SYDNEY — A New South Wales tribunal has become the first known legal body in Australia to explicitly factor the potential impact of artificial intelligence on the job market into a worker’s compensation payout, awarding an injured former warehouse worker nearly $1 million after finding his future earning capacity had to account for growing workplace uncertainty tied to AI.

The NSW Personal Injury Commission assessed earlier this month that Andrew Duong, a 34-year-old former warehouse worker for Aldi and a home delivery service, suffered damages totaling $950,000 following a head-on car collision on his way to work in 2023. The award included $400,000 specifically tied to Duong’s future economic loss, after the commission found he could continue working only with significant restrictions, and that his ongoing injuries and pain would further limit his ability to find alternative employment if he were to lose his current position.

Duong was working roughly 70 hours per week across his warehouse roles for Aldi and the home delivery service before the crash. The collision caused injuries to his right hand and wrist, shoulder, elbow and lower back, along with a psychological injury, and required two separate operations on his wrist. He ultimately lost his position at Aldi because he was not medically cleared to return to full-time work, though he remained employed by the delivery company on reduced hours following the accident.

Commission member Philip Carr, who assessed the case, found that Duong had 33 years of working life remaining that would be affected by his reduced capacity. Carr determined that Duong should receive what he described as a “significant buffer” to account for broader uncertainty surrounding his future earning potential, explicitly citing the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence as one of several contributing factors. “[And] with the uncertainty of any occupation in today’s workforce, especially with the advent of artificial intelligence and its workplace challenges during his working life, which requires an allowance for his future continuing loss of capacity,” Carr wrote in his determination.

Importantly, the tribunal did not find that artificial intelligence had already cost Duong his job, nor did it predict with certainty that AI would do so in the future. Instead, Carr’s reasoning centered on the idea that AI-driven disruption could contribute to broader job market uncertainty in the years ahead, a dynamic that could disproportionately affect an injured worker who requires greater workplace accommodations than an uninjured colleague performing the same role. Carr identified artificial intelligence as one of several considerations factored into his overall assessment of Duong’s future earning capacity, alongside his physical injuries, ongoing medication needs, and the general risk that he could eventually lose his current, accommodated position.

The ruling arrives amid broader national debate over how significantly artificial intelligence is currently reshaping, or is likely to reshape, the Australian labor market. Dr. Leonora Risse, an associate professor in economics at Queensland University of Technology, said substantial uncertainty remains regarding AI’s overall impact on employment. “There’s no one definitive clear result. In some ways it’ll be positive, in other aspects, it will be negative,” Risse said. She noted that even in industries or roles not directly threatened by automation, AI is still likely to reshape the specific tasks and skills required within many jobs. “Work and tasks are going to look very different,” Risse said, adding that labor markets have historically undergone continuous change in response to technological shifts of various kinds.

The tribunal’s decision follows the Australian federal government’s first-ever formal analysis of AI’s impact on the national jobs market, which found no clear evidence of broad, AI-driven disruption within Australia’s labor force to date. Modelling conducted by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations suggested that employment in occupations more heavily exposed to AI technology was running approximately 2% lower by February than would have been expected under pre-ChatGPT employment trends. However, the department cautioned repeatedly that this finding did not constitute proof that AI itself had directly caused job losses, noting that occupations more exposed to the technology had already been experiencing slower employment growth even before ChatGPT became widely available to the public. The government indicated it would continue monitoring available data as further evidence emerges regarding AI’s longer-term effects on the labor market.

A separate economic analysis from consultancy firm Deloitte, referenced alongside coverage of the Duong ruling, suggested that the organizations most likely to succeed amid AI-driven workplace changes will be those that effectively combine human judgment with machine capabilities, with recruiters interviewed for that report emphasizing that human decision-making will remain a critical factor even as AI tools become more deeply integrated into various industries.

The Duong case is likely to draw significant attention from personal injury lawyers, insurers and tribunal members across Australia, given its status as what is believed to be the first instance of a legal body explicitly incorporating AI-related job market uncertainty into a formal compensation calculation. Legal and insurance industry observers may view the ruling as an early indicator of how tribunals and courts could increasingly grapple with quantifying the economic risk artificial intelligence poses to injured workers’ future earning capacity, particularly as AI adoption continues expanding across a broader range of industries and job functions.

As the debate over AI’s economic and employment impact continues to develop in Australia, both within government policy circles and now within the legal system itself, further cases addressing similar questions of AI-related occupational uncertainty may follow, particularly as additional workers navigating injury-related compensation claims seek to account for the same kind of long-term labor market unpredictability that shaped the commission’s assessment in Duong’s case. The federal government has indicated it considers it too early to draw firm conclusions about AI’s current or future effect on job losses in Australia, but has committed to continuing to monitor emerging data as the broader technology continues to evolve and become more widely adopted across the national workforce.