Return of the Luddites
Are we 21st century Luddites? As we progress to a world where artificial intelligence (AI) and technological advances lead to major changes in working practices, we can and should draw analogies with the introduction of automated weaving machinery in the 19th century. Experienced textile workers were understandably incensed by the introduction of machines which changed their working practices so significantly that they organised raids to destroy them.
In the 1970s Labour MP, William Price, referenced an Financial Times article covering accusations of vandalism and sabotage at a new General Motors plant in Ohio. The carmaker had been pioneering robotics on the production line since the early 1960s.
Fifty years on and it looks like we are heading full throttle to another pinchpoint in industrial relations. No one expects people to vandalise datacentres, but who can predict how disenfranchised people will react when they feel that AI is stealing their livelihood.
Company bosses are driven to improve efficiency and reduce overheads as they strip out the extra weight they think they are carrying in order to accelerate time to value and deliver a handsome return for investors and shareholders. This extra weight is the people who, prior to the advent of AI, were doing jobs that enabled company bosses to deliver on their business strategy.
Doing more with less is a phrase the tech sector seems to use a lot. These days that means less people are needed to deliver more software and do this much faster than before. The likes of Amazon, Google and Microsoft are funding their huge AI investments, by reducing headcount.
Analyst Gartner recently surveyed company bosses about how, driven by a need to deliver a return on investment, they are using AI to replace employees. It found that of the 350 business bosses polled, 80% say that autonomous technologies and AI have seen a reduction in the size of their workforce. The headcount reduction is in the range of 1% to 15%, but let’s assume a median figure of around a 7% drop in the size of the workforce, that still represents 2.8m UK workers. Some may reskill, some will accept lower-paid jobs but there will inevitably be people who remain unemployed.
It’s hard to see how this can be avoided. Regulations to curb AI job replacement will likely lead to UK firms being at a disadvantage. The UK government has been reluctant to curb the excesses of the tech sector and unless policymakers have a plan, Whitehall will find that while GDP may indeed increase thanks to AI-fuelled productivity gains, growth will intricately be linked to lower tax returns from a shrinking UK workforce and the inevitable societal impact.