By Alicia Lucas
OpenAI released ChatGPT in Australia and elsewhere in 2022. OpenAI had by then gone from a totally non-profit company to operating ChatGPT in a profit subsidiary of the non-profit company. OpenAI seems to have ignored the negative consequences ChatGPT could have on people, including to their mental health. ChatGPT is claimed to be something different but really all it is is automation that resembles human communication. It uses known statistical methods collectively referred to as “machine learning” and portrayed as “artificial intelligence” and calculates using: a selected range of everything publicly available that can be copied from the internet; that inputted or generated from ChatGPT; and; more recently, third party partner’s information. When the model provides the answer to a question it doesn’t produce anything new outside of the data cobbled together from these sources. Amongst that likely inputted into the chatbot model were social media content and information related to business such as plans and plan templates. These are its data – part of it’s entry into many business worlds.
Uber’s practices as a Big Tech business can help illustrate how other Big Tech businesses including OpenAI may operate to quickly install their products in other countries and companies. It can help identify the consequences of just letting a Big Tech company rip. In Australia’s case, we are well down the path of losing an Australian controlled industry with probably no overall benefit to workers and loss of government revenue. The revenue Australia used to get from the taxi industry is now perhaps increasingly going offshore to the USA and possibly still a tax haven.
Uber started operating without permission in Australia in 2012. First it started the high end (Uber Black – Uber’s premium service) and two years later, UberX. The introduction of UberX, particularly, ignored the rules and regulations of the existing taxi and hire car industry, even those concerned with passenger safety, for example, drivers did not need to be trained or vehicles checked for safety. Like ChatGPT, UberX was claimed to be something different, but really all it was was the automation of the role of the taxi staff who co-ordinated passengers with taxis.
Is Australia’s acceptance of UberX and ChatGPT giving the companies that produce them too much of a fair go? ChatGPT may lead to the hollowing out of services like those for mental health and effectively largely transfer their control to another country just as Uber appears to be doing to Australia’s taxi services. Passenger’s favouring Uber’s business style but with money not an issue have directly and indirectly led to loss of government revenue and the working terms and conditions of blue collared taxi workers. ChatGPT could similarly undermine the employment security of white collared workers such as mental health professionals.
On the surface Uber and OpenAI’s products look very different. ChatGPT has at its centre machine learning. While machine learning isn’t Ubers vocalised purpose, it uses machine learning including matching riders to drivers. Uber focuses specifically on an app for commercial passenger vehicles while ChatGPT may potentially have many foci and appears currently even somewhat amorphous. Uber’s business appears relatively straightforward because of the apps narrow service and ChatGPTs much more complicated. Recent serious concerns, however, about ChatGPT and its interactions with people who have gone on to commit suicide or a violent act have prompted the not-for-profit company to announce ways forward that allow a similar business model as Ubers to be glimpsed.
Uber appears to have gone through an investment cycle from unprofitable to overall profitable. ChatGPT is still at the unprofitable phase. The following describes some aspects of Uber’s development that may provide some insight into the possible evolution of ChatGPT including in response to the challenges thrown at it by existing industry, drivers and governments.
Entering a country
The entrance to Australia of the two products, an app (sometimes described as driver and passenger apps) in the case of Uber and a chatbot in the case of OpenAI, helps mask potentially similar operating characteristics and business models. Uber was seen as a competitor from the time it started in the existing taxi market whereas ChatGPT could be portrayed as advancing humanity. Individual state business laws and regulations were important to the running of Uber from the beginning but not to ChatGPT so far. Australian and State laws may influence the operation of specific business types if running in ChatGPT although with difficulty if a ChatGPT business is located wholly overseas.
Uber Black was not as challenging to regulators as UberX would prove to be. Uber Black drivers were professional and accredited and cars were more easily acceptably licensed for the otherwise less heavily regulated hire car market. Examples of points of contention with Uber Black were ensuring they were acceptably pre-booked in NSW and loss of limousine licence values when opening up the market for Uber in QLD. In contrast, anyone with a drivers licence and a car could become a UberX driver when first introduced. Taxi’s were regulated and that costs, allowing UberX to charge cheaper fares than Australian taxis.
Australia’s states and territories had a choice to accept Uber or send it packing. All states initially attempted measures to check Uber’s advance where illegally operating, such as fining drivers. One state amended legislation so Uber administrators could also be fined. One by one States mostly opted to legalise Uber in a way that effectively led to some deregulation of the taxi industry butwith only some regulations for Uber.
The Australian Government’s National Competition Policy lent its weight to consideration of deregulation of the taxi industry at this time except in the NT as the industry had been unsatisfactorily deregulated in 1999. Specific encouragement was given to deregulate and allow competition into the taxi and hire car industry as part of a review of that policy in 2015. When UberX entered the market, the Victorian taxi industry was already being deregulated following a 2012 report on deregulation of the industry including increasing competition. The former chair of the ACCC, Professor Allen Fels, was involved in this report and also a 2014 deregulation report of the WA industry. The argument for deregulation of the motorised taxi industry to improve efficiencies undermined and conflicted with its experience from the time it started in the early 20th century. The taxi industry and drivers had fought and learnt ways to sustain a viable industry and a decent living for workers over this period that included world wars and the Great Depression. It may not have been a perfect industry, but is Uber really the answer?
Uber’s ease of entry into another country and its success was facilitated by local political systems that work in their favour, for example, those of free market and small government that favoured deregulation. Powerful company heads who prefer machines to people and looking to the future may perhaps also be influential.
The following states and territory legalised Uber typically following a review and mostly with compensation to the existing industry. When legalised, Uber was put in a different category to taxis. Minimal changes were made to the legislation initially. More substantial changes followed later, for example, Queensland revised legislation during 2017. The ACT then NSW legalised Uber in 2015 followed by WA and Tasmania in 2016. SA considered stronger regulations but ultimately legalised Uber for Adelaide only in 2016. Queensland also legalised Uber in 2016. In an article about an ABC 7.30 report about Uber, particularly in Queensland, Graeme Samuel, another former chair of the ACCC, and then head of the Victorian Taxi Commission, was quoted as saying “banning Uber simply would not work” in regards to those state governments contemplating banning Uber.
Uber wanted distinct regulations for their services. The company argued against being under the same regulations as used for taxis in Queensland, SA and WA. “On-demand Charter”, for example, was the category used for Uber-type services in WA while Queensland categorised Uber-type services under “Booked-hire services.” This is not suggesting that these governments deliberately favoured Uber over existing industry.
Uber used a number of techniques to further its aims. For example, Uber provided free rides to Adelaide passengers to show there was no need for further regulation. Offers of free rides were also made to Gold Coast residents even though the Queensland government had ordered Uber to cease and desist. It was reported Queensland drivers were told to keep driving by Uber and it would continue paying any fines drivers received.
Victoria found it’s rules being disputed legally. An Uber driver contested a fine for driving illegally. The government ultimately lost effectively allowing Uber to operate in Victoria in 2016. The government stopped UberX use by increasing the powers of the Taxis Services Commissioner to correct the problematic legislated redundancies that allowed the driver to win the case. In 2017, the government legislated for taxis, Uber and similar services to all be considered commercial passenger vehicles in what the then Premier described as being “about fairness.”
Victorian law has a booked commercial passenger services category that includes bookable taxis and Uber. Any changes to regulations that, say, Uber argued were needed to improve its service would also apply to bookable taxis and vice versa. It would be more difficult to favour one type of taxi provider over another.
It was the deregulated, although notably walked back, NT that banned Uber. NT had actual lived experience of implementation of “economic theory.” When Uber was given the opportunity to operate it decided not to as it considered the then proposed government regulations and barriers for entry too onerous. Uber, however, continued to monitor the number of times its app was viewed, even where it was banned. The total number of views in the NT helped lead to the company changing its mind. Uber commenced there in 2018 under the initially rejected but by then in place NT regulations and barriers. A lesson for the states and territory that acted earlier.
Taxi drivers took it into their own hands. Taxi drivers in various states went to court. Victorian taxi drivers, amongst other acts such as protests, joined with hire car drivers and subsequently drivers from NSW, Queensland and WA in a class action in which Uber ultimately agreed to pay $272 million to settle. The class action accused Uber of acting illegally by operating contrary to regulations between 2014 to 2017 resulting in those in the existing taxi and hire car industries suffering serious loss of income and/or capital value and possibly a decrease in livelihoods. The case was started in 2019 and continued to 2024.
The NSW government belatedly argued the case for Uber to pay tax to state government – some $81.5 million had not been paid by 2021. The NSW Court of Appeal found in 2025 that drivers earned wages from Uber and therefore state payroll tax had to be paid. This overrode a 2024 finding of the NSW Supreme Court that Uber drivers were contractors. Uber is appealing this decision in the High Court of Australia. Australia’s taxi industry has struggled and declined, including GoCatch, which similarly worked from a mobile phone app, and other competitors have not been successful so far. The Indian company Ola has left the country.
To be continued…
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