The realities of working alongside artificial intelligence

https://www.trinity.nsw.edu.au/2026/05/06/the-realities-of-working-alongside-artificial-intelligence/

Publish Date: 2026-05-05 19:28:00

It’s a tale as old as time: everyone panics when there’s new technology. We all worry about our future prospects. It even has a name: technopanic.

Now, as AI and Generative AI continues to be integrated into nearly every aspect of our lives, there is a concern that this technology will take over roles that we’ve not considered as ‘process work’ before.

For example, there are many areas of entry-level roles in Accountancy and Law firms that can now be completed efficiently by AI ‘agents’. So, does this mean that young people should no longer consider a career in Finance, or Accounting, or Law?

AI still needs humans and their human skills

Generative AI works on collating data from sources and producing a summary or aggregation of all of that data. This is a fine way to get a quick answer but the more it feeds into itself, the more the results become a ‘soup’. AI needs new human data – history, information, input – to keep producing.

Using the example of simple tasks in an Accountancy or Law firm, when AI is used to review data across legal cases to prepare summaries, or to draft letters to clients, we still need humans to instigate this process. There needs to be creative thinking about the data required, where to source it, and what the output should look like. Once the output is created, it needs a review process. All of this is still driven by humans.

All of this is built on an employee’s ‘soft’ or transferable skills (critical thinking, communication, collaboration in the case of the tasks above) applied alongside technical skills (writing AI prompts, understanding how legal data is recorded and accessed, etc).

Processes can be replaced with technology and roles are changing to get the most out of that technology.