AI job cuts hitting UK hardest, research finds

More jobs are being lost to AI in the UK than in other large economies, according to new research.

British job losses as a result of AI were twice the international average, the study by investment bank Morgan Stanley found, with a net loss of 8 per cent over the past 12 months.

The companies surveyed claimed that the introduction of AI had improved productivity and output, even with fewer staff working.

Of the five major economies included in the study, only the US saw an increase in jobs as a result of AI.

One of the report’s authors said the findings were an “early warning sign” of the massive impact that AI will have on the workforce.

Unemployment in the UK is currently at a five-year high, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), with retail and hospitality sectors hit particularly hard.

A separate study last year from job search site Adzuna found that the number of entry level jobs comprised of apprenticeships, junior positions and graduate roles had fallen by nearly a third since the arrival of ChatGPT in 2022.

Sam Altman, the chief executive of ChatGPT creator OpenAI, has been a vocal proponent of universal basic income (UBI) to offset AI-related job losses, but has also warned that there will be no single solution to the problem.

Jobs at jeopardy to AI range from data scientists and economists, to historians and authors, according to a study from Microsoft last July.

Earlier this month, London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan said AI could usher in a new era of mass unemployment and inequality.

“We mustn’t drift, absentmindedly, into a future we didn’t ask for and don’t want,” he said during his annual speech at Mansion House.

“We need to wake up and make a choice: seize the potential of AI and use it as a superpower for positive transformation and creation, or surrender to it and sit back and watch as it becomes a weapon of mass destruction of jobs.”