Most Brits are worried their jobs will be replaced by artificial intelligence, a new survey has revealed.
A survey of 1,000 UK adults for “mentoring platform” PushFar found that 58.4% of Brits worry that AI will make their jobs “more easily replaceable”.
Women are more concerned than men about being replaced by robots, by 14.4 percentage points.
Breaking results down by age group, those aged between 25 and 34 feared the rise of robots the most, with almost three quarters of respondents saying AI would make them more replaceable. That compared to only around a third of those aged over 55 believing AI would make them mroe replacable.
A report by US investment banking giant Goldman Sachs said that more than 300 million jobs will have at least some of their tasks automated, though it stopped short of estimating how many jobs would actually be lost.
BT has been among the high-profile UK companies that has planned to replace staff with robots. Last week, the company’s technology chief sparked outcry with her comments about the impact of AI on jobs.
In an interview with Raconteur magazine, Harmeen Mehta said: “I don‘t know how horses felt when the car was invented, but they didn’t complain that they were put out of a job; they didn’t go on strike.”
PushFar co-founder and CEO Ed Johnson said that while many existing tasks may be done by AI, the growth of the tool also offers new opportunities for those who can use it in their work.
“By getting yourself clued up on AI powered tools, you can create programmes which will automate repetitive tasks and data analysis, helping you free up valuable time to focus on higher order problem solving tasks,” he said.
