Shadowing Practice: How will AI impact the jobs market? | BBC News - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

Research suggests that seven in ten workers are worried about their jobs and think AI will lead to widespread unemployment.

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Research suggests that seven in ten workers are worried about their jobs and think AI will lead to widespread unemployment.

Are they right to be worried?

No, are they right to be worried?

Absolutely.

Are we going to start on that low?

Yes, I have to believe that we are going to see unemployment rising in the next two to three years.

Some sectors will see 20-30% unemployment's unheard of numbers really.

But that's not a challenge of AI.

That's a challenge of a choice of the capitalists who run businesses

that will choose to reduce costs by asking people to leave

rather than increase the overall intelligence of an organization by empowering people with AI and technology to make people do more.

But is it not unrealistic to expect companies not to use AI to save money

and improve the bottom line at the end of the day?

So the idea of saving money in itself is actually a very complex idea

because at an individual level every organization wants to save money

but if you if every organization in the UK

or anywhere in the world would save money by laying people off you're wiping out the consumption side of GDP

and when you do that what ends up happening is

that people will not have the purchasing power to even buy what you what you're making

because they won't have the income because they won't have the income and

so you know in a very interesting way in a very

individualistic level uh you know a company may benefit from laying off people

but at you know for the economy at large it's actually quite risky for the economy

so victor tell us about you then because you have a company that you basically,

tell me if I get this wrong,

you basically employ actors to let you use their face

and their voice I imagine to create training videos and that kind of thing.

So they give their consent,

but obviously that then means they don't have a job with you after that,

they've just got that one.

Job losses, are you as worried as Mo?

I think we'll definitely see displacement of jobs.

Does that mean losses?

I think it depends on the timeline that we're talking about.

I think if we look at a three,

five, ten year timeline, I think we will find things to do.

I think work will change.

I don't subscribe to the idea that businesses will just save costs.

I think on the contrary,

what we're seeing right now is that businesses will develop more products and humans will change what they do.

I think a lot of the busy work that we do today,

we can probably replace with AI.

But I tend to think that great companies today consist of great people.

And I think in five or ten years,

great companies will still consist of great people.

If you go back 50 years in time and you told everyone

that most people's job would be sitting at a desk and looking into a screen,

no one would believe you, right?

We've gone through this progression many times in history before and there will for sure be a disruption, I think.

But I'm very optimistic that humans will find ways to play status games.

We will do much more than we could before

and I think there will be a lot of new jobs in the future think

that when you look at what is most valuable in society it is generally what is the most scarce

and what's about to happen right now is

that what has been very scarce which is software development numerical jobs analytical jobs

that will be much easier to do with technology

and i think the value of human relations

and human connection is going to go up very very significantly

and the for a consumer to talk to a human

or business talk to a human i think that'll be much more valuable in a in a year or two.

Because it's not, I mean,

we end up talking to chatbots a lot, don't we?

I mean, so you think we're going to get less of that?

Because at the moment it feels like we're getting more of that.

I think we'll get more of that,

but I think the value of the human in the loop,

I think, will increase.

But it won't be responding to it if your package is on the way.

It will be something that's more valuable, more creative than that.

Okay, we've got a few hands up already.

Let's hear the man in the white T-shirt in the middle.

I'm hedging my bets personally,

purely because, you know, people like Sam Altman came out very recently in the past few days

and he did say predictions that he previously made around job losses and things.

he's kind of rolling back on them,

so it feels as though they're still...

We're clearly going through a massive period of change and there's lots of uncertainty,

but it feels as though,

you know, the ink isn't dry yet.

There's still kind of, like,

decisions to be made on where the future goes and whether there are as big a job losses,

as they say.

Well, as you know, when you come along,

be part of our audience,

we talk to you at some length about your experiences as well as your politics and everything else.

And there's a few people that I particularly wanted to talk to.

So Richard, Richard Gagin, you're here at the front.

So we're talking about job losses.

There's also been a report out today about young people not in education,

employment or training, quite how bad the job market is.

So what's your experience?

Yeah, so I just graduated like two weeks ago with a degree in computer science

and I've been specifically applying for kind of software engineering roles.

So, so far I'd say I've applied to over 150 positions and 150.

Yeah, I've got friends and I know people online applying for like hundreds of positions globally.

It's sort of because like these companies are using AI to replace software engineering, like entry-level roles.

It means that it's really hard and like really competitive to get these roles out of university.

And I feel like this is just going to keep going forward as these AI companies develop better

and better tools like so how does

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that make you feel about your future job prospects i mean

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obviously like i started back in 2022 i had like sort of no idea

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that i mean none of us said

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that this ai bubble would kind of boom um

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so kind of software engineering say it's really like the primarily

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primary career path people would take like coming out of a computer science degree

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so now it feels like that career is sort of not safe at all

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and in 20 years time i feel like even even like 10 years time,

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I feel like it might not even exist at all.

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So now I've got to feel like I've got to pivot and find something else.

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So, Laura, how right are people to be worried about job losses?

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I mean, I think it's a very reasonable thing to worry about.

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We have seen, so the gentleman in the white shirt made a really good point.

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There's a very big difference between predicting the future,

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which we've got lots of data and evidence that show

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that humans are really bad that and in fact that experts are worse than people that know nothing about it.

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Well that's a bit of a story.

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Yes, you have to be careful what you ask people,

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future prediction is very tricky.

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Well what about the question our audience is asking,

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research suggests 7 or 10 workers are worried about their jobs,

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are they right to be worried?

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They are, so I think we have seen,

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you know, without predicting the future,

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a genuine collapse in the job market for the younger people

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that isn't necessarily borne out for people further on in their careers.

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I think there's been a 16% decline in entry-level jobs since ChatGPT came out,

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not all necessarily because of that.

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I think I saw 28% of graduate jobs sort of in the past year or so.

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So you're looking at something that is currently a real problem.

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And we have all these lovely predictions that say,

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you know, by 2030, there'll be 170 million new jobs

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and the loss of 92 million old jobs and that people need to transition.

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So you've got Two problems,

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is that right and all of these new jobs will be created?

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And then secondly, do you keep the education system up

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and do you have a place for these people who are caught in that transition point which is happening right now?

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So I don't know the answer but I think yes,

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it's a very reasonable thing to worry about.

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Man there with a white shirt with the glasses, yeah.

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I think on the new technology coming in,

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a couple of examples I've come across.

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The first one was when spreadsheets came out.

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Initially, I think the suspicion was that accountants would go out of work.

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But in fact, as opposed to the summing stuff,

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they were able to add a great deal more value and there were more accountants.

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And also, if you look at agriculture,

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years ago, the whole base of the US used to be involved in the fields,

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whereas now only 3 percentile,

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but there's far more productivity,

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which allows people to go and do different things.

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So I think, ultimately, if we can use technology and,

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you know, and then sort of develop ourselves,

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we'll be better for it.

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Okay, a woman there in the blue top.

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Thank you.

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I agree with what the panel said so far about kind of jobs,

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and I'm aware that there will be some jobs that AI may take.

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I think I'm concerned about the routine jobs

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that AI will likely replace are what help us build the experience to be competent.

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The sort of entry-level jobs.

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Yeah, I use AI in my job,

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but I'm able to critique it because I have the knowledge

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and skills in the area that I'm trying to use it for.

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If we fast forward 10 years

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and a cohort of students have just got used to producing

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things with AI without the competence to be able to critique it,

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challenge it or anything like that,

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they're not going to be able to use it properly.

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Well, we've got some in the audience.

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Charles, you're at the front here,

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and you've got direct experience.

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You run your own company,

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I believe,

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and you've been using AI to be able to reduce the workforce just tell us a bit about

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that well we haven't reduced a lot

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because at this stage we're experimenting with vast amounts of AI we see the technology capable to do

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so much that we don't we can't fathom how far we can go with it

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so we're in a phase of experimentation I would say over

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90% of what we try doesn't really work yet we can

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imagine in a few years it might some things can be immediately applied then it might reduce jobs now

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that has happened and that's happened with you and that's happened with us

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and it will continue to happen to everybody in the industry

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because it's such an obvious use case

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but it's very few today what we can't understand very well is how many new opportunities it will create

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but we know there will be but it's hard for us to see them yet

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so we're in an experimentation phase it's actually adding costs to

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us today then reducing costs is a little bit of reduction and a lot of experimentation which is expensive.

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The expectation is in the next two or three years those will yield new services or new opportunities.

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How we exploit those is still nebulous.

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But I think the point was made earlier,

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we are very bad at predicting but we're very good at experimenting and that's the phase we're in now.

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So Darren, one thing that struck me about what Mo had to say,

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watch case we don't know what's coming exactly

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but you've got job I mean there there are jobs being

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laid off you've got standard chartered it's down 8,000 people BT predicts 55,000 fewer employees

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when in the decade got Amazon already got rid of 14,000

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it's got something like 16,000 more to come whether that's all AI

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or not is not apparent it's any AI is being laid at the door of some

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if not all of those and one thing that Mo mentioned was

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if people aren't working who's going to be paying the taxes and paying for all the services that we use.

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Now is this something you're even thinking about?

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It is and it's deeply personal and political as well as an interest for government.

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So as a Labour Party politician our kind of mission of sharing power,

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wealth and opportunity amongst the many

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and not the few is I would argue more relevant today than it was

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when my party was created to represent the interest of workers at the start of the 20th century

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and the reason I say that is

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because the UK economy is around 80% services

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and the service industry jobs are the ones

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that are the most at risk of the large language models

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and front of AI tools that are being developed

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so the challenge for us as political leaders

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and the challenge for all of us as a country

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that relies on creating our wealth from the service industry is

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how do we shape this technology in the interests of the British economy

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and the British people as opposed to just allowing the market to rip through to take away jobs

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and to extract wealth from the UK and send it predominantly to US big tech companies.

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So what are you coming up with because Because,

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I mean, there are so many unknowns in this particular topic,

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but if, and this is happening at an exponential rate,

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so you need to be thinking fast,

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you need to be thinking now.

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So, do you have any solutions?

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The government is working on a whole range of issues.

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One of them is around training and skill support.

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So are we giving young people the skills and degrees

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and technical training that's best suited to the modern economy coming out of the education system,

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or do we need to work with those providers to make sure

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that you're not having to go back and think a second time about what you might want to be educated.

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But Darren, what about this bigger point that

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if there are fewer people in work you're going to get fewer taxes paid

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and you're going to have less of an income as a nation,

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what are you going to do about that if that comes to pass?

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That can't come to pass because the maths just doesn't add up for us as a country.

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We're already an ageing population with fewer people paying tax in work and higher demand on public services,

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so we've got to do two things.

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We have to make sure we create wealth in the UK that is reinvested back into the UK,

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but on public services we have to use things like AI

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to make sure we can provide better services more efficiently at

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a lower cost to achieve better outcomes for people who want to use them more.

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So that's all things you want to do,

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but I haven't heard how you're going to do it.

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We're doing a number of these things already.

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So on public services for example,

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we are creating the technology so that you can log in and prove who you are

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into the gov.uk app so

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that we can help you get access to services more efficiently than being on the phone

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or waiting for a letter to come through the post.

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The big message here is that this can be a huge threat to the UK economy

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and it's right that people worry about that,

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but it can also be an enormous opportunity for Britain.

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We've seized the benefits of industrial revolutions in the past.

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We have huge strengths and assets here in the UK to be able to seize them again,

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but you need political leaders you need business leaders working in partnership with us

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and we need each and every worker in this country

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and young person in this country to be given the skills

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to step up into this national endeavor julia i completely understand why people would be worried

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but as we've heard from the panel there's a real range of quite differing scenarios about how this plays out and that

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and actually the early evidence is quite mixed on this the

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gentleman in the audience talked about how he's applying ai

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but actually not very clear yet how it's going to make a difference to his business

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and actually a lot of companies which have been encouraged to

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use ai to transform their internal systems are finding it's not giving them the productivity gains

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that they had anticipated

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and now the cost of tokens is going up then the

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relative cost uh versus humans is actually a slightly different calculation now

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and i think one of the obvious own goals from the government on this is

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that it has made the employment of humans more expensive

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and added a lot of regulation and complexity to that and

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that has made it very difficult particularly

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when it comes to young people people do not want to take the risk of employing a young person

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and I think this is going to prove to be a real mistake not just from the government

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but from companies themselves about not building that talent pipeline

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but Julia in fairness and we've talks a lot on this program over many weeks

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and months about the arguments going backwards towards whether the government putting increasing employers national insurance is a good

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or a bad thing but just looking big picture for a minute

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because in one sense there is a juggernaut coming our way

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which is AI which could eradicate a lot of jobs

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or might possibly create new ones we don't know

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so what's happening now in terms of employers national say is

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that not just tinkering around the edge in terms of the difference that is coming on.

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I don't think so.

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I think if you view it as a collective,

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Fiona, if I'm in government,

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you've got to give businesses the tools to win the race, right?

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And labour is increasing the cost of employing people.

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It's increasing the cost of energy so that these tech companies can't base themselves here.

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It's creating regulatory uncertainty.

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It's doing a very bad job at applying AI within government,

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so the cost of government is increasing.

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There have been 8,000 more civil servants under labour than previously.

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They undone a lot of the great AI tools that Laura was building when she was in government.

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So are you worried that lots of people are going to lose their jobs

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and if so what do you what would you do about it?

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I think any responsible politician has to be worried about that scenario.

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And so what would you suggest doing about it?

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Well I say I would give companies the tools to win to make sure

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that they are growing as companies

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and they are able to base themselves in this country that they are not looking at other countries, other jurisdictions.

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You can't wish away this technology but you can try

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and build a really strong ecosystem in this country

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and i think on those basic fundamentals labor's getting a lot

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of things wrong okay no you wanted to come in there

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i think i i think that's spot on to be honest

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the only answer you have is to keep growing the economy

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in ways where more people will have jobs now ai just to answer the gentleman in in the white t-shirt

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there is a very big difference between technology of the past

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which was a tool we were building tools that people could use.

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If you're a taxi driver and we give you a navigation system,

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you may be able to do your job a little better.

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You know, an AI which replaces that altogether,

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a self-driving car will not even need the driver in the first place.

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Having said that, we live in the era of augmented intelligence.

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So we haven't yet gone to an era where AI can replace everything,

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but it can make every single person smarter.

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And I think the biggest challenge,

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if we talk about the UK economy,

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and I have no right to comment on that,

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is that you're outsourcing AI to other economies instead of building stuff within your economy that can create more jobs.

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You're basically giving it all away across the Atlantic to the other side,

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and that's a massive, massive risk.

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Okay, I'm going to, I want to move on.

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Can I come back just very quickly on one of Julia's points?

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Really quickly.

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I would just say that making it easier to sack people

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and not protect workers in this environment is the complete opposite of what we should be doing

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so I'm very happy to defend our employment rights legislation

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but I just say as well politically there was a whole list of things there we can agree

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and disagree on actually political parties need to come together on this issue

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because it is a big issue facing our country

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and Britain will either rise or fall if we get this right

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or wrong so we need to get beyond the traditional political bickering

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and come together with the strategy to make it Darren and it's one that Tony Blair made of your government this week.

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And it's important that we get it right.

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We're getting the basics right.

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Let me move on.

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This is a huge topic.

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I want to try and at least touch the sides of it.

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