Remember Robocop, the dystopian Eighties classic in which an evil corporation tried to replace the police with AI-driven death machines? Turns out that the real nightmare of the future might be something even more mundane – Robobank, where automation quietly guts entry-level employment.
The City’s enthusiastic embrace of artificial intelligence is leading to a bonfire of entry-level jobs. Figures from job-search website Adzuna reveal that ground-level job openings have plummeted by nearly a third (31.9 per cent) since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022.
Graduate, intern and junior roles have all been torched. Ditto apprenticeships. Combined, these now account for just a quarter of the jobs market – down from 28.9 per cent in 2022.
Part of this will clearly be the result of a spluttering economy, which businesses typically respond to by scaling back investment in favour of cost cuts and cash preservation.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves hasn’t helped matters by increasing taxes on jobs and lowering the threshold at which they kick in. That has made lower-paid entry-level roles a lot more expensive for businesses to provide.
Add in AI, with companies like BT, the Big Four accounting firms (Ernst & Young, Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG), and City banks formulating plans to slash their costs with its assistance, and you have a perfect storm.
It doesn’t look set to blow over any time soon. On the contrary. Dario Amodei, the boss of Anthropic, a $61bn (£44.5bn) AI start-up, last month warned that the tech could replace half of the available entry-level jobs in just five years.
This is obviously going to create a serious problem for a government whose attitude towards AI can be summed up with the phrase “Yay, AI, we love it” while it tells young people they’re all lazy ne’er-do-wells who need to look for work.
It makes sense to be at the forefront of a revolution that’s coming regardless, but that doesn’t absolve policymakers from reckoning with its impact.
At a time of cuts in support for young people and disabled Britons – both groups that find it very hard to secure employment – it ill behoves ministers to do their “three wise monkeys” act in response to the difficult questions AI poses.
There is nothing like high unemployment – and frustrated groups of angry kids with nothing to do – to add fuel to the populists’ fire. And unemployment is currently rising rapidly, although Adzuna’s take on the number of vacancies (rising slightly) is very different from that of the Office for National Statistics, which has been reporting rapid declines.
However, it isn’t only the government that needs to consider the long-term impact of this. If you take the flamethrower to your next generation of employees, who is going to do the jobs AI can’t do further up the food chain? Who is going to have the necessary capabilities if employers abandon on-the-job training?
Britain is already grappling with a skills gap – and to be fair, it isn’t just Britain. The European Commission, for example, found that almost half (42 per cent) of SMEs across the bloc were struggling to get their hands on suitably qualified staff in 2023.
The future for employers might just be a vicious and horribly expensive battle for a diminishing number of people with the requisite skills to perform highly specialised roles.
Perhaps the bots will go on to replace the mid- and even higher-level functions? Interesting thought experiment: what happens if they’re all rolling the same AI-powered dice the same way in the financial casino? Hard to find the edge that facilitates rainmaking trades if everyone has the same fancy kit, doing the same thing.
As much as we can criticise the government for failing to think through the far-reaching impact of this new tech, short-sighted CEOs who can’t see beyond the next quarter also deserve to be held accountable.
When it comes to the skills gap, businesses have to do their part. Their lobby groups like nothing better than to whinge about how hard it is for their members to find the people they need. That won’t wash when their members are enthusiastically engaged in making the problem worse.
It is, of course, true that some people believe AI could also create jobs. The World Economic Forum, for example, thinks that while tech – along with the green transition and economic and demographic shifts – will “displace” 92 million jobs, it will create 170 million more. That represents a net increase of 78 million.
Quite who is going to do those jobs when the fashion-conscious CEO about town is ditching on-the-job training is anyone’s guess.
“We want Britain to step up; to shape the AI revolution, rather than wait to see how it shapes us,” said Peter Kyle, the science and tech secretary, announcing the government’s “go AI” strategy. Sorry, the government’s £2bn AI Opportunities Action Plan.
Tell you what: if AI could just help ministers come up with less awkward soundbites – something more human, perhaps – I think I could be converted.
