Fels backs calls to use artificial intelligence as wage-theft detector

"The amount of underpayment occurring now is so large that there is an effect on wages generally and on making life difficult for law-abiding employers." Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter did not rule out introducing data matching as part of his wage theft crackdown and said workplace exploitation "will not be tolerated by this government". Senator Sheldon said artificial intelligence could be used to detect discrepancies in payment data held by the Australian Taxation Office on employers in industries such as retail, hospitality, agriculture and construction. "You could do it for wages and superannuation, with an algorithm used as a first flag for human intervention," he said. Senator Sheldon said an algorithm could be programmed with the average amount of overtime employees typically worked in each sector, and flag the employer for audit if they were paying little or no overtime.