Artificial Intelligence (AI) in London

AI has the potential to improve efficiency, create new opportunities, and support people with disabilities and caring responsibilities. It can help people access information more easily, develop new skills, and reduce time spent on routine tasks.

However, there are also concerns about job losses, digital exclusion, privacy, and bias in decision-making systems. Not everyone has equal access to technology or the skills needed to use it. AI should not replace human contact, particularly in health, social care, education, and support services where empathy and understanding are essential.

It is important that AI is developed and used fairly, transparently, and in a way that benefits all Londoners, including carers, disabled people, and those who may be vulnerable or less confident with technology.

I think how generative AI is currently being used and developed is incredibly detrimental to all of us and needs more regulations and guardrails before it is implemented more into every little crevice of our lives. I don't think AI should be replacing our brains and critical thinking skills (ie. for work/studying), should replace human connection (ie. those who treat chatbots as their friend/romantic interest, or as a therapist), or should replace human creativity (ie. AI generated 'art' or writing).

AI has clear benefits. It can help break through mental blocks, stress-test ideas, and automate routine tasks, allowing us to move work forward or go deeper without getting stuck. By reducing time spent on repetitive work, it can free up space for more thoughtful and creative thinking.

The challenge is the risk of complacency. There’s a tendency to assume that because AI can automate certain tasks, it can replace human judgement (or even humans) altogether. There’s also a risk in taking AI outputs at face value, without questioning whether they are accurate, appropriate, or aligned with what we actually need.

The fact that AI has no guaranteed way to not make up information, is itself a non starter. Why would we put trust into a chatbot that won't tell us when it's being incorrect (as has been well documented, especially in legal contexts), and puts entry levels positions completely out of reach for young workers? It has no readable benefit for the economy or for workers 

AI has been around for a while and there have been no tangible benefits for ordinary people. Stress and mental health issues directly caused by job insecurity, linked to AI, is there.

London should prioritise people's wellbeing and social security first, then try to actively promote AI, but based on the questions in the survey you can clearly see AI will come first, the rest might possibly come eventuqally, when it's too late.

I can't wait until next hear a survey on why Londoners don't hqve children pops up and the authorities feign cluelessness.

NO TO PALANTIR. The biggest challenge is surveillance creep from Big Tech. Imagine what a company like Palantir will do with our health data and biometrics if they do succeed in winning contracts with our public services. London can lead the way with its own responsible AI framework independent of any national level framework that might be influenced by lobbying and such.

I use AI daily for both personal and work-related tasks, and it has completely changed the way I work. I’ve become much more productive, and it has been especially helpful with my dyslexia.

However, AI should be used as a tool, not as a replacement for people. One thing I’m seeing more of is companies hiring fewer new staff because the productivity gains from AI allow existing employees to pick up the slack, especially for entry-level roles.

Companies are benefiting from employees using AI to increase output and efficiency, but the extra work and revenue often only benefit shareholders and senior leadership. If AI is creating more value, there should be more discussion about how that value is shared with the people actually doing the work.

I use AI (LLMs and Agents) at work. It saves a huge amount of time on repetitive tasks and can produce better written outputs than most people. However, it can also make mistakes. People need to be educated that LLMs can 'hallucinate'. I am concerned about the impact of AI on entry level jobs (already impacting my workplace) and about how it could be used in the hiring process in a way that is unintentionally discriminatory. I am also concerned that people do not understand how data put into AI tools is processed and stored. I also suspect small businesses might be left behind in the AI revolution as they cannot afford to invest in AI the same way big businesses can. Please invest in providing Londoners with free education to enhance their AI knowledge and skills or the City will be left behind. 

Really concerned for generation of YP saftey aspects of using AI. In a responsiable way. Lots of training at school,extra curriculum for them. Also couses or events by official companies for general public to learn, or understamd what may be fake pr real. AI can be mosleading. We also need know statstics on job losses because of AI should be some kind of reporting system from companies to say how many staff had before usong AI to using AI going forward lole reduancey/scaling down on staff amf what type jobs have gone. 

AI is a tool, it shouldn't be considered a replacement for people. It has been proven to hallucinate and make things up when providing answers to people. It cannot be fully trusted to complete work autonomously without someone checking for errors and while it might complete the work it's not necessarily more efficient.  

The above is not even taking into account what is the actual cost of using AI? Do our communities now need to be built with data centres in mind? How much natural resource are these data centres taking away from the populace? What is the point if it does more damage than good?

Scammers are using AI to fake voices, images, texts to steal millions from vulnerable people - who is considered responsible the scammers or the people who created the AI tool that allows this?

Companies are using AI chatbots for customer service, HR, fraud and AML. It is automatically rejecting job applicants that might have been given a chance because a human would have found a detail of interest that the AI would claim "doesn't fit in parameters". We are human no one is ever going to fit into every "parameter" that is the beauty of our species. 

I am an IT professional for 45 years, my position is systems and solutions architect. I write code for various platforms and Oracle databases. I am considered good at what I do. A week ago a new programmer showed me some code he had written, I looked at the code and asked him is he understood it. No, was the answer because he used AI to create it. 1600 lines of code I rewrote in 200 lines. Both codes were tested, mine worked at a 63% performance increase. I told him, get a pencil and paper and use the mind. Young people are becoming lazy and they don't really care if the code is good or not, as long as it works. Our minds are what is fundamental to being who we are. We do not need a machine to do the work for us. Thankyou.

 recruitment is now destroyed as all cv's scanned and reviewed by AI and if criteria not met rejected e.g if ou 66 and applying forj ob your automatically rejected as out of age parameter

AI is a magnificent intervention but we all actually need to stand back and debate can we afford AI it is space demanding, energy demanding and water demanding and guess what ? we don't have enough energy, we don't have enough water and we don't have enough space unless we give up our green belt, we don't have enough materials for sustenance to survive as we will have to forgo water and energy to AI so maybe we will have to start culling the world population if we considerAI more important than human survival. AI was asked how can we stop the violence between humans- the answer was annihilate the Humans

• What opportunities, if any, do you think AI brings?
  
  A few benefits to a select lucky few who are employed due to it
  
  What challenges, if any, do you think AI poses? 
  
  Reducing the amount of jobs available, especially entry level jobs catered to younger people. 

Negative:

Day to day, people using an AI agent to identify my business as a potential sales lead, and to send me streams of annoying, time wasting emails is a drain on my time. I'm sure they think it's a brilliant way to save effort but it's a waste of time and resources.

It makes up complete rubbish. This is not "hallucinating"; it is falsehoods, and thatnis dangerous.

I don't subscribe to any AI services and falsehoods  to block programs which claim to "help" me to write. I didn't invite any of this in. It's kicked the doors down.

It's intrusive, it steals creative work, it's making people less intelligent.

It uses too much energy and water.

ChatGPT sends me customers who believe it to be giving them facts. It is lying to them, but they believe it no me. 

I am fed social media posts which can appear real, but they are completely fake. The ones I see are being used to spread hate, and to sell useless or harmful "wellness" cures. 

Positive:

I make videos, and the built-in AI which writes captions has improved over its previous voice recognition, which couldn't cope with technical language. That has improved my life; the function was already in place and no longer makes as many mistakes. 

The huge dangers of AI are even being voiced by the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, finally opening up space for dissent amid the headlong rush to embrace AI and fundamentally transform our lives. The environmental impact, damage to people's cognitive faculties, unethical practices are all of huge concern and too little treated by the media. Powerful vested interests are pushing their own agenda, concealed behind amusing memes.