UK needs plan in case of 'unprecedented' AI job losses, says minister
Source: BBC ·
Kanishka Narayan says one of his top priorities is to have a plan in place if job losses are as bad as some fear.
From the source
Kanishka Narayan was appointed AI minister by Andy Burnham in July The government must "take seriously the possibility of an unprecedented impact on the jobs market" caused by artificial intelligence (AI), a UK minister has said. AI Minister Kanishka Narayan said there was no evidence so far of an overall reduction in jobs as a result of AI, but one of his priorities was to have a contingency plan in place for worst case scenarios. "If it's going to hit us in a big way, you are going to want to be as ahead of the curve as possible," he told a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference. Carsten Jung, of the IPPR think tank, said: "In a worst case scenario you could have about 8 million jobs being negatively affected by this." Jung said the think tank was working on a "pandemic preparedness" report on AI labour market disruption. The level of AI adoption by industry was not that high so far and it might not ultimately lead to massive job losses, he said, but he claimed it was still…