Government’s AI Strategy Summit today boasts Elon Musk as a guest, whilst workers and unions left out

As world leaders and tech companies meet in Milton Keynes today for the government’s much anticipated AI Safety Summit, unions and tech experts have heavily criticised the gathering as a “missed opportunity” before it even started.

The Deputy General Secretary of Prospect union, Andrew Pakes, spoke to LFF about why his union was among more than 100 international organisations who signed an open letter accusing Rishi Sunak of “marginalised” workers and communities in the Summit, who are already being affected by the impacts of Artificial Intelligence.

Signatories include leading human rights organisation and tech groups, who slammed the gathering, which boasts Elon Musk and the boss of ChatGPT as guests, as a “closed door event” dominated by Big Tech.

Pakes, who also heads communications and research at Prospect union which representing professionals and specialist workers, highlighted why discussions into the regulation of AI must involve unions and workers who are already being impacted.

“We’re already seeing the rapid growth of surveillance software, task allocation and micromanagement software, which is changing the way we’re managed, often with risk to workers’ wellbeing, privacy and rights,” said Pakes.

Unions have made ongoing warnings that unregulated AI risks increasing discrimination and exploitation at work, due to unfair algorithms and profiling and its use in the hiring and firing of staff.

Whilst the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has warned today that the UK risks becoming an “international outlier” in failing to regulate AI in the workplace, in contrast to what’s being done in the EU and US where workers are being incorporated in the conversation.

For example when the Biden administration held its AI Summit, trade unions had a seat at the table, whilst the US President issuing an executive order on Monday which included measures to protect jobs and workers’ rights in the face of AI.

In contrast, Pakes said the UK Government had taken a “narrow, restricted approach” to how it defines AI and who it involves.

“There remains a key missing ingredient at the Government side, and that’s people.

“The focus on big tech and apocalyptic visions of how AI could destroy the world are a convenient way for overlooking the very real impacts of everyday AI and how AI is already changing how we work and live our lives.

“It’s a deliberate strategy by this government to overlook the nature of work.”

Rishi Sunak is hoping the UK can become the hub for regulating the technology industry on a global scale, referring recently to its “existential risk”. However Pakes highlighted the impact of the government’s current discourse on the topic.  

“I think this obsession that everything’s going to be like Terminator and the robots are coming for our jobs creates a very convenient narrative that makes technology something exceptional, which only clever people can understand,” said Pakes.

“And the rest of us don’t get a look in. Whilst if you start off saying it’s about people’s ambitions, opportunities, skills, prosperity, then if you anchor policy in the real world and people’s everyday lives, you have an opportunity to really make people partners in that ability to change and create a new economy.”

So what should the government be doing to protect workers?

Pakes argued: “There needs to be a digital transition to make sure people are not left behind when those changes come about.

“Ensuring that workers unions and communities are involved in planning for change means that people can be reassured and be part of the change. I think that’s the big, real risk.

“That this is going to be big tech and government discussing top down change, where its impact on people’s everyday lives is going to be the last thing on their mind. And we need to change that.”

He said that Labour’s ‘mission driven approach’ laid out through an economic strategy was a move in the right direction. The Party’s pro-business, pro-worker approach offers the potential to ensure unions and communities are part of that discussion, Pakes said.

Pakes, who grew up almost next door to Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes, the once top-secret home of the World War Two Codebreakers, which is hosting the AI Summit this week, said he is a “tech optimist” and emphasised that we are going to have to “embrace technology”.

“There’s a great phrase the Swedish trade union movement often use, which is workers shouldn’t be scared, shouldn’t be afraid of the new machines, they should be scared of the old ones,” said Pakes.

“There is no future prosperity if the UK economy doesn’t adapt and change.

“The big question for the Government is, how does it carry people with it, making workers and communities partners in that change, rather than change being done to people? And that’s the real risk.”

(Image credit: Creative Commons / vpnsrus)

Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward, focusing on trade unions and environmental issues

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