businessmen in history (regardless of how you may feel about him personally, you got to give him that) can't make more than a 0.1% dent in the federal government expenditures [and not from lack of trying, that's for sure!] then the only conclusion a rati
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Contrary to what people think or believe, yes it is. This is not to say there isn't waste. Find me a large organization which doesn't have waste. But what this shows, and what many people who worked on this have said, is the federal government is efficient despite its size. The reason there is so little waste is because of all the cross-checks and safety measures built in to prevent waste in the first place.
It's why there are auditor generals (well, there were until his orange highness got rid of them) t
Re: Not unexpected (Score:1)
Re: Not unexpected (Score:4)
Indeed. Fortunately, the "dot com" idiocy did not really touch me, even if I watched it in fascination from outside. I agree that apparently, many "decision makers" in companies like Microsoft and Google really believe that the current hype-"AI" will transform everything, and do so against all evidence. And the body of evidence that in many uses, LLMs are much more of a problem than a solution (e.g. 50% of all AI code seems to have serious security problems in a time where pressure from attackers is high and increasing), is getting larger. Sure, there are some uses, but none are really revolutionary. The numbers I have seen range from 1 hour per work week saved to around 4 hours. And that is without any negative effects (such as lower work quality) being accounted for, so overall using LLMs may decrease efficiency in many cases. I do not think there is any way to keep the exceptionally expensive training and running of these models going with that. And that should become obvious in a the next years. And when it does, it may well turn into a landslide.
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I am expecting more of these stories in the next few months, where organizations find out that the current "AI"-promises are pretty empty, after all.
I agree we'll see more stories like this, but that isn't quite the understanding I came away with from this article. I'm under the impression that it is not merely the case that the AI solution didn't live up to expectations (though that may also have been true), but that AI was being used as a red herring to justify cutting a huge chunk of the workforce and replacing them with cheaper labour (by outsourcing). From the summary: "The union also alleged that CBA was hiring for similar roles in India, Bloomber
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In part, yes. But that lie by misdirection only worked because the people doing the lying did believe the lie was credible.
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yeah this one.
Many of us folks (I know, yourself included) have been trying to point out that the AI bubble will not survive contact with operations.
Further, many of us have been trying to point out how obvious this makes the fact that management don't understand or listen to operations until they make such bad mistakes that the business starts to actively grind to a halt.
It's sort of like an opportunity, from a certain perspective...
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It's sort of like an opportunity, from a certain perspective...
As I derive most of my income from doing, teaching and evaluating IT security, yes, it is an opportunity. And the need to clean up messes will only increase. I think the real core strength of AI is to make any mess a lot bigger.
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In this case this wasn't about AI underperforming what was promised, but AI performance being exaggerated to cover the company's tracks as it offshored jobs to India. The intent was to use AI as an excuse to let Australian workers go, then to quietly replace them with Indian ones.
I don't think AI promises are "empty", but there is a lot of irrational enthusiasm out there getting ahead of the technology. I think for sure there are plenty of technical failures arising from technlogical hubris and naivite.
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Speaking of DOGE, wasn't that total re-write of the SSA's old COBOL code supposed to be done by now?/s
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Yep. Same as the war in Ukraine stopped in a day, and a few other things. They are hard at work creating concentration camps though and deporting people into 3rd world places where they know no one and do not even speak the language. Next step will likely be to kill them directly.
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where organizations find out that the current "AI"-promises are pretty empty
This story isn't that. This story is that they lied about the use of AI to justify sacking workers to outsource them to India. There's no evidence they actually even finished trialing an AI chatbot.
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where organizations find out that the current "AI"-promises are pretty empty
This story isn't that. This story is that they lied about the use of AI to justify sacking workers to outsource them to India. There's no evidence they actually even finished trialing an AI chatbot.
And in the end, the bankster still got their bonus.
Texan AI (Score:4, Funny)
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"I recon we all should do the needful thang, Yeehawwl!"
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We should add a menu.
For Texan, press one.
For New Yorker, press 2
Magas will love this! "I always pick a Texan. They get things done without a hassle!"
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I want a Denzel Washington voice.
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But... but... the AI was a lot more efficient. They used the AI to make the caller from India sound like a Texan. Can’t beat that with a stick.
OK... why would an Australian bank want to make their CSA's sound like they're from Texas?
I guarantee for the racists amongst Australians who hate Indians, the seppos will not be too far down that list.
I hope your chooks turn into Emus and kick your dunny down... Ern I mean Y'all have a real nice day now, y'hear.
More signs the AI bubble is (Score:1)
...unravelling. Wait, can bubbles unravel, or only pop?
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Used to be, people believed in and took for granted there was a central narrative that those people who were informed all knew and agreed with.
They were wrong and naive, but it was comforting and they could make bad business decisions confident that they'd never see the negative results.
CBA customer service is in decline (Score:3)
Quality of CBA's phone support has gone downhill rapidly since a high point around 2010. They tried blaming COVID and other crap, but they just don't have enough phone staff any more. They went from opening a bunch of new branches to closing a whole lot of branches. The trouble is, the rest of the Australian banks are even worse.
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Twice lately I attempted to use their AI chatbot to answer the questions I had.
Frankly I was astonished by the incompetence of the AI responses. It wasn't a complete waste of time because it gave me a laugh from how badly it performed.
Luckily the phone staff were excellent.
Burnt bridges (Score:2)
Who would go back to work for a company that fired them?
You tell me that you no longer want me, we are done. Fool me once and all that... If they fire you once illegally, they are just going to find another way to fire you again.
If the only way to get compensation for the lost wages due to the illegal termination was to return, then I would do so... and then quit. If the court says I have to stay for X amount of time in order to collect... fine, but don't expect any useful work from me.
If the company has
Chatbot efficiency (Score:2)
They just hang around in the parking lot, smoking and gossiping about management in Gibberlink.
Some manager not receiving his bonus (Score:2)
this year,
Can't replace people (Score:2)
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Yet to find a use. One of the guys today spent hours using it to do a job reasonably well, for which there has long been a dedicated tool that does the job perfectly and quickly.
And... (Score:2)
What about those NFTs? How are those working out for you?