We recorded this on the day Firmus pulled its float. We still think it’s relevant, and maybe even a little prescient. Stephen and Lauren talk about the A$44 billion AI company most Australians had never heard of, and about rules being written after the projects were already approved. Then they look at what Melbourne’s 1880s railway boom tells us about who carries the cost when the money runs ahead of the economy.

They cover diesel generators and trucked-in water at Bell Bay, Canberra’s “Getting It Right” consultation, Victoria’s new 150-metre buffer heading into the 28 November election, and the 1884 Octopus Act, which gave Melbourne railway lines to places nobody lived yet.

Chapters

00:00 A float bigger than Coles
02:35 The rules that weren’t there
07:55 The federal rules
14:19 Victoria’s rules,
21:47 The Octopus Act

The AI Transition is hosted by Stephen and Lauren. We cover AI developments with honest, human-centred analysis — no hype, no doom, just the questions that matter.

Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

Follow us: https://www.aitransition.show/

The AI Transition is a People Over Process production.

You still matter. At least for just now.

A youth football pitch on a freezing Sunday. A furious letter, written at 9pm and rewritten by morning. A fear with the wrong name.

Half the adults in America now use AI every week. Most of them don't trust it. In the UK, entry-level jobs are quietly disappearing. Australia's watching, a few steps behind.

Stephen and Lauren take apart FOBO — the fear of being obsolete — and find it's aimed at the wrong door. The threat isn't the robot at your desk. It's the bottom rungs of the ladder, sawn off in silence.

Then: what actually helps. A brand agent that coached an artist back to herself. A substitution app built in two nights for a Sunday morning football team. A letter that got the outcome an angry one never would have.

You can't think your way out of FOBO. You can only do your way out of it.

00:00 Intro
02:56 Australia Two Waves Behind
10:33 The Wrong Door
14:13 Start Where You're Not Afraid
25:52 Wrap-up

Deep Dive to the Show:
https://www.peopleoverprocess.com.au/podcast/deep-dives/ep8-the-wrong-door

Podcast Show Notes:
The Rising AI Backlash and Algorithmic Anxiety A King's College London study reveals 70% of workers fear AI job losses, while clinical research highlights the rise of FOBO (Fear of Being Obsolete) and the psychological cost of AI integration. https://www.edtechinnovationhub.com/news/kings-college-london-study-finds-uk-public-more-fearful-than-hopeful-over-ai-and-work https://www.innovativehumancapital.com/article/algorithmic-anxiety-in-the-modern-workplace-understanding-and-addressing-the-human-cost-of-ai-integ https://drjodie.com.au/workplace-anxiety-ai/

The Entry-Level Squeeze Recent data shows a 45% drop in entry-level job postings as AI displaces graduate roles, forcing students to pivot toward soft skills to adapt. https://intuitionlabs.ai/articles/ai-impact-graduate-jobs-2025 https://roarnews.co.uk/2025/ai-and-the-graduate-job-market-whats-really-changing/

Corporate Realities: Mass Layoffs and AI-Washing Databases have logged over 340,000 job cuts attributed to AI, exploring how executives use AI as a smokescreen for cost-cutting, highlighted by controversial layoffs at companies like Atlassian. https://displaceindex.com/trends/ai-layoffs-tracker/ https://founderreports.com/ai-layoffs-tracker/ https://kimseelingsmith.com/the-atlassian-layoffs-ai-disruption-broken-values-and-the-ceo-survival-crisis/

Macro Trends and Human-Centric Work Authoritative studies, including PwC's Jobs Barometer and the Pissarides Review, outline the shifting labor market and call for a new paradigm of human-centered automation. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/ai/ai-jobs-barometer.html https://www.ifow.org/publications/the-final-report-of-the-pissarides-review

The AI Transition is hosted by Stephen and Lauren. We cover AI developments with honest, human-centred analysis — no hype, no doom, just the questions that matter.

Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

Follow us: https://www.aitransition.show/

The AI Transition is a People Over Process production.

You still matter. At least for just now.

225 megawatts. 14 football pitches in size. Approved, funded, operational. 210 megawatts. Refused. Unanimously. Two data centres. Two cities. One question nobody wants to answer.

CHAPTERS
00:00 — Intro
02:26 — Melbourne
10:39 — Edinburgh
19:06 — Big Picture
27:20 — Wrap Up

REFERENCES

Deep Dive Podcast Companion
https://www.peopleoverprocess.com.au/podcast/deep-dives/ep7-two-data-centres

Melbourne Data Centre Boom & NEXTDC M3
https://www.theurbandeveloper.com/articles/data-centre-knight-frank-report-september-2025-melbourne-sydney

Edinburgh South Gyle Proposal & the Green Data Centre Policy Problem
https://aprs.scot/news/update-on-data-centres-campaign/

Energy Bottlenecks & the Off-Grid Shift
https://www.morganstanley.com/insights/articles/powering-ai-energy-market-outlook-2026

Global Energy Demands, Water Usage & AI Regulation
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/global-energy-demands-within-the-ai-regulatory-landscape/

AI Data Centre Power Constraints & Build-Outs
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/24/what-we-know-about-energy-use-at-us-data-centers-amid-the-ai-boom/
https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-demand-from-ai

The AI Transition is hosted by Stephen and Lauren. We cover AI developments with honest, human-centred analysis — no hype, no doom, just the questions that matter.

Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

Follow us: https://www.aitransition.show/

The AI Transition is a People Over Process production.

You still matter. At least for just now.