For Mums and Dads: What’s Really Going On With AI, Insurance, and Injured Workers in NSW
Nov 19
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Most parents don’t have time to follow every new bill in Parliament. But here’s something you do need to know, particularly if your child is new to the workforce.
The NSW Government is trying to protect workers from harmful AI systems in places like Amazon warehouses — things like tracking toilet breaks, measuring every movement, and pushing people too hard.
That’s a good thing.
But here’s the part they don’t want you to notice:
When someone gets injured at work, and it could be any of us, insurers use the same kind of algorithms to decide whether that person gets medical help — and there are no protections at all.
It's been going on for decades - in fact insurance was one of the first sectors to adopt AI to manage claims, that is, injuries. All the way back to the late 1980s. It started in Australia with a computer program called Colossus.
Sadly there has been No oversight. No transparency. No rules. Mostly because government didn't understand the impact of AI on a workers' compensation claim.
If you know nothing else, know this: A claim is managed for 'consistency' by an insurer, that's what they tell their case managers about procedures. In reality it's about savings. That translates to denying medical treatment.
Insurer computer-driven systems make decisions about:
who is believed
who is rejected
who gets treatment
who gets cut off
who loses everything
And the government refuses to regulate those algorithms.
Five people in Shattered spoke to the Government hoping to change that. Instead, they walked away feeling ignored. One woman said:
“I feel as though we were tricked.”
And while their trauma was being used to push through harsher laws against psychological injuries, the government quietly dropped the part of the bill that would have protected workers from dangerous algorithms.
So here’s the simple truth:
If a computer system is too unsafe to run a warehouse, it is definitely too unsafe to decide the fate of an injured worker.
Every parent understands that.
Every Australian does.
