Artificial intelligence will not be the “mass destroyer” of jobs, according to governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey.
The Bank says most businesses are investing in AI and expect to see benefits to productivity soon, predicting that workers in the sector will learn to work with the new technologies.
He told the BBC that “economies adapt, jobs adapt, and we learn to work with it”, adding that “I think you get a better result by people with machines than with machines on their own”.
In its latest assessment of the UK economy, the Bank said that employers were already “containing recruitment and labour costs” thanks to AI and automation.
His comments came as the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee issued a report on the government’s approach to AI and large language models such as ChatGPT, claiming this has become too focused on a “narrow view” of AI safety.
The Committee said: “The UK must rebalance towards boosting opportunities while tackling near-term security and societal risks.
AI impact on jobs
“It will otherwise fail to keep pace with competitors, lose international influence and become strategically dependent on overseas tech firms for critical technology.”
If it continued down this route, the UK could miss out on the “AI goldrush”, it added.
Its chair Baroness Stowell accused the government of concerning itself with “existential risks and sci-fi scenarios” rather than embracing the positive impacts of AI.
She said: “One lesson from the way technology markets have developed since the inception of the internet is the danger of market dominance by a small group of companies.
“The government must ensure exaggerated predictions of an AI driven apocalypse, coming from some of the tech firms, do not lead it to policies that close down open-source AI development or exclude innovative smaller players from developing AI services.”
The report backs up Bailey’s assertions that the proliferation of AI will not lead to a mass loss of jobs.
“Much of our evidence suggested initial disruption would give way to enhanced productivity,” it said. “We did not find plausible evidence of imminent widespread AI‑induced unemployment.”
There have been some dramatic predictions about the impact of AI on the job market in the past, including one from Goldman Sachs predicting that generative AI would replace some 300 million jobs.
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