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Technology Investment and AI: What Are Firms Telling Us?

Information technology investment by Australian firms has grown strongly over the past decade. A key question is how these technologies are shaping and may continue to shape the Australian economy in the future. We surveyed more than 100 medium–large firms from a range of industries in the RBA liaison program to understand how technology investments are affecting their operations, including their labour productivity and hiring decisions. The results suggest that surveyed firms anticipate these investments, particularly in artificial intelligence tools, to be labour-saving and productivity-enhancing over the long term. Firms also expect to see a substantial transformation of the types of roles and skills needed in the future. Importantly, evidence suggests that the labour-creating effects of past technologies have generally outweighed the labour-replacing effects in aggregate. Firms highlighted that there is considerable uncertainty around the extent and timing of these effects and emphasised that the main barriers to enhancing their productivity over recent years have been the regulatory environment and the ability to access suitable labour.