ARTIFICIAL intelligence could have as wide-reaching and profound an impact on jobs as the first Industrial Revolution.

That was the warning issued by the government’s former chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, when he appeared before Parliament’s science and technology committee earlier this month.

Research commissioned by the then Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy suggests that 7 per cent of all British jobs could be automated out of existence within just five years as a result of AI.

Within the next 20 years, that figure could rise to as high as 30 per cent of all jobs. 

Like the Industrial Revolution which preceded it, the AI revolution threatens to create a world of winners and losers all over again.

AI promises to create opportunities for growth and innovation in fields like health, education, and science and technology. 

But sectors such as manufacturing, transport and public administration could witness job losses on an unprecedented scale. In manufacturing alone, as many as a quarter of all jobs could disappear by 2037. 

AI is also already transforming the ways in which many of us work. A TUC report into the worker experience of AI highlights how workplaces are increasingly adopting AI-powered technologies — typically without employees having been consulted or even informed.

By January 2022, 68 per cent of large companies in the UK and 15 per cent of all business had adopted at least one AI-powered technology.

Workers are increasingly being forced to navigate workplaces in which their autonomy, privacy and right to a private life are all being steadily eroded by the intrusive use of AI. 

This technological revolution also poses a profound challenge to the hard fought for right to equality at work.

Employers are relying ever more frequently on AI and automated decision-making (ADM) tools to make decisions about hiring and employee performance. The problem is these technologies can all too often perpetuate very human prejudices.

In one of the most high-profile cases, Amazon used an AI tool to “scrape” CVs of job applicants and select the most suitable candidates. 

Recognising that previous hires within the company had disproportionately been male, the AI taught itself to downgrade applications from women. 

The growing sophistication and prevalence of AI-powered technologies — like ChatGTP, which is capable of producing in an instant uncannily life-like speech — has provoked a long overdue public debate about the impact of artificial intelligence.

Across the world, there’s also growing recognition of the need for legislation to catch up with the rapid progress of AI.

The EU is shortly set to agree the Artificial Intelligence Act, likely to be the most comprehensive piece of legislation ever passed to regulate the use of AI.

The state of California, the world capital of AI, is also preparing a raft of measures protecting the privacy and civil rights of workers from the intrusive use of these new technologies. 

The British government, meanwhile, has signalled its intention to adopt a very different strategy.

Its AI white paper calls for a “light-touch” and “pro-innovation” approach that effectively leaves regulation of AI up to the market and overstretched and under-resourced regulators like the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and the Information Commissioner’s Office. 

The government says that this hands-off approach will make Britain one of the most attractive places to invest in AI and help to create the “Silicon Valleys of the 21st century.”

But it would leave British workers without the safeguards that they need and deserve in the workplace. It will undermine the few rights that they already have. It is classic Tory deregulation dogma.

Today I am introducing legislation that would for the first time give workers the protections that they need to mitigate against the harmful applications of AI.

Building on the work of the TUC’s AI Working Group, my Artificial Intelligence (Regulation and Workers’ Rights) Bill recognises the fundamental importance of ensuring that AI must work in the interests of the many, not just the few.

It seeks to target for further regulation those uses of AI that are particularly high risk to workers.

And it would ensure that workers themselves can shape a world increasingly run by machines by introducing a statutory duty for employers to meaningfully consult with employees and their trade unions before introducing AI into the workplace.

It would also introduce a right to a human review of “high-risk” decisions made by AI and ADM technologies as well as a right to human contact when important, high-risk decisions are made in the workplace.

It would strengthen existing equalities law to prevent “discrimination by algorithm.”

AI has the awesome potential to improve our lives for the better — helping to drive equitable economic growth, improve health outcomes and tackle the huge challenges we face like the climate crisis.

But to ensure we all enjoy the benefits of this AI revolution we can’t afford to leave the market and bosses to regulate themselves.

We need to forge a people-focused and rights-based approach that guarantees workers are protected in all decisions made by employers and the government. 

There’s much about this technological revolution that my Bill doesn’t address — from the role that a universal basic income can play in supporting workers’ whose jobs are lost to AI to the growing importance of investing in lifelong learning and skills training.

But by insisting that the right to human dignity should never be sacrificed in the interests of corporate profits in this new machine age, it is at least a step in the right direction. 

Mick Whitley is Labour MP for Birkenhead.