Artificial Intelligence (AI) in London

I think the questionnaire is an unhelpful distraction on where the Mayor should be targeting attention.

• The public needs to understand how AI uses their data, how to spot algorithmic bias, and how to query public services effectively.
• Align AI deployment with how Londoners actually want to consume service (like conversational, multilingual access to housing or transport update), while maintaining human-in-the-loop overrides for critical decisions.
• Establish a transparent "London AI Register" detailing exactly where and how public data is used. Implement continuous automated red-teaming to catch demographic drift or bias before it impacts vulnerable communities.
• Ensure AI tools don't widen the digital divide. Interfaces must support assistive technologies, low-bandwidth environments, and diverse linguistic needs, ensuring equitable access for all Londoners.

We keep seeing how AI introduces bias when misused, the most important training program is internally within the public sector and their support organisations.

AI is a tool, just like the internet is. You can choose to use it to help yourself or others, or the complete opposite.

AI is happening, and will continue to grow- Those who embrace it will have an advantage over those who don’t.

As a society, we need to embrace it but also minimise the negative effects as much as possible without damaging progress. 

I am concerned that politicians do not fully understand or appreciate the changes that AI will have on employment, society and the potential wide scale use of AI. They talk about we must have it and must use it, but either don't want to recognise the job losses or just state oh well there will be different jobs. So what are these different jobs and why are we not seeing these new jobs and roles now. By the time our politicians realise the impact that AI will and is starting to have on people, families, employment, society and our lives it is going to be too late.

This discussion is too general and shows to me that this enquiry and research doesn't know nearly enough about what is really going on which is not all surprising to me considering how woeful the government has been so far on anything and everything to do with AI.

There needs to be a clear distinction made between 'Generative AI' (GenAi) and just 'AI'.

GenAI is the LLMs (Large Language Models) like ChatGPT, and image generators like MidJourney, Claud, Gemini.

To me the very barest minimum of using generative fill in Photoshop to extend the blurry background of an image for a poster or web banner is fine.

But using it to create entire concepts and imagery from scratch?

NO. Never.

AI was built on stolen works from humans all over the world.

It is the dodgiest of the dodgy. It you have an integrity or ethics, you will not get sucked in to this show of fakery.

Furthermore it guzzles our most precious resource - water! Gallons and gallons every single time you use it, and not 2nd hand old water, brand new fresh as snow water.

Wake up people, this is a fast track to hell.

Add to that, using and LLM for writing - goodbye your ability to think. Here comes dementia. 

It's already been showed to permanently damage the millions of students using it. There's no going back once you've gotten hooked.

Anyone see the animated movie 'Wall-E'? See it now.

AI is not a magic wand that will advance our world.

It is an axe that's already severed millions of jobs around the world - great, creative, important, HUMAN jobs.

If no one can work to make money, who is buying all those subscriptions and products huh? Not us. We will be homeless and starving.

Say NO to AI. 

I have tonnes of articles on proven outcomes for all of this, I've been studying it since it first started 3 years ago. So don't even try to discredit me. 

I can see from the comments page that the majority of people mistrust AI, quoting that results vary greatly between different sources. Perhaps at this point in the discussion it only demonstrates that Human final decisions are still important and hopefully, the threat to employment is currently minimal. Perhaps some time soon reliability and consistency will creep in. Until this comes about I will remain relaxed about the threat to my retirement.

I have been involved with the impact and evolution of machine learning since 1982. Unless and until the AI and Jobs taskforce uses "augmented intelligence" to analyse the direction of travel over that time, including its steadily growing impact on employment in London, it will not understand what has already happened, let alone what is now happening as teh pace of change accelerates. 

I am therefore focussed on supporting the work of OCN London in implementing processes to specify micro-modules on the practical use of augmented intelligence at all levels, from level 0  (access to employment) to 7 (use by engineers, lawyers, consultants to analyse very complex situations and make evidence-based judgements/recommendations). 

Until very recently I was parliamentary research assistant to Lord Lucas helping get corporate support for place-based skills partnerships. I am now development lead for Neighbourhood Watch in Lambeth.  

One of my immediate priorities is to enabling affordable (including uncharged to the recipient) access to OCN accredited training for talented NEETs who are otherwise at risk of being recruited by organised crime.  

 and can be contacted via [email protected]          

Without being heavily regulated, more so than any other industry in history, AI is going to massively increase the unemployment rate, heavily reduce the amount of tax governments of all levels can collect in this country, and drastically worsen the quality of live for the far majority of the population. This will only result in a very grumpy voting public who are not going to be very happy with any government that doesn’t tread very very carefully around this topic.

Accessible and affordable training in use of and application of AI required for daily life and work. 

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.