AI was supposed to end offshoring. It seems to be doing the opposite.

In line with this week’s news that Qantas is considering taking 1000 jobs to India, it seems that most of our industry’s predictions about AI’s impact on offshoring has turned out wrong.

The national airline is reportedly in early discussions with Accenture about a program known internally as Project iQ, which could move up to 1,000 back office roles to India, including marketing, finance and HR. Qantas says no formal agreement is in place and no decisions have been made.

Clearly there’ll be an outcry from many circles, given the airline’s history with outsourcing, but this isn’t an isolated case. Woolworths began consulting staff in June about moving hundreds of finance, HR and IT roles to its hubs in India and the Philippines. NAB is hiring more than a thousand people across Vietnam and India. Officeworks is moving customer service roles offshore. Telstra signed a $700 million AI and data joint venture with Accenture.

Every one of these has been framed as an AI story. That’s what is surprising.

Two years ago the accepted wisdom was that AI would kill offshoring. Why send work to India when a model can do it for the price of an API call? We had that exact conversation about our own India-based Nibble Edge studio. We sat around wondering whether we’d spent years building something with a short shelf life. Would all the love and energy put into the team be wasted?

AI doesn’t turn up as a finished product. It turns up as a capability........

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