Artificial Intelligence (AI) in London

AI can only be justified as an additional cost by further reducing employment. With the quick uptake of AI, how are we going to deal with the likely implications of high levels of unemployment, poverty, loss to the economy as a whole that will follow? The only benefit to the economy as a whole will be to a narrow selection of already wealthy people at the expense of everyone else. Or should AI be restricted to only a small selection of industries it could provide real benefit such as the Science and Medical industries?

A government licence should be sort for by any AI developer to ensure accurate and safe use for personal, educational and professional use. That way people may feel more inclined to use it without worrying if the information they are given is incorrect or misused, and hopefully any environmental impact can be significantly reduced.

Are there underlying assumptions that need questioning? Why data centres? Why not use our existing computers cooperatively with a few quantum computers? Open source cooperative AI? 

The survey asks sensible questions about skills, access, and workforce displacement. But it frames AI primarily as something that happens to individuals, and asks what individuals and the Mayor can do in response. That framing misses the harder problem.

Most London employers deploying AI at scale lack the governance structures to catch consequential errors, assign accountability, or support workers whose roles are being reshaped by automated decisions. That is not a skills gap. It is an institutional design failure. And no amount of free training for individuals will fix it.

The entry-level job question is real and underweighted. The roles that historically gave young Londoners their first foothold in professional work, the ones where you learned by doing, made mistakes in low-stakes environments, and built the judgement that made you useful, are precisely the roles most exposed to automation. We are not just at risk of fewer jobs. We are at risk of fewer pathways into work that builds capability over time.

The taskforce should look at both sides of this. What support do individuals need? Yes. But also: what governance, transparency, and accountability standards should apply to organisations using AI to make or inform decisions about people's work, pay, and prospects? London has influence over public sector procurement and can set expectations for suppliers. That lever is not mentioned anywhere in this survey.

Skills matter. So does the institutional context in which those skills are, or are not, used well.

I think AI can be hugely powerful and transformative - and like or or not (I do totally appreciate the fear surrounding it, the environmental concerns and worries about data and quality) - however - it is like the internet was when that launched. It IS here to stay and it WILL shape the future. The bubble will only burst for those who don't invest in it, and those who don't upskill, or reskill themselves to properly understand how to use it and apply it in their daily lives. That is the big risk here. Job losses will affect those who don't embrace this wave of opportunity. 

London - and the UK in general - have a fantastic opportunity to position ourselves at the forefront of AI (so many impressive AI companies UK developed and headquartered, same as organisations focused on adoption and skills) we must allow the UK to lead the way here and I would love to see the press in particular supporting British initiatives better so that we can work together effectively (as humans!) to create opportunity, jobs and drive efficiencies to power the British economy to prosper in this new era. 

Primarily I think 'AI' is hugely problematic from an environmental point of few, and that the majority of its use is not worth this damage.

I also think 'AI' is problematic for having been trained on private or stolen data, as well as biased data.

I think refering to a lot of different things as 'AI' (rather than Large Language Models) etc is unhelpful to adding public understanding as to what the various tools are.

I am concerned about companies forcing 'AI' on to consumers.

In practice, in work, I have not seen 'AI' do a good job of what is asked of it. It has 'hallucinated' and produced inaccurate information. It is output has been worse than I would expect of a high school work experience student and yet is being asked to do high level tasks across the organisation!

I consider it to be a financial, environmental and societal problem.

My impressions of AI so far are mostly negative. There seems to be no interest in how hundreds of millions of people (worldwide) will cope when their jobs are eliminated. We hear from business owners and tech oligarchs, who are getting richer and richer from AI, so the picture is skewed. Of course they like it, they’re getting wealthier! The huge data centres drain electricity and water wherever they are built, as well as destroying pristine wildlife habitats. Climate change seems to have been solved, or how else do you explain the data centres?! 

In daily life, of course you can have fun making videos and photos of politicians dancing or whatever, but this is trivial. More important is the decline of human contact, both in person and on the telephone. We send a typewritten triage form to the GP, for example. We get chatbots instead of customer service. Loneliness is getting worse and worse.

I can see the advantages in being able to sift through reams of information such as medical data, and breakthroughs from this would of course be positive. 

I just can’t see how the positives aren’t outweighed by the negatives of unemployment, loneliness, poverty and inequality right now. We are in a big experiment, and we have no power to slow, stop or shape it. It is anti-democratic.

If I am wrong, and AI will actually bring millions of high-paid jobs, as well lessen poverty, inequality and loneliness, then I would be happy to be corrected. Very happy. Fingers crossed!

1. It will be helpful for medical research and other areas where large amounts of data need to be sifted
2. There is a risk of reliance on AI generated results, to the detriment of people's ability to think for themselves and with a risk of perpetuating bias and mistakes

I don't think that AI will be any good because I think that it would cause a hell of a lot of job losses up and down the country remember you are only a number in your work force it's like machines if you have a hundred people in your work and some company say's that we can help you save money for less than all of your employers and can do the job twice as fast the director will choose the machines and make you all redundant and employ 2 or 3 people that will look after the machines and look haw much much money they will be making and saving this goes with AI it is already going on look at amazon there will be a hell of a lot of unemployment and the is not much work about and the people that only known one trade all of there life they will find it more difficult to find another job and in fact all people so I disagree with AI in that respect and I disagree with these chat bots when you need to speak to a real person you get a chat bot that doesn't give you the answers that you are looking for in stead you have jump on busses spend half of the day and find the company to find out it's closed and only certain days that it's open few times a week these chat bots can give you the wrong information It's like that they don't want to have human interaction now more or they have done away with customer services and replaced it with a chat bot so I am against IA new machines that get rid of workers and chat bots let people keep their jobs otherwise there will be several hundred people trying to get in to a company that has only got one advertisement for one worker 

The term AI covers a wide range of what are just computer tools. When used by professionals for such things as medical research, debugging code etc. the AI tools are good and being made better. When used by companies and councils to reduce the workforce by having AI slop being a customer contact the tool and implementaion is appaling. I leave businesses who will not allow me quickly to talk to a human.

AI will be used (sooner or later) to replace jobs. It has started in the NHS, eg trying to book GP appointments, ie replacing human receptionists. It is often promoted as a means to make services more efficient, but over time, you decreasingly interact with a human and instead with a 'machine'/device. Eg digital check-ins for medical appointments. I fear that it may be demonic in origin* as it is starting to reduce our interactions with other people and making it harder for people to find secure work and support themselves & their families. It slowly makes us anti-social and normalises having to interact with devices rather than people in certain sectors. (*Not the tech firms as such, but the influence of satan in the world, turning people against each other and turning tech against us, but under the guise of it being all for our good).

I worry most about AI ownership. AI will become the intellectual hub for many of us, which means it will become crucial to decision making on decisions that impact everyone. The problem is that most of the AI services are owned by a very small number of people, many of dubious political sensibilities. The challenge is that AI ownership will concentrate power over the intellectual hub of humanity in a tiny number of right-leaning hands. I fear a host of dangers in that outcome.

The problem with AI is that too many people believe that it gives correct answers to questions, and 'knows' things - it does not. It makes up answers and tells outright lies - it does not know they are lies! Many search engines now bring up an AI response first, and I can see that most of the ones I get are WRONG.

I am worried about how AI will impact employment opportunities for young adults. It has been concerning is that I am not sure if AI companies and/or politicians have a plan for this with the rise of AI use. In talks I've watched and publications I have read, CEOs of AI and social media companies reassure that it will "all be okay" but don't have anything more concrete to say than that. It is reassuring that the Mayor has set up a taskforce to look directly at this. It would be reassuring to hear from the Mayor's taskforce about how politicians are considering it's impact (for better or worse) and what they can do to make most of opportunities and mitigate challenges.