Andrew Duong was awarded damages of $950,000 after a head-on collision on his way to work in 2023 left him with physical and psychological injuries and reduced working capacity. The NSW Personal Injury Commission said $400,000 of that total covered future economic loss, including the uncertainty of finding work in a labour market now shadowed by artificial intelligence and the limits placed on his body by the crash.
Who Pays When Work Breaks
Duong’s case puts a hard number on what happens when a worker gets smashed up on the way to the job and then has to face the market with a damaged body. Before the crash, he was working about 70 hours a week in warehouse roles for Aldi and Home Delivery Service. Afterward, he lost his Aldi job because he was not cleared to return to full-time work, though he remained employed by the delivery company on reduced hours.
The commission said the award reflected not just the injuries themselves, but the way those injuries would shape Duong’s future in a system that demands constant availability and punishes anyone who can’t keep up. He suffered injuries to his right hand and wrist, shoulder, elbow and lower back, along with a psychological injury. He had two operations on his wrist. That’s the cost of the collision, then the cost of trying to keep working inside a machine that treats damaged people as reduced assets.
The Buffer for a Precarious Labour Market
Commission member Philip Carr wrote that Duong had 33 years of working life ahead of him that would be affected by his loss of capacity. Carr determined that Duong should receive a "significant buffer" for the uncertainty around future loss of earnings, which included the impact of AI. He wrote, "[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."
The tribunal did not find that AI had cost Duong work, or predict that it would. It said only that AI may create more job market uncertainty that could disproportionately affect an injured worker with a need for greater accommodations. Carr found Duong could continue in his delivery role with restrictions, but said his prospects on the open labour market would be "considerably reduced" if he lost it. Artificial intelligence was one of multiple considerations in the assessment, alongside his injuries, medication and the risk of losing his current role.
That’s the hierarchy in plain sight. A worker gets hurt, loses one job, hangs on to another with restrictions, and then has to live under the threat that the open market will chew him up if the current arrangement disappears. The commission’s language is clinical. The pressure is not.
What the Officials Admit, Carefully
Queensland University of Technology associate professor in economics Dr Leonora Risse said there was a lot of uncertainty about how AI would influence the job market. She said, "There's no one definitive clear result. In some ways it'll be positive, in other aspects, it will be negative," and added that even if certain jobs or industries were not threatened by automation, there would still likely be an impact on the tasks that comprise a job and the skills required. She said, "Work and tasks are going to look very different," adding that the job market has always been in flux as a result of technological change.
The federal government released its first ever analysis of AI's impact on the jobs market after the commission’s decision. That analysis found no evidence of broad AI-driven disruption in Australia's labour market so far. Modelling by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations suggested employment in a more AI-exposed occupation was about 2 per cent lower by February than under its pre-ChatGPT trend. The department repeatedly cautioned that this was not proof AI had caused job losses.
Jobs exposed to the technology had already been growing more slowly before ChatGPT became widely available. The government said it would continue monitoring the data as more evidence became available. That’s the official answer: watch the numbers, wait for more evidence, keep the machine running. Meanwhile, the people doing the work are the ones left to absorb the shocks, the injuries, and the uncertainty when the system shifts under their feet.