2026 Foenander Lecture: The Real Impact of AI on Jobs – Toby Walsh

Many dire predictions about the impact of AI on jobs have been made, starting with the prediction from 2013 by Frey and Osborne at the University of Oxford that 47% of jobs were at risk of automation in the next decade or two. This prediction was clearly wrong for jobs at risk in the next decade, and the next half a dozen years will determine if it was any good over the longer time horizon of two decades. More recently, Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of Anthropic has predicted that AI could eliminate up to 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs and push unemployment in the US to 10% to 20% within a one-to-five-year timeframe. The reality is that neither economists nor technologists know what the net impact will be. But we can trace the outlines of what we do know. And this requires us to start making policy decisions today as people need to begin to educate themselves for what work remains, and as we need to ensure we have the right fiscal settings, so everyone gets a “fair go” in this AI powered future.

Join us for light refreshments from 5:30 PM to 6:30 PM.

The public lecture will commence at 6:30 PM..

Hosted by the Department of Management and Marketing, University of Melbourne

Please note: This is an in-person only event. The recording will be available online after the lecture.