Artificial intelligence could displace between 1 million and 3 million private sector jobs in the UK, although the eventual rise in unemployment will be a few hundred thousand as the growth of the technology also creates new roles, according to the group of Tony Blair’s experts.
Between 60,000 and 275,000 jobs will be displaced each year for a couple of decades at the height of the disruption, estimates by the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) suggest.
He described the figure as “relatively modest” given that the average number of job losses in the UK has been around 450,000 per year over the last decade. More than 33 million people are employed in the UK.
AI, a technology that can be loosely defined as computer systems that perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, has rocketed up the political agenda following the emergence of the ChatGPT chatbot and other advances in the field.
TBI added that it did not expect the magnitude of the displacement to be reflected in long-term job losses. He predicted total losses would be in the hundreds of thousands at their peak at the end of the next decade, as AI creates new demand for workers and draws them back into the economy.
“Our best guess is that the maximum impact of AI on unemployment is likely to be a few hundred thousand and that the effect diminishes over time,” says the report, titled Impact of AI on the Labor Market. “A common lesson is that AI is likely to increase labor market dynamism by prompting more workers to leave existing jobs and start new ones.”
Such a process will require an “upgrade” to the UK’s labor market infrastructure, TBI said, which could include an early warning system indicating how a worker’s job could be affected by AI.
The report estimated that AI deployment could boost GDP (a measure of economic growth) by up to 1% over the next five years, rising by up to 6% in 2035. Meanwhile, unemployment could rise by 180,000 people by 2030. Currently, there are around 1.4 million unemployed in the UK.
However, TBI, which has described AI as a “substantial policy challenge,” said all of these scenarios depend on factors such as the tools that will emerge over the next decade, investment decisions made by private companies, and government policies that accelerate or delay its implementation.
The think tank said AI would “certainly” replace some jobs, but could create more by boosting worker productivity, which would increase economic growth and create more jobs. It could also follow the pattern of previous technological advances by creating products and sectors that require workers to perform new tasks and roles.
TBI indicated that administrative and secretarial jobs will be the most exposed to technology, followed by sales and customer service, and banking and finance. Those jobs will produce the biggest time savings when implementing AI, according to the report.
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TBI said most of the efficiencies will likely come from products that perform cognitive tasks, such as chatbots, rather than AI-enabled hardware, such as robots that perform physical work. Therefore, sectors that involve complex manual work, such as construction, are likely to be less exposed, he said.
However, jobs that involve routine cognitive tasks, such as secretarial work, are more likely to be affected, as are industries that generate large amounts of data, such as banking and finance, which can train AI models more easily. .
TBI said it expected unemployment to rise initially as some companies take advantage of the time savings brought by AI (the report estimates that almost a quarter of the time private sector workers spend on their jobs could be saved) by laying off employees. staff.