Majority Of Brits Think Government Must Intervene To Stop AI Taking Their Jobs

A majority of Brits think the government must step in to stop artificial intelligence taking jobs from humans, a new survey has found. 

Almost half fear their job could be done by AI within a decade and 63% want the government to do something about it, according to the poll.

Former No.10 advisor Jimmy McLoughlin said the survey of 1,000 people showed it was “clear” there is a role for government in shaping the place of AI in work. 

“In the eyes of the British workforce, it also has a role in intervening to stop jobs from being destroyed,” he added.

It comes amid heightened fears over the speed at which AI is progressing and its ability to do human tasks. 

Geoffrey Hinton – the man widely seen as the godfather of AI – quit his Google job this week, saying he now regretted his work.

He told the BBC some of the dangers of AI chatbots were “quite scary” and they may soon be more intelligent than humans. 

Among those booming in popularity is Chatbot ChatGPT, with some workers already using it to help them in their jobs.

The artificial intelligence has been trained on huge amounts of text data to generate human-like responses to given prompts.

In March, an open letter – co-signed by dozens of tech figures including billionaire Elon Musk – called for a pause on all developments more advanced than the current version of ChatGPT to ensure robust safety measures are implemented.

The survey found:

• 52% have never used ChatGPT and only 16% have used it in a work setting 
• 60% think that AI will reduce the number of jobs overall
• 63% think the government should intervene to stop jobs being destroyed
• Less than 1 in 5 Brits have had training about AI provided by their employer, yet 2 in 3 employees think that it is important to have it
• 41% of people think that AI would improve the effectiveness of government
• 1 in 4 think that AI could worsen the current standard of living

The fresh survey of British views was carried out by FocalData between April 27 – 29 on behalf of Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future.

McLoughlin added: “The UK could lead the way in developing the future of AI, working with some of our innovative tech companies and experts to do so.”