And why we need to start speaking out before it’s too late
Author: Mark Bolton. Co-written: DeepSeek.
Dear Carolynn… further to my blog the other day about AI and music, I’ve been dealing with AI technology being used by the mandatory ‘Support Partner‘ acting as the middle agent between My Aged Care (Australian government funded support) and my mother. Mum is nearly eighty-six-years-old and living with Alzheimers.
AI is being used by the accounts area of Mum’s Support Partner (I won’t mention the company name) to reject invoices sent by Mum’s extremely important support worker. She (support worker) pays to the Support Partner a 10% cut of every hour worked.
It’s obvious that AI is being used to look at incoming invoices from support workers. The algorithms randomly reject legitimate invoices over stupid little things like a misplaced word. AI then generates an email to inform the support worker and the client (in this case me, as I am mum’s Enduring Power of Attorney) and request that the support worker ring the Support Partner to sort out the problem, to which most times goes to voicemail. Sometimes the support worker does not get a call back. The support worker then has to ring again and hope for the best.
Leaving aside this incredibly stupid doubling/tripling of wasted hours to operate this way, support workers live like almost everyone else—week-to-week and they have to go occasionally weeks without an invoice being paid because AI makes an inaccurate decision.
This is bonkers. But that’s just one piece of a much larger puzzle.
What’s happening in aged care is happening everywhere. And it’s happening to people who are trying to get a job, trying to get ahead, and trying to survive. Nobody, no matter age, gender, colour, class, religion, health will escape the affects—at least not until the (Western) AI bubble bursts and the entire economy dies with it.
Putting your head in the sand and declaring “ignorance is bliss” is hiding from an unprepared misery. Whether it be a small inconvenience or a major life disrupter, you will not escape untouched.
The Job Market Has Become a Dystopian Lottery
I’ll tell you about Jamie. He’s 24 years old and wanted a part-time job at his local Woolworths in New South Wales, Australia. He never once spoke to a single human being during the entire hiring process.
Instead, he was subjected to two AI interviews. The first was a text-based chatbot where he had to type answers within a time limit. The second required him to record voice and video responses—which he wasn’t comfortable with, especially given that Woolworths made nearly $1.4 billion in profit in 2024-25.
Six weeks later, he received a generic rejection email with no human feedback.
“I find it really hard to believe the company that makes that much money every year couldn’t afford to have a human interview me,” Jamie told 9news.
He’s right. And he’s not alone. To make things worse, these are the sorts of people Australia’s One Nation Party leader, Senator Pauline Hanson refers to as lazy and on their phones all day. Perhaps they are on their phones a lot—attending AI interviews.
And if you want to be totally horrified, watch this YouTube video by Vanessa Wingårdh (and I recommend watching all of her content. She’s highly intelligent and researches well). In one example, Vanessa shows a clip of a candidate being interviewed by two AI bots at the same time—they chatted to themselves and ignored the candidate. But that is only one moment of AI craziness.
The Discrimination Problem Nobody Is Talking About
A study from the Melbourne Law School found that AI hiring systems may amplify discrimination against traditionally marginalised groups. This includes women, people with disabilities, older candidates, and those from culturally diverse backgrounds.
The numbers are staggering. Speech-to-text tools used in video interviews have an error rate of less than 10% for native English speakers. For Chinese non-native English speakers, that error rate spikes to 22%.
“The training data will come from the country where they’re built — a lot of them are built in the US, so they don’t reflect the demographic groups we have in Australia,” researcher Dr Natalie Sheard told The Guardian.
One AI company featured in the research admitted that only 6% of its job applicant training data came from Australia or New Zealand, and 36% of the training data were white. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were often absent from the training data entirely. Imagine missing out on an office cleaning job because the day of the interview you had a bad cold.
If you speak with an accent, or have a disability affecting your speech, or have a non-Anglo name — the algorithm may systematically screen you out before any human ever sees your application.
More articles here News.com.au, ABC.net.au
Ghost Jobs and the Free Consulting Scam
And then there’s the exploitation that happens before you get rejected.
Companies are posting fake job advertisements — so-called ghost jobs — with no intention of filling them. Why? To gather market intelligence, build candidate databases, and generate leads. In some cases, employers can even claim tax incentives simply by showing they are actively trying to hire.
The Australian competition watchdog recently removed 2,000 fake job ads and 30,000 social media accounts in a single six-month campaign against recruitment scams.
But there’s an even more insidious practice. Unethical companies are using these interviews to harvest free consulting advice.
Job seekers are being asked to complete extensive tasks as part of the interview. Seeking business strategies, detailed solutions to specific problems. Interviewees spend hours on these tasks, submit them, and never hear back.
“I have never received a job offer after being asked for free work,” one job seeker wrote on Glassdoor. “These lowline employers are benefiting from your desperation with free ideas and free work“.
It’s disgusting and must be so disheartening. The business has no plan to employ. They’re getting different ideas from candidates to solve problems in the business — without having to pay consultants.
How Widespread Is This?
More than you think. 62% of Australian organisations used AI extensively or moderately as part of their recruitment processes in 2024. 30% of Australian businesses are already using AI hiring tools, with adoption expected to grow in the coming years. 80% of Australians surveyed said AI job interviews should not be a normal part of the hiring process for retail jobs. For corporate roles, that figure was 83%, and 79% are concerned about how AI is being used in recruitment. Source: Nine.com.au
Despite this widespread opposition, there is currently no legislation in Australia that directly regulates the use of AI in recruitment. It doesn’t look like there is legislation anywhere in the world. There is also no legal right for job seekers to request a human interview instead of an AI one. And, of course, what happens if a company is taken to task? It will likely have to submit its defence to an AI to reach a finding.
This Is Bigger Than Just Jobs
The same pattern is emerging everywhere:
- Aged care: As I wrote above, AI systems rejecting legitimate invoices over formatting errors, with middlemen taking a cut.
- Centrelink: Automated systems making decisions that affect people’s livelihoods, with the Robodebt scandal as a warning of what happens when algorithms go wrong.
- Health insurance: US companies like UnitedHealth and Cigna have been sued for using AI algorithms with error rates as high as 90% to deny claims — and they profit from it because almost nobody appeals.
- Government services: The Australian Public Service has had to overturn AI-assisted recruitment decisions because the algorithms were blocking experienced, qualified candidates.
What Can We Do?
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, nothing changes unless people speak out.
The Robodebt Royal Commission only happened because thousands of people made noise. The new transparency laws coming into effect in Australia in 2026 exist because advocates and academics warned parliament. The US lawsuits against UnitedHealth and Cigna are driven by class-action lawyers who aggregated the stories of thousands of wronged patients. Also, environmental activist, Erin Brokovich has taken on another mammoth load to help US citizens who have been forced into having data-centres built in their towns.
Your voice matters. Here’s what you can do:
- Document everything. Record on video every AI interview, keep every rejected application, every automated email with no human follow-up.
- Share your story. Post on social media, write to journalists, talk to your friends and neighbours. Jamie’s TikTok about his Woolworths experience was viewed about 100,000 times. Awareness is the first domino.
- Formalise your complaint. If you’ve been discriminated against by an AI hiring system, you can take it to the Australian Human Rights Commission.
- Write to your local MP/Congressman. Tell them this isn’t just about jobs — it’s about the erosion of fundamental rights. It’s also about the erosion of humanity itself. MPs respond to constituent mail more than you think.
- Support advocacy groups. Organisations like the Older Persons Advocacy Network (OPAN) and the Consumer Action Law Centre are fighting these battles. They need stories like yours. (Australia only—seek out advocacy groups in your country).
- Be aware of ghost jobs. If an interview asks you to complete extensive unpaid work, be suspicious. Reach out to the company directly to verify the role before investing hours of your time.
A Final Word
I’ve barely scratched the surface here. We are sleepwalking into a world where programmed algorithms decide who gets care, who gets a job, and who gets left behind. Modern vehicles are listening to everything you talk about, and use that information to target advertising for you. Who knows what else it records.
The AI Flock Cameras in the USA are creating headaches for so many people and there is major pushback from citizens. Flock Safety CEO, Garrett Langley called DeFlock activists terrorists simply because they are rejecting a technology that targets everybody. A cop from another town used his access to Flock to stalk his ex-partner. The AI in the cameras misread one man’s number plate so many times he may as well have had a ‘police only’ entrance to his house.
The people building these systems are not accountable to us. The companies using them are not transparent about how they work. Financially, they are cleaning up at our expense.
The US AI bubble will burst eventually — and when it does, we will see even more desperate, poorly implemented AI shoved into every corner of our lives, making even more mistakes, hurting even more people.
But none of that is inevitable.
Speaking out is not just an option. It’s the only option we have.
If you’ve been through an AI interview, a ghost job application, or an automated rejection with no human explanation — share your story. Share this blog if you want. Let’s make some noise. Don’t stay silent.
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