AI development needs reining in whether it creates jobs or not

It seems that not a day passes without fevered headlines about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on future jobs. Alarm and confusion are everywhere – from young people trying to enter the job market to AI specialists worried their role is about to be usurped by AI itself to accountants and lawyers watching AI gobble up roles that until recently justified high fees and salaries. Panic is warranted, not just over the increasingly rapid encroachment of AI into every part of our personal and working lives but also over the truly confusing array of implications. AI is going to create some jobs but destroy others. It is going to change some jobs, sometimes routinising them and sometimes empowering them. It is going to create new demand but also eliminate demand. As more consumers use AI to get things done rather than employing human specialists or intermediaries, AI could even make many roles invisible to gross domestic product as statisticians measure it. Resistance to AI is sometimes countered by arguments that technological change has been a massive disrupter throughout history. Those arguments are fair: the arrival of motor transport ended our reliance on horses and the pivotal role of blacksmiths. Washing machines put thousands of laundry shops out of business, and computers brought an end to many printing-related jobs in the newspaper industry. The march of technology has also destroyed the role of telephone operators, bus conductors and lift operators. Since my childhood, millions of once-essential jobs have disappeared, silently and unmourned. There was the milkman delivering to every home before dawn, the weekly visit of the coalman, the grocery van, the fizzy drinks lorry and even the ice cream van. As more families came to own cars, town-centre retailers and supermarkets persuaded us to come to them for our shopping rather than force them to come to us. The arrival of the internet and smartphones undermined the role of jobs from office typists and translators to travel agents and insurance salesmen. History suggests that for every job lost to new technologies, others will be created. Productivity has risen, as have living standards. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Future of Jobs Report, labour market transformation will result in the creation of an estimated 170 million jobs by 2030 but also the displacement of 92 million current jobs. An International Monetary Fund working paper from last year found that while one-third of jobs in the Philippines are highly exposed to AI, 61 per cent of them are highly complementary and likely to be supported by AI while low complementarity jobs – representing 14 per cent of the worforce – were at risk of being replaced by AI. A 2025 International Labour Organization working paper estimated that one in four workers globally were in an occupation with some exposure to generative AI, with 3.3 per cent of global jobs in the “highest exposure” category. Women were about twice as likely to be in such jobs. It concluded that “as most occupations consist of tasks that require human input, transformation of jobs is the most likely impact” of generative AI. A piece by Clara Murray in the Financial Times last week illustrates this well. She identified millions of “picks and shovels” jobs being created as the AI hyperscalers invest billions in the data centres, power generators and other specialist engineering companies that sit behind the massive physical buildout supporting AI’s expanding use. Monthly spending on data centre construction in the US hit US$50 billion in April, leading some observers to question how long this boom could last. Jobs reports do not provide much guidance. Financial Times columnist Sarah O’Connor wrote last month that “notwithstanding the splashy headlines every few days about tech companies making AI-driven lay-offs, very little is actually happening in the labour market overall”. She noted that the rate at which people are getting fired, hired and quitting their jobs is low. “It’s as if everyone is holding their breath and waiting for what they have been told is coming,” O’Connor wrote. Despite the absence of data, O’Connor acknowledges the angst. She quotes San Francisco-based writer Jasmine Sun: “Most people I know in the AI industry think the median person is screwed, and they have no idea what to do about it.” The general alarm over AI remains pervasive. As Martin Wolf wrote this week in the Financial Times: “There is a good chance that AI will in time devastate the labour market, increase inequality and create an extraordinary concentration of economic – and so political – power in the hands of a tiny number of people.” The acute uncertainty, coupled with the potentially catastrophic potential for harm, leads Wolf to a simple conclusion. Uncertainty justifies readiness, the potential for harm makes industry self-policing unacceptable and tight regulation is justified and must be globally agreed. “There must be a global agreement on how AI is to be tested and controlled, and how liability for damage is to be imposed.” Just as drugs can’t be released into the market without thorough testing, and as regulators can impose speed limits for drivers even though cars have the ability to travel much faster, the case for painstaking regulatory oversight of AI seems uncontestable. It might take many years before the net job impact of AI becomes clear; in the meantime, applying the brakes to development makes sense.

AI development needs reining in whether it creates jobs or not

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Just as drugs can’t go to market without thorough testing, the uncertainty surrounding the effect of AI means it must face globally agreed regulations

Just as drugs can’t go to market without thorough testing, the uncertainty surrounding the effect of AI means it must face globally agreed regulations