- Kathryn Sullivan, a 63-year-old bank teller, says she was made redundant after 25 years with Commonwealth Bank, months after unknowingly training its Bumblebee AI chatbot to handle her role.
- She described the experience as “completely shell-shocking” and said, “Inadvertently, I was training a chatbot that took my job.”
- The bank later admitted mishandling the process, offering staff their jobs back, but Sullivan chose redundancy.
Kathryn Sullivan, a 63-year-old bank teller, says she was made redundant after 25 years with Commonwealth Bank just months after unknowingly training a chatbot to do her job.
“I was completely shell-shocked, alongside my colleague,” she said. “We just feel like we were nothing, we were a number.”
Her final duties included scripting and testing chatbot responses for the bank’s Bumblebee AI. “Inadvertently, I was training a chatbot that took my job,” she said.
Sullivan claimed the bank “ghosted” her for eight business days after her dismissal, adding that while she supports AI, “there needs to be some sort of regulation… to prevent replacing humans.”
Following backlash and customer service failures, CBA admitted it mishandled the process and offered affected staff their jobs back. Sullivan declined, saying the role offered was different and insecure.
Leave a Reply