Rapid technological change is likely to have a “dramatic” impact on society and jobs, ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott says.
Mr Elliott said it was not clear governments were equipped for their role managing the dislocation caused by other transitions, such as the industrial revolution.
“I’m in the camp of people who believe technology — whether it’s robotics, machine learning, algorithms — is going to have quite a dramatic impact on society in terms of the work available for people, and I think it will come quite quickly,” he said in an ANZ in-house interview.
Recent history, such as the launch of the smartphone only a decade ago, showed adoption levels reached a tipping point, after which acceptance quickly became ubiquitous.
This could happen in banking, with Mr Elliott saying it wasn’t clear that massive retraining would be possible given the rapid pace of the coming changes.
“That could have quite a profound impact on employment and what people do, so what does that mean for our role?” he asks.
“History says when there are big transitions, like the industrial revolution, industry and business drive those revolutions and governments clean up behind them and deal with the consequences of that, with employment dislocation and industry change.
“I’m not clear we’re set up to manage that transition and it begs the question of what is the role of business in helping clean up the impact of those transitions.’’