Thousands of stationary black cabs had gridlocked the length of Whitehall, halting traffic around Westminster and the West End.<\/p>\n
It was June 2014, and drivers were protesting against a newly-launched private hire service called Uber<\/a>.<\/p>\n By the following summer, France had cracked down on Uber\u2019s ride-sharing option after disorder saw cars overturned, windows smashed, tires set on fire<\/a>.<\/p>\n Cab drivers in Paris said they were being undercut by the taxi app and its various services, now ubiquitous in cities across the world, while back home there were complaints about supposed differences in regulations, making competition unfair. <\/p>\n The emergence of new technologies and the threat they pose to jobs has caused unrest<\/a> throughout history. But anything that has come before could all pale in comparison with what is to come.<\/p>\n Economist Carl-Benedikt Frey, associate professor of AI<\/a> & work<\/a> at the Oxford Internet Institute, paints a bleak picture on how he believes artificial intelligence (AI) will impact the future of work in the UK<\/a>.<\/p>\n Looking back on the anti-Uber protests, he told The Independent<\/a>: \u201cThat was not a technology<\/a> that was going to replace them (drivers); that was a technology or company that meant more competition.\u201d<\/p>\n As for the future, \u201cI think civil unrest will come long before mass unemployment<\/a>\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n The fear that AI will \u201creplace\u201d humans, whether merely on a professional level or in a more fatal sense<\/a>, is held by many.<\/p>\n In May, research by King\u2019s College London (KCL) revealed that more than half of the British people believe AI will create widespread unemployment \u2013 and one in five think it will do so at such a rate which would create civil unrest<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to Dr Frey, backlash towards AI \u2013 whether that is on an environmental level or through the construction of vast data centres \u2013 shows it is a \u201ctremendously unpopular technology, even without having produced anything like mass unemployment\u201d.<\/p>\n That sentiment will only deepen once its impact on incomes and livelihoods takes hold further, with new AI models increasingly capable of more<\/a> and businesses drawn in by their cost-cutting abilities, he believes.<\/p>\n Dr Frey explained: \u201cIf AI threatens to reduce people’s incomes, even by 5 per cent or 10 per cent \u2013 10 per cent being roughly the amount by which Uber reduced incumbent drivers’ incomes – you can see unrest from that as well.<\/p>\n \u201cTaxi services as a share of the entire economy is relatively small; generative AI is a general-purpose technology that will touch on many different industries and occupations, if not all of them.<\/p>\n \u201cCertainly, we can see a lot of discontent and unrest long before anything like mass unemployment materialises.\u201d<\/p>\n A 2024 report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) found that, without government intervention, nearly eight million jobs in the UK could be lost to AI<\/a>, leading to a \u201cjobs apocalypse\u201d.<\/p>\n The think tank states that entry-level, part-time, and administrative jobs are the most exposed to being replaced by AI in a worst-case scenario over the next three to five years.<\/p>\n Likewise, at least a million jobs in London<\/a> are “highly or significantly exposed” to AI, a report published by City Hall in April said.<\/p>\n Last month, the Office for National Statistics said the number of people aged between 16 and 24 not in employment, education or training \u2013 so-called Neets<\/a> \u2013 sat at 981,000 from April to June.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It represented a drop from the 1,012,000 Neets in January to March but means that at 13 per cent, the UK\u2019s rate remains among the highest in Europe.<\/p>\n Some places have just one vacancy for every 22 young people<\/a>, new findings from the IPPR show.<\/p>\n Rotheram in South Yorkshire was found to be the local authority with the fewest suitable vacancies, at just 46 for every 1,000 young people \u2013 58 per cent below the UK average.<\/p>\n This was followed by East Renfrewshire in Scotland (53 per cent below), Broxtowe in the East Midlands (47 per cent), and Newcastle-Under-Lyme in the West Midlands (47 per cent).<\/p>\n The figures illustrate what is a tremendously difficult climate for young people trying to find work \u2013 a climate that is only going to become tougher as AI further eats into the job market.<\/p>\n And there is little optimism among young people. In the KCL study, the view that AI-driven unemployment will drive civil unrest rose to a third (34 per cent) among university students.<\/p>\n \u201cI have immense sympathy for young people today\u201d, KCL professor Elena Simperl told The Independent<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have already had their lives disrupted by a global pandemic, and now they face the rise of generative AI against a backdrop of wider economic uncertainty\u201d, added Prof Simperl, who co-directs the King’s Institute for AI.<\/p>\n However, it is not just jobs for young graduates that AI poses a threat to. According to Dr Frey, the common consensus is that the technology is most threatening white-collar jobs, but its impact will be felt much more widely.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n He explained: \u201cIt’s jobs across the board \u2013 in construction, in manufacturing.<\/p>\n \u201cAnother story which I think is under-appreciated is that AI allows us as consumers to do more things ourselves. If the boiler breaks down, I would usually call a heating engineer straight away.<\/p>\n \u201cThese days, I take a picture of it and see step-by-step with the help of AI if I can fix it myself.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is not going to mean widespread unemployment, but it means that many manual trades which we think of as being safe havens from automation might also face income pressures, because that heating engineer loses a job and might then only get the more technically difficult cases.<\/p>\n \u201cThat also means that apprentices who learn on the job may not get those easier calls either, which is not going to be good for learning. Those are the more immediate impacts.\u201d<\/p>\n The genie is out of the bottle, however. AI may create jobs but its impact on traditional professions will continue to be felt. <\/p>\n According to Prof Simperl, this means that, assuming the trend of decline in employment continues, we must now think of the required safety nets – as well as re-skilling programmes to adapt to a new and ever-changing world.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to actively guide the trend rather than just letting it happen to us\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis means collecting better evidence, but also training both employers and workers to use AI for things they should be using it for, rather than just adopting it blindly and waiting to see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n There is also a sociological impact to consider. What would the world look like if millions of people lost their jobs – or job roles which have existed for all of living memory cease to exist? <\/p>\n \u201cI think that would be extraordinarily transformative and challenge a lot of people’s identity, sense of purpose, and self-fulfilment\u201d, said Dr Frey.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would be a very significant shock.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the same time, before the Industrial Revolution, basically everybody worked, but very few people had jobs in the modern sense. We’ve been in that world to a large degree before, so we know that we can potentially adjust to such a world.<\/p>\n \u201cThat would be a more pleasant world where you can do your gardening without depending on it for your living – if a harvest was bad, that would not mean your family was at risk of starving.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing on the other side of this, we can potentially get to a better place, but that would be an extraordinarily disruptive transition for a lot of people. It wouldn’t be smooth sailing by any means.\u201d<\/p>\n AI-inspired mass unemployment would, naturally, increase pressure on the country\u2019s welfare spending.<\/p>\n Though advocates of the technology suggest it could eventually create a \u2018post-work\u2019 world, where the money generated by AI provides a universal income to those made redundant by it, Dr Frey thinks governments must get ready for its impact.<\/p>\n He is unsure whether they are. <\/p>\n Many of these people are already tremendously wealthy; they are probably more interested in writing history than anything else<\/p>\n Carl-Benedikt Frey<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t think they’re prepared for it mentally in the sense that they have policy proposals on the table ready to be implemented when it happens\u201d, he said. <\/p>\n \u201cAt the same time, in many ways, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel.<\/p>\n \u201cThe welfare state exists, and we do have educational systems – we can build on those. There are certainly things that will have to be modified.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the labour share of income goes down, obviously, as we tax less income from labour, we will have to tax consumption and capital more, and there are many other things that need to be adjusted.\u201d<\/p>\n Unemployment is not the primary concern related to AI, however.<\/p>\n Researcher Jacob Coxon quit tech giant Anthropic earlier this month, warning that the company and its rivals were \u201cgambling with our lives\u201d, adding those building AI \u201cearnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"London](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/450442590...jpeg\")
London Black Cab drivers take part in a protest against a new private taxi service ‘Uber’, a mobile phone app, on the Mall leading to Buckingham Palace in central London on June 11, 2014 (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/478589372...jpeg\")
A taxi blocks the area of Porte Maillot in west Paris, on June 26, 2015, with drivers furious at what they see as unfair competition from Uber (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n![\"Almost](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/15154037-3ee8adac-a307-4c3f-b49b-e9ed37b740d4.jpg\")
Almost 1m young people in the UK are out of work, unemployment or training (Alamy\/PA)<\/p>\n