Artificial intelligence could displace between 1m and 3m private sector jobs in the UK, though the ultimate rise in unemployment will be in the low hundreds of thousands as growth in the technology also creates new roles, according to Tony Blair’s thinktank, The Guardian has reported.
Between 60,000 and 275,000 jobs will be displaced every year over a couple of decades at the peak of the disruption, estimates from the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) suggest.
AI, a technology that can be loosely defined as computer systems performing tasks that typically require human intelligence, has shot up the political agenda after the emergence of the ChatGPT chatbot and other breakthroughs in the field.
TBI added that it did not expect the scale of the displacement to be reflected in long-term job losses. It predicted total losses to be in the low hundreds of thousands at its peak at the end of the next decade as AI creates new demand for workers and pulls them back into the economy.
TBI indicated that administrative and secretarial jobs will be the most exposed to the technology, followed by sales and customer service, and banking and finance. Those jobs will produce the greatest time savings from deploying AI, the report said.