VIDEO: Commonwealth Bank CEO: AI will bring a transition the workplaceSarah Ferguson7.30Tue 26 May 2026 at 8:22pmTue 26 May 2026 at 8:22pmTue 26 May 2026 at 8:22pmHas Video Duration: 14 minutes 50 seconds.Watch 14m Commonwealth Bank CEO:  “AI will bring transition the workplace”Share optionsFacebookLinkedInX (formerly Twitter)TranscriptSARAH FERGUSON: Overnight, Pope Leo added his voice to warnings about artificial intelligence and the concentration of too much power in too few companies. While OpenAI's Sam Altman, the CEO of one of those companies, told a Sydney conference run by the AI Forward Commonwealth Bank that one of AI's biggest advantages is that unlike us, it never gets tired, distracted or loses focus. He also said AI might not cause the jobs apocalypse he anticipated but other AI leaders don't agree with him. Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn joins me now. Welcome back to 7.30. MATT COMYN, COMMONWEALTH BANK CEO:  Thanks very much. SARAH FERGUSON:  What did you want the audience today to hear from Sam Altman? MATT COMYN:  Well, the whole day was set up to bring together more than 1,000 of our clients, many institutional and business customers who are thinking about implementing AI. It is really about sharing practical experiences. That was the course of the day but Sam was kind enough to join us this morning from the US on a public holiday and we covered a lot of ground. And he touched on one of the points he mentioned and he also talked a little bit about how he was surprised that enterprise adoption was running slower and that's what led to his comment that actually changed his views and forecasts. And I think also acknowledged a lot of the uncertainty that exists and I think that's an important message as well - to be prepared but not necessarily alarmed. SARAH FERGUSON:  As I said at the beginning, at the same time, there are very different views amongst that, the peak of the AI leaders. One of them Dario Amodei from Anthropic describes a reasonably near universe when you have a huge productivity growth from AI at 10 per cent, but a company buy large scale unemployment. Is that also something we should prepare for at the same time? MATT COMYN:  Look, Dario has been outspoken around scenarios like that. I must say the little that I do know him, I've met him a few times, I do think he's genuine and he's sincere. It probably doesn't hurt though in the backdrop when you're raising funding to be thinking about overall the benefits. To be clear, if we got a significant boost in GDP, that would be great from an output perspective. If that was accompanied by a very large increase in unemployment, that would not be success. I think that's why it's so important to be thinking about some of those longer–term issues and particularly how to prepare in our case our people or our employees but also I think more broadly and I think there is a transition that's under way and hopefully that can be done in advance and can be done well and responsibly. SARAH FERGUSON:  One of the issues here, the current government for example talks about the importance of Australians having a stake in the economy. But that version, the more extreme version but also supported by other people in the industry suggests a world where a lot of people don't have a direct stake in the economy. Now whichever version it is, what do you do about that if a lot of people lose their positions, their roles and no longer have the same involvement in the economy, in the community they had before? MATT COMYN:  I think it's very difficult but say I think very few people know with any level of certainty what's going to happen in 12 months as it relates to those forecasts, most of which have been wrong and even more so over 10 years. But I think what is known though is we're going through a period of rapid change. We're seeing a technology that's very significant and significant on a global basis. I don't think it's the right strategy to just delay and hope that it goes away. I think there has to be a lot of thoughtfulness and preparation. I don't think making people anxious about the future is a good strategy, doesn't get the best out of people. SARAH FERGUSON:  A difficult balance, isn't it, straight talking versus making people so concerned they don't make good decisions? MATT COMYN:  Sure. I think that's right. I mean what we have seen certainly in the Australian economy is relatively few roles or jobs impacted by AI at this point. But a lot of changes underneath that, particularly at the task and the skill level, I know that was something we touched on the last time we spoke. And so, I think that will continue but that also gives people an understanding if the job that I'm in is actually changing, I can change with it. I can learn new skills, I can think about the skills that are ahead of me. But I don't want to make that sound easier than it is. Of course, the pace of change will matter but yes, I think it's important to try to be clear. I don't think you protect people by not talking about the things that you think are happening and giving them a chance to take some agency and build better resilience for themselves. SARAH FERGUSON:  One of the things that Altman talked to you about today was his realisation that people didn't like receiving his AI written emails. They actually wanted to hear from him. So how do you decide which jobs it is that humans must continue to do? This is a little bit the conversation we had before but I'm wondering if your thinking has developed. How do you figure out which is the AI email that you don't want? You don't want your emails written by AI? MATT COMYN:  I thought that answer was interesting. I asked him about how he was using AI and he flipped around and said how he wasn't. I actually think there's a lot of different roles and what we're seeing as I said, the tasks are changing but often the criticality of the human judgement and the importance of that is actually growing. Now I wouldn't necessarily say that sending of an email is the most critical thing that many people do in their role, but the point he was trying to make was that it feels even though the agent or the machine can do that, it feels wrong to be doing that. There's something quite human about communicating even in writing, let alone in speaking. I gave the same sort of example that I was in regional Queensland recently with one of our regional bankers driving out to see a client. Realistically, there will not be a Mac Book going out to visit one of our clients in regional Queensland any time soon. SARAH FERGUSON: Presuming someone goes out to visit someone. MATT COMYN:  Yes but I do think that is still a very important part of both our service proposition. I think what we will see is that people will still really value a lot of the human connection. I think in a better scenario, there is more of a migration to higher value work, judgement, problem solving, the ability to communicate clearly, empathy. There’re the sorts of skills that are still going to be very highly valued and it should be humans that are driving the machines not the other way around. I think that was at least one of the things I saw in the Pope's message. SARAH FERGUSON:  I wanted to ask you about safety as well because that's obviously at the forefront of everyone's minds and clearly it is at the forefront of a bank in making the big decisions and the big investments that you're making in AI at the moment. So all of the AI leaders acknowledge that they don't really understand why AI models do some of the things that they do. That AI agents might have goals even beyond, will have goals, are very likely to have goals beyond that which we have given them. That sounds deeply incompatible with banking. How much does that aspect of how AI is developing, how much does that trouble you about your use of AI? MATT COMYN:  The latter part of your question, the models that are publicly available, are not in that category but to your point, they are not probabilistic which means they are not going to be perfect all of the time. So you have to build a lot of safeguards and guardrails around that. Often basically making sure that you're checking and there's different technologies that you can use to do that but then also I think one of the things, again this has to be a human task, really what you're doing is making sure you understand objectively in real time, what's the evaluation criteria? How are you monitoring that? How are you detecting and then how do you remedy anything? It has to be a very fast feedback loop. So it is, I guess a different way of designing a system and it is a very important role for a human. Even though people talk a lot and it's true, engineering or software development, is very automated, it is really though the humans that are setting the architecture, the overall solution that is driving some of that automation. And what we're seeing is actually people can be very productive which means that they're very valuable and so would be compensated as such. SARAH FERGUSON: Alright let's move on to the budget. We've been hearing how it's been going, how the debate has been going on in Canberra today. On this program earlier this year you said you were in favour of reducing the CGT discount as long as the changes were grandfathered. Do you enforce the CGT changes in the budget? MATT COMYN:  So a few quick things that straight to CGT I think which really stand out in the budget and worth maybe just briefly mentioning. First the context in which we're operating in, not just the technology that we've been talking about but a completely changed geopolitical and strategic environment. What does that mean? It means we have much higher costs around defence, resilience. We've got some structural issues as well in terms of demographic and aging population. We are in a structural deficit which means our expenses exceed our revenue. I think the Government have looked at that and look, you could make a case to say Australia's debt at a government level is one of the lowest of advanced economies. I think they're doing the right thing by reducing some of the pressures on the budget from a fiscal perspective, for a couple of reasons. One, we both know it's effectively a tax on future generations. And secondly, you lose degrees of freedom to be able to respond to a shock. It used to be at ballpark, every 10 years there would be a shock now they're much more frequent and I think we should plan for that. So then specifically to get to your question you have to look at both the context, the expenditure profile. I think the majority of the budget repair was really done in the work in the NDIS which will be difficult and definitely has some execution risks but the government should be called out for that. And then you get into some of the other revenue measures and overall again ...SARAH FERGUSON:  Here I am waiting for the answer. MATT COMYN:  I know, I will get to it quickly. I mean as it comes to taxation. We tax labour or ...SARAH FERGUSON:  And you have said before, too much tax on labour, not enough tax on capital.MATT COMYN:  Lightly wealth ...SARAH FERGUSON:  So do you endorse the CGT changes in the budget? MATT COMYN:  I mean there's nothing inherently wrong and I would support changes to CGT and as I described it at the time between moving or reducing the discount. Now this is going back to the indexation. There's nothing inherently wrong with that although I'd make the distinction which understandably there's a lot of focus. There is a big difference in my mind between passive asset accumulation, versus productive capital or risk–taking. The latter category and clearly this is something the government are looking at closely. SARAH FERGUSON:  So should it have just been for housing? MATT COMYN:  I think they've announced the policy. It's obviously very clean if it's only for housing. I think when you get... SARAH FERGUSON:  Would that have been better? MATT COMYN:  When you get into all asset classes, you're trading off simplicity. I think we have got to be careful and obviously as I said the Government have announced that they're looking at that, very carefully between it. Look, if I'm just accumulating an asset and I'm passively holding that, versus I'm investing in a start–up, a founder, a business, a junior explorer, I think that's quite different. I don't think we want to change the incentives towards risk and enterprise and innovation. SARAH FERGUSON:  So what you are saying is that the government should change what it's done when it comes to other investments, to shares or investments in companies beyond just start–ups? MATT COMYN:  Again, I'd make the distinction more around the passive asset accumulation versus growth and productive risk capital. They're looking closely at that, and they've obviously talked already about start–ups and small business. SARAH FERGUSON:  Do you think it should so further than that?MATT COMYN:  I'll leave it to them where they draw that line. But clearly that category will be very much on their mind. SARAH FERGUSON:  Have you talked to the Treasurer about it? MATT COMYN:  No. Not since the Budget. SARAH FERGUSON:  Will you? MATT COMYN:  I'm sure I will at some point. I'm planning on being down in Canberra in the next couple of weeks. SARAH FERGUSON:  And what will you tell him? MATT COMYN: Substantially similar to what we have said. SARAH FERGUSON:  So they should, just to wrap up there, they should reconsider applying CGT to those other areas beyond passive investment in housing? MATT COMYN:  I think that's the area that you have got to look at and again though, this is a step where I do think wealth, relative particularly to labour and even to consumption, is taxed lightly and inconsistently and if you go back to the same, if there's an expectation which Australia has for the services that we currently enjoy we don't want to add to the fiscal situation and a tax on future generations then clearly we have to get the balance right between what's the growth profile, how do we broaden the tax base, how do we make it as fair and efficient as possible? These are hard choices. I mean clearly any changes in and around tax were never going to be popular and understandably. These are very finely calibrated decisions. But against that backdrop where there are some real constraints there. SARAH FERGUSON:  You think the government should look at altering the way they have levied this CGT, the way they are planning...? MATT COMYN:  They have already announced it there. SARAH FERGUSON:  You want them to go further? MATT COMYN:  Well I think that's the area where there is, I think, as they've acknowledged the greater focus and scrutiny. I think the negative gearing changes are less controversial. So it makes sense to me that they would focus and look at that. I'm sure they'll be inundated with opportunities for engagement from multiple sectors. SARAH FERGUSON:  And a little bit of Matt Comyn into the picture now too. Thank you very much indeed for joining us. I appreciate it. MATT COMYN:  Pleasure, thank you.Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn has spoken about the transition in the workplace that AI will bring. He speaks with 7.30’s Sarah Ferguson. AustraliaAI