Artificial intelligence tools should not be used in making recruitment decisions, the union representing commonwealth public servants has said. The hardened position comes as the CPSU releases its own survey into attitudes towards AI, days after the Digital Transformation Agency published its review of the whole-of-government trial of Microsoft's Copilot AI platform. The CPSU surveyed 1800 bureaucrats across 90 agencies including union members and non members and found 85 per cent of respondents were concerned about the use of AI in recruitment and promotion decisions. Public servants in human resources positions were the second most likely to be using AI at work, with science workers only more quick to adopt the technology. At just under 30 per cent of HR professionals using AI at work, these workers were more likely to use the tool than those in research and ICT roles. One in five respondents had participated in an APS recruitment process that involved the use of AI and half of those said they had experienced issues with the process. CPSU national secretary Melissa Donnelly said AI making decisions around someone's job was a red line for the union. "A proper application of the merit principle requires human oversight and human decision-making," Ms Donnelly said. "The use of AI in recruitment decisions is in our view inappropriate." But while recruitment decision-making with AI may be a red flag, it is clear that AI is being used in the APS, and it is only going to be more broadly adopted. In the DTA review of the Copilot trial, public servants who used the tool on average saved an hour a day through the automation of note taking and summarising. While some time had to be spent checking the outputs of generative intelligence tools, Ms Donnelly said workers could see the positives of AI in their jobs. "There is already increasing use of AI in the APS, employees can see the potential benefit of the use of AI in terms of how they do their job." It is not only Copilot in use by the APS, but also ChatGPT and more specialised platforms. What wasn't getting through, however, were the raft of high level documents and guidelines that had been produced in the past 12 months. READ MORE PUBLIC SERVICE NEWS: Only 6 per cent of respondents had received any training on the use of AI at work and 18 per cent had read the interim guidance on the use of generative AI that was available at the time of the survey. Public servants were also unsure about how to raise issues with AI and did not feel they had been consulted about the use of AI before it was introduced. Ms Donnelly said while there were positives from AI, workers needed to have a say in how the tools were implemented. "What our survey shows is that front-line workers don't feel like or haven't been consulted on these technologies, and there's more to do, not just so workers know what's going on, but also so we can structure the use of these technologies in the most effective way to deliver the best possible results."