Let’s be real.
We ignore it as much as possible, but no matter what we call it — AI slop, people getting called out for using AI, universities banning it — AI keeps getting better.
And it is happening faster than most of us expected.
If you run a business, or even just work a normal 9–5, it is hard not to feel a bit uneasy about where this is all going.
Are our competitors better at using AI than us?
Are we slowly falling behind?
Is my job even safe long term?
If you zoom out, we have seen this before.
Look at the Industrial Revolution. When machinery came in, factories that stuck to manual processes simply could not compete anymore. They were slower, more expensive, and less consistent. The ones that adopted machines just won.
Over time, “handmade” did not disappear, but it became niche. The bulk of the market — and the money — moved to industrial-scale production.
But the part people do not really talk about is that the transition was not clean.
People lost jobs. Entire skill sets became less valuable almost overnight. And it took a long time for new industries to catch up and absorb that workforce again.
The businesses that adapted, though, are the ones we still know today.
Take Ford Motor Company. Before mass production, cars were slow and expensive to make. When Henry Ford introduced the assembly line, it completely changed the game. Cars became more accessible, demand exploded, and Ford helped define the industry.
The same thing happened with jobs.
Yes, people lost them. But over time, they did not simply disappear — they shifted.
A huge portion of the workforce used to be in agriculture. Now it is tiny by comparison, yet we have more total jobs than ever before. They just look completely different.
The catch is that this shift does not happen evenly. Some people adapt quickly, others do not. And that gap is where much of today’s anxiety is coming from.
At the same time, expectations changed.
When things became easier to produce, people did not just buy the same amount for less. They expected more. Better. Faster.
Take Coca-Cola. It did not become massive just because drinks were easier to produce. It scaled because distribution improved, branding got stronger, and demand went global. The product became simpler to make, but the business around it became much bigger.
So in reality, the jobs did not disappear. They evolved.
Factory workers became machine operators, technicians, and engineers. Outside the factory, there was growth in marketing, logistics, and R&D — things that barely existed at scale before.
The work became more specialised, more technical, and more important.
So we asked ourselves the same question at Automation Consulting:
If we genuinely believe this shift is happening, why are we still working the old way?
Because the reality is, most companies will not change yet.
They will experiment a little. Try a few tools. Maybe run a small internal project. But largely, they will keep operating the same way.
And honestly, that did not sit right with us.
So we made a decision.
Not to slowly phase it in.
Not to treat it as an add-on.
But to actually commit to it.
We have fundamentally changed how we build.
We are not adding AI into our process.
We rebuilt our process around AI.
At Automation Consulting, our developers are not just writing code anymore.
A big part of their role now is orchestrating systems — pipelines of AI agents that generate, test, and iterate on work.
Before, development was pretty linear: write something, test it, fix it, repeat.
Now it is different. You design the system, let it run, validate what comes out, and refine it. It is faster, but it also changes what the job actually is.
And it is not just developers.
Project managers, designers, and testers — everyone across the team is using AI in some form now. It is simply part of how we operate.
What that means in practice is that we can move faster, explore more options, and get to better outcomes quicker.
We are probably one of the earlier consultancies in Australia to really commit to working this way. But globally, this direction is already happening.
Companies like Stripe are clearly moving toward more AI-assisted development, where engineers can build and iterate far faster than before.
This does not mean people are out of the picture.
It simply means the way we work is changing.
And with that, the way businesses approach technology is changing too.
Instead of buying software and forcing your business to fit it, more companies are starting to build things around themselves — systems that actually reflect how they operate.
That becomes your IP.
Your workflow.
Your advantage.
And I think that is really where this is heading.
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