Who stands to benefit from AI’s jobs disruption?

Past revolutions have always created winners and losers

Innovation and efficiency are invariably framed by the tech industry as being an unalloyed good. In reality, however, there are always winners and losers, at least in the short term; and at times of rapid change those adversely affected will often struggle to adapt, becoming long-term losers. Change has consequences.

AI is poised to disrupt or eliminate many jobs, and the real question should be cui bono? Who stands to benefit from this innovation, and who is likely to lose out?

The tech industry tends to shrug off this question, passing it over to government, markets or society in general, but for an increasing number of people and organisations it's a live issue to which they want answers.

Companies like Klarna are saying the quiet part out loud, believing they can achieve substantial savings by replacing human workers with AI-powered solutions, cutting employee numbers by about half in advance of a planned IPO. Customer service staff have already lost their jobs, but investors and future shareholders may benefit.

Elsewhere transcription jobs have all but disappeared, as have many other text-in-text-out writing roles and some creative design positions, because companies can now use AI to do what they used to be paid for.

On the other hand, new jobs such as prompt engineer, model tester and AI governance are emerging. But how many people can switch from transcriber to AI governance, and what happens when those new jobs become automated in turn, presumably against a backdrop of ever faster change?

Desolate pit villages and rusting steel towns stand as testament to the difficulty of supplanting the old with the new.

These questions were in the spotlight this during at a panel discussion at Computing's IT Leaders Summit.

A delegate asked about the fate of creatives such as graphic designers, actors and musicians who have spent years honing their craft and will not find it easy to redirect their talents as brands, studios and media organisations come under competitive pressure to cut costs.

Kavita Reddi, head of business development at AI startup Voxta, pointed out that there is much to be gained by artists using AI. She mentioned discussions with animation company Aardman.

"It took them three years to make Wallace and Gromit part two. Today, that whole thing could be cut to six months.

"Coming up with the original Wallace and Gromit idea, that has to be from humans, but the creators repeating and doing claymation animation, that can be done by AI. So there are advantages to that, but we have to look at ensuring that the creativity is not throttled."

But Nick Hodder, head of digital transformation at the Imperial War Museum, begged to differ.

"This makes me sad," he said. "People who do claymation, even though it takes a huge amount of time, they love the process. I feel like you are doing damage by taking the process away. If they were people who wanted to do the most efficient thing, they'd never have done claymation."

He added: "There's something sad about people seeing something special disappearing or being devalued or commoditised."

Commoditisation of artisanship has been happening since the industrial revolution, but there are new opportunities for those using the new tools. Reddi spoke of jobs "rising up the food chain" with more oversight roles and opportunities to identify new ways of doing things. Creativity need not be lost: "I don't think that automation at the front end is definitely going to negatively impact the human in the loop. Quite the contrary."

There remains the question of whether the same number of people will be needed to fill those posts, whether they will satisfy the same creative urge, and for how long they will be around before they, too, are automated away.

One thing the pair did agree on was the potential of AI to help drive productivity in the public sector, which could provide more money for public services like the NHS. The Tony Blair Institute said recently that the adoption of AI across the public sector could save £10 billion a year by the end of the current parliament. Whether or not those figures are achievable, it is something that could ultimately benefit us all.

"Our public services are in crisis," said Reddi. "It could mean more money for councils, more money for the NHS, more money for social services. I think that is a saving worth making."