UK AI minister says Britain needs a plan for 'unprecedented' AI job losses

[Sinead]

The UK's AI minister, Kanishka Narayan, has said the government must take seriously the possibility of an unprecedented impact on the jobs market from AI. Speaking at a Labour Party conference fringe event, he stressed there is no evidence yet of AI reducing overall employment. But he said preparing for the worst case now is sensible rather than waiting to be caught out. It is a noticeably more cautious tone than the government's usual enthusiasm about AI

He pointed to what he called silent adoption, where firms quietly bring in automation and simply hire fewer people, so the effect never shows up as headline redundancies. One tech company had apparently told him it was taking on fewer staff for exactly that reason. He also promised more transparency about when AI is being used. That quiet effect is much harder to spot in the statistics than a factory closing

The numbers mentioned are significant. The IPPR think tank has estimated that up to 8 million jobs could be affected in a worst case scenario. Around 11 percent of UK jobs are currently seen as highly exposed to replacement by chatbots, mostly administrative roles, and that could rise to 60 percent of tasks if more advanced agentic AI takes off. Women are said to be around 40 percent more exposed than men because of the sectors they tend to work in

The ideas floated include changes to labour market policy, possible new regulation, reskilling programmes and even redesigning the tax system so that keeping workers is more attractive than automating them. The Prospect union welcomed involving workers but warned that working people must not become the victims of the shift. That is going to be the political fault line

I think it is right to plan ahead, but I am not sure what the plan would look like in practice. Taxing automation sounds neat until you try to define it. Retraining schemes have a mixed record at best. What would you want the government to do if AI does start wiping out jobs at scale?

UK needs plan in case of 'unprecedented' AI job losses, says ministerwww.bbc.co.uk