Superhuman AI bots will not steal this man's job

Until superhuman swimming robots take his job, Luke Gnocco remains pretty relaxed about artificial intelligence (AI).

"Electronics and water usually don't work," he points out.

Mr Gnocco's marine tourism business in north Queensland takes people on snorkelling tours on the Great Barrier Reef, jet ski tours and guided walks around Magnetic Island.

He said hands-on, manual and interpersonal interactions were core aspects of the job.

"With a reef tour guide, there's literally no part in the process that could be replaced by AI.

"Especially being Australia, a lot of our tourism and a lot of our products are the country, they are the reef, they are the water, and I don't think it's ever going to go backwards."

While he is confident the tourism industry will weather any AI boom, recent research by public policy consultancy firm SGS Economics and Planning found about 30 per cent of work tasks across regional Queensland could be exposed to AI automation.

Principal and partner Alison Holloway said regional locations were more resilient to change from AI.

"A lot of the knowledge jobs and professional services jobs are located in the city centres … and they're the jobs that are most exposed to AI automation," Ms Holloway said.

The report found almost 40 per cent of work tasks in Brisbane were at risk of AI automation, followed by the Gold Coast on 37.1 per cent.

The Sunshine Coast sits at 36.4 per cent, followed by Cairns at 36, followed by Townsville and Rockhampton at 35.6, and Mackay at 34.9.

Despite the Gold Coast's status as a major tourism hub, Ms Holloway said there was a mix of occupations in the region, including many administrative tasks within tourism that were not in-person.

SGS Economics and Planning drew upon research by Jobs and Skills Australia and data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics to determine the risk of exposure in different locations.

Ms Holloway said roles susceptible to automation were concentrated in the professional hearts of cities, such as finance, professional services and office-based jobs.

She said those less exposed to AI disruption required in-person engagement or a physical presence.

"If you think about the care economy, nursing and aged care, they're all things where a physical person is engaged in that job," she said.

Christoph Breidbach, an associate professor of Business Information Systems at the University of Queensland, said many regional occupations were inherently different because they required local knowledge, human relationships or engaging with unpredictable natural environments.

Dr Breidbach said farming, for example, required responding to changing weather or soil conditions and livestock behaviour.

"What AI does is that it could assist with planning or with scheduling or with decision support, but you simply can't replace the physical execution of these tasks, unless you have very advanced robotics," he said.

While previous waves of technological change disproportionately affected regional economies, Dr Breidbach said the AI wave was different for industries like agriculture and manufacturing.

"It's not so much the physical labour that is now being automated or even augmented, but you can see change to cognitive tasks. So, your writing, your analysing of information, preparing of reports, and those are tasks that you would associate with white-collar jobs."