What would you have done? Australia's biggest bank cut 45 jobs thanks to an AI bot — then reversed course

In July 2025, Commonwealth Bank announced 45 call-center redundancies: its AI "voice-bot" had supposedly cut calls by 2,000 a week. It had three options: cut the roles at once to bank the promised savings; keep the team and measure the bot's real effect for a quarter; or redeploy staff to complex cases while the bot handled simple queries. The bank chose the first. Call volumes actually rose, staff moved onto overtime, managers went back to the phones, and in August the bank reversed the cuts, calling the decision an "error".

The lesson holds for any company: a projected AI gain is not a proven one. Before you touch headcount or processes, measure the tool's real effect in live conditions over a full cycle, and set your decision threshold before the pilot, never after.

Source: ABC News, "Commonwealth Bank backtracks on AI job cuts, apologises for 'error' as call volumes rise", 21 August 2025.