Increasing deployment of artificial intelligence will cause job losses, the UK technology secretary has warned, saying: “I want to level with the public. Some jobs will go.”
In a speech on government plans to handle the impact of AI on the British economy, Liz Kendall declined to say how many redundancies the technology might cause but said: “We know people are worried about graduate entry jobs in places like law and finance.”
She said: “Others will be created in their place”.
While some forecasts have suggested the fast-developing technology could create a net increase in employment, Kendall said: “I’m not complacent about that.”
Earlier this month the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, said that without action to use AI “as a superpower for positive transformation and creation”, it could become “a weapon of mass destruction of jobs”.
Speaking to an audience of tech and business leaders at the Bloomberg headquarters in London, Kendall, the former work and pensions secretary, pledged Labour “won’t leave people to struggle on their own”.
She announced plans to train up to 10 million British workers in the most basic AI skills by 2030 – including members of the cabinet – signalling a focus on helping workers adapt to the coming shifts in the labour markets, rather than resisting them.
She said the government’s goal was to “make Britain the fastest AI adoption country in the G7” and said jobs will be created around the government’s four AI growth zones.
“We are on the cusp of great change – an industrial revolution [taking place] in a decade,” she said. “We have barely begun to see how this technology will transform all our lives – I believe for the better.”
The rollout of online AI training for millions of workers – to involve Multiverse, a company founded by Euan Blair, plus a new programme to support women to move into entry level tech roles – would together be “the biggest single plan to upskill the nation since Harold Wilson’s Open University”, she said.
A new “future of work unit” is also being established in the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) with involvement from trades unions and business leaders.
Ministers have faced criticism they are relying too heavily on US AI companies, whose models could soon be competing with British white collar workers for jobs. It was announced that a $1m (£750,000) donation from Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta was being spent on a government initiative to build AI systems for defence, national security and transport.
Meanwhile, Anthropic, a US AI startup valued at $350bn, has been chosen to build and pilot a dedicated assistant tool for public services on gov.uk, starting with a model that will give jobseekers career advice. It is providing the services for free. The government also has a memorandum of understanding with OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.
