There’s an outbreak of laughter as Mel Lee makes an odd admission to an audience of thousands. FW’s Digital Director confesses she’s created a digital clone of her boss, FW founder and Managing Director Helen McCabe. This digital Helen, she says, workshops creative ideas with her before they’re presented to the real Helen. 

“I must say, digital Helen gives glowing performance reviews,” she tells the FW Leadership Summit. 

Lee is sharing the ways artificial intelligence shapes her own life at work and beyond. At home, Lee has built one custom ChatGPT called Gloria to help herself and her husband stay on top of scheduling and shopping. Meanwhile, Gloria’s ‘little sister’ is a custom bot called LearnBug, who fields the flurry of questions their six year old tends to ask between 5 and 6am. 

Lee is a tech optimist. Fundamentally, she sees artificial intelligence as a vehicle to democratise knowledge. She admits we’re still all “figuring it out” but reminds the audience of just how recently widely-available AI was launched: 39 months ago.

Given its nascence, she looks to the past when contemplating the concern she sees the most: that AI will take all of our jobs. Yes, we are living through what is likely the most significant technological shift in our careers, even our lifetimes. But throughout all technological change in history, Lee says, “humans have always found something to do”. 

“Women are uniquely placed to make the most of this opportunity.”

“We are so early in this journey. This narrative around AI taking all of our jobs relies on the truth that there are a finite number of jobs on the planet – but AI is creating new jobs, new industries all the time.” 

Lee is circumspect about other major concerns: water usage, energy, environment, data, privacy, perpetuating bias, consent and culture to name a few. She says that ensuring AI is built and operated ethically – and that individual users are able to make the most of the opportunities it presents – comes down to two things.

“The first is curiosity. We know there are big questions – we have to ask these questions of our politicians, our AI providers, our vendors, our superannuation providers. Things like, ‘Where is the data stored? What is your pathway to renewable energy? How is the AI we are using trained? Is it respecting Indigenous culture, Australian journalism?’” 

The second is agency: taking control of the experience and experimenting by downloading free apps and using them. If you’re not sure where to start, she recommends Lovable. 

“Stop waiting for permission. Pick up your phone, try it out,” Lee says. 

She also shares one example of how AI is making workplace support cheaper, faster and better for some of the world’s fastest adopters: the 2.5 billion people living outside of the G20. Namely, a farmer from Bangladesh. 

“His family is dependent on the health of his crops to survive. Every day the farmer gets up and goes to check his crop, he looks for some signs of disease and pests. [If he finds them he then contacts] the field extension office,” Lee says. “[They] will then send out an officer. That could take two to five weeks.” 

But there is another option.

“Sixty percent of Bangladeshi families have a smartphone. One in six are currently using AI,” she continues. “So our farmer, instead of waiting for the field officer, can take a photo of his crop [and] troubleshoot in the moment.” 

Another group of fast adopters are women, who now make up more than 50 percent of ChatGPT users. Lee ends her keynote by reflecting that “women are uniquely placed to make the most of this moment in time, of this opportunity”. 

“We have the street smarts, the wisdom, the taste, the curiosity and we can build the agency to start to shape what this looks like. Use your intelligence – not the kind that sits in a big data centre in San Francisco, but the type you were born with – to make the most of this moment. You can build the future of work – and that will be the future of work that works for you.”