Last night’s BBC Question Time AI Special was a real eye-opener on so many levels…
First off Mo Gawdat was the only panellist who really gets it (or seems willing to be so open about it) about how much disruption and displacement is going to occur over the coming 5, 10, 15 years… In fact, his points on the current British strategy on AI sovereignty, leadership and lack of urgency in this area being enough to overthrow a mature democracy seemed to really throw the panel, which smacked of heads in the sand, and real ‘everything is fine, dog in burning house meme’ vibes
The 2 politicians on the panel – holy F… no wonder people are moving into support for other parties. Rt Hon Darren Jones MP came out of it slightly better, but his answer to what would happen if tax receipts collapsed overnight, “well, we just can’t let this happen… so it won’t happen” will likely become a well-watched clip in a few years’ time…
Here’s some back of a fag packet maths… If 100 well-paid accountants currently do a great job right now, but have their industry disrupted by AI efficiencies, well, 20 may rise up to become senior managers to keep things on track. Another 20 will likely use a team of AI bots, custom AI software etc to keep things running as they do now for clients. 10 more if they’re lucky, may become more personal banker style workers, giving that value add to HNW’s…
That then leaves 50 out of work, likely needing to completely retrain, and then needing to move into new industries… and of course, there are a lot less entry level jobs for new accountants etc to come through and that adds to youth unemployment.
There are roughly 350,000 accountants in the UK, so there’s 50% less tax receipts, 50% less NI etc – and more burden on the shoulders of the government to fast re-train them… to stop mortgages defaulting and to try and get back up to anywhere near current tax receipts (increasing national debt along the way…)
By the way, Darren, this is just one industry… so I think we need to talk more about the reverse blitzscaling that’s coming down the tube on this… I will say, though, that it was good to see you saying that political parties should be coming together on this, which tbh, the less said about the shadow tech minister Julia Lopez, the better, who just seemed to try and score political points against Labour, and brought nothing to the conversation…
Dr. Laura Gilbert CBE had a few well-made, balanced points… It felt very much like she was holding back, and maybe with her working so close with the government, she couldn’t take the handbrake off…and let her true concerns out on the table.
Victor Riparbelli seemed like a nice guy, but let’s face it… He’s going to be all in the upside and not looking at the downside…
Speaking of upside, there’s tonnes of it in AI and loads on the way… but thank God Mo had the balls to let the general public know about what they should be asking their MPs to focus on… This was truly a groundbreaking BBC Question Time AI Special
