A new South Australian pilot program is helping small businesses figure out what artificial intelligence actually means for their jobs, their staff and the future of work.
There’s a lot of AI talk right now that sounds like the opening scene of a disaster movie – robots taking jobs, industries disappearing overnight, your entire career replaced by a chatbot.
But talk to the people actually building and using these tools every day, and the story is usually much less dramatic – and a lot more useful.
Ashleigh Greaves is one of those people. The Adelaide-born founder and CEO of simplefy.ai graduated from New York University, spent several years at JP Morgan in New York, and is now back home delivering the state government’s new AI Capability Pilot Program.
“The biggest surprise for many businesses is that AI isn’t some mysterious future technology arriving overnight,” she says. “It’s something most people are already interacting with every day.”
Who is the program for?
Funded under the state government’s Small Business Strategy 2023-2030, and managed by the Office for Small and Family Business, the AI Capability Pilot Program offers hands-on training and coaching to help small and family businesses start using AI in practical, everyday ways.
Think of a tradie going out on their own who’s missing calls and drowning in invoices. Through the program, they could set up AI to answer enquiries while they’re on site, draft quotes, and keep the paperwork moving.
Or there’s South Australia’s wine industry, where producers have already been signing up for the program. AI can analyse costs, track margins and figure out where a vintage went sideways – the kind of insights winemakers used to need expensive consultants for.
“A lot of business owners start exploring AI because they’re overwhelmed,” Ashleigh says. “They’re up at night doing invoices, replying to emails or trying to manage admin after the kids have gone to bed.”
“This program is about helping people use AI to spend less time on the tasks they hate and more time on the parts of the business they actually enjoy.”
Will AI take your job?
The obvious question that brings up is: if AI can handle the admin, will it eventually replace some of our jobs altogether?
Ashleigh’s short answer is no – and she says the fear usually comes from a misunderstanding of how the technology actually works.
“It’s not that people will become redundant,” she says. “However, certain tasks will.”
Someone still needs to guide the tools, check the output and set the direction. A receptionist who once spent most of their day on admin might find themselves doing more customer engagement or sales as the repetitive stuff gets automated.
For younger workers especially, learning to work with AI – knowing how to ask it good questions and evaluate what it spits out – could quickly become one of the most important skills on your resume.
“Each business needs to find their own footing when it comes to where and how AI should and could be used, but for us one of our core pillars is ‘Humans in loop, AI in support’,” says Ashleigh. “AI and automation handles routine tasks so humans stay in charge of decision making and outcomes.”
Using AI safely
That oversight matters, because AI does come with real risks – and working through those is a core part of what the program covers.
Businesses need to think carefully about what they share with AI tools, where data is stored, and how to protect customer details.
There’s also the risk of AI generating incorrect information – the phenomenon known as “hallucinations.” For some businesses, an honest conversation about risk might lead to the conclusion that certain tasks aren’t ready for AI at all.
“If you want to spend your five hours of coaching in the program just understanding the risk so you can go away and make a judgment – great,” Ashleigh says. “Let’s have that conversation.”
How it works
Participants attend a four-hour AI Build Day, identifying the task eating up the most time in their business before building their first AI tool to tackle it. The goal is for business owners to leave with something working – and the skills to keep improving it themselves.
The results can be striking. Adelaide energy company 1KOMMA5° Adelaide used simplefy.ai to build a sales coaching agent, cutting the time it takes to get a new sales rep up to speed from two to three weeks down to four days.
Five hours of one-on-one coaching follows, plus six months of ongoing support. Businesses with little or no AI experience are welcome, though they may need to learn the basics first, via TAFE SA’s free AI Essentials course.
“We want people to walk out of the workshop realising that this is something they can actually use,” Ashleigh says. “Once they see it working in their own business context, that’s when the confidence starts to build.”
For small business owners already stretched thin, that matters.
“AI can’t solve every problem,” Ashleigh says. “But if it can give someone a few hours back in their week, that’s a pretty powerful place to start.”
Find out more about the AI Capability Pilot Program and apply here.
