The Analysis 

“The impact of AI on UK jobs and training” report published online by the government, highlights the results of a study that used US methodology to look at the abilities needed to perform different job roles, and the extent to which these can be aided by a selection of ten common AI applications.

These applications are:

1. Abstract Strategy Games: The ability to play abstract games involving sometimes complex strategy and reasoning ability, such as chess, go, or checkers, at a high level.
2. Real time Video Games: The ability to play a variety of real-time video games of increasing complexity at a high level.
3. Image Recognition: The determination of what objects are present in a still image.
4. Visual Question Answering: The recognition of events, relationships, and context from a still image.
5. Image Generation: The creation of complex images.
6. Reading Comprehension: The ability to answer simple reasoning questions based on an understanding of text.
7. Language Modelling: The ability to model, predict, or mimic human language.
8. Translation: The translation of words or text from one language into another.
9. Speech Recognition: The recognition of spoken language into text.
10. Instrumental Track Recognition: The recognition of instrumental musical tracks.

These AI applications were selected based on their relevance and the progress in technology from 2010 onwards, as recorded by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). They represent fundamental applications of AI that are likely to have implications for the workforce and cover the most likely and most common uses of AI.

The study also focuses on which occupations, sectors and areas within the UK labour market are expected to be most impacted by AI and large language models (LLMs), and how this could impact workers in different UK geographic areas.

The Findings 

The key findings of the study show that:

• Professional occupations are more exposed to AI, especially those associated with more clerical work and across finance, law, and business management roles.
• The industries least exposed to AI and to LLMs across industries are accommodation and food services, motor trades, agriculture, forestry and fishing, transport, storage and construction.
• The finance and insurance sector is more exposed to AI than any other sector.
• The occupations most exposed to all AI applications are management consultants and business analysts.
• The occupations most exposed to large language modelling are telephone salespersons, followed by solicitors and psychologists.
• Workers in London and the south east have the highest exposure to AI, being five times as exposed as the north east of England, reflecting the greater concentration of professional occupations in those areas.

These findings led to some press reports that AI’s incursion into our working lives would most affect ‘city highflyers’.

Qualifications and Training

The study also exposes the qualifications and training routes that most commonly lead to these highly impacted jobs, concluding that:

• Employees with more advanced qualifications are typically in jobs more exposed to AI, that is those with a level 6 qualification, equivalent to a degree.
• Employees with qualifications in accounting and finance through Further Education or apprenticeships, and economics and mathematics through Higher Education are typically in jobs more exposed to AI.

Other Studies 

Other studies highlighting levels of exposure to AI include:

• A Pew Research Centre Study in 2022 which found that 19 per cent of US workers were in jobs highly exposed to AI, where key activities might be replaced or assisted by AI.
• A Goldman Sachs Report from 2023 suggesting that AI could replace the equivalent of 300 million full time jobs globally. It indicates that about a quarter of work tasks in the US and Europe could be replaced by AI, impacting two thirds of jobs in these regions to some degree.

IMF  

A paper from October 2023 also highlights the dual nature of AI in advanced economies: AI’s potential as either a complement to or a substitute for labour. The paper also highlights the important point that women and highly educated workers face greater occupational exposure to AI.

It’s worth noting that the Goldman Sachs Report mentioned above also highlighted this dual effect of AI, showing that AI also has the potential to create new jobs and boost productivity, potentially increasing the total annual value of goods and services produced globally by 7 per cent.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

As highlighted in the report for this study and as supported by the findings of other studies, 10 to 30 per cent of jobs are able to be automated, with fast evolving AI putting many of those jobs at risk. This government study confirms largely what many people may have expected: that those in clerical work and across finance, law, and business management roles, where generative AI’s outputs are particularly effective, are most at risk from AI diminishing their value as workers. There are, of course, many other areas, some highlighted by this report, where generative AI is clearly able to replace or reproduce or copy human efforts to an acceptable degree. These range from customer service roles to creative work. Some people may find that it’s disconcerting that jobs and professions which have taken years of study and have a specialist element and high social value, for example solicitors and psychologists, are shown in the report to be suddenly and significantly at risk from what are, basically, algorithms.

The report’s findings also makes what seems to be quite a logical conclusion that since there’s a greater concentration of professional occupations in London and the south east, this region is more likely to be negatively affected by AI.

The report of the study also makes the valid point about the dual nature of AI’s effects, that in addition to threatening many jobs, AI also has the potential to increase productivity and create new, high value jobs in the UK economy. However, the main focus of this and other studies may appear to confirm the fears of many, that fast advancing AI is likely to have a profound and widespread effect on the UK economy and society, and not necessarily in a good way for many peoples’ jobs, skills and value.

As highlighted in the report, the UK education system and employers will now need to adapt to ensure that individuals in the workforce have the skills they need to make the most of the potential benefits advances in AI will bring. As individual workers, many may now want to look at the ways they can maximise their value and be in a position where they can use and orchestrate what are essentially tools more effectively than others, and in a way that adds value to themselves and their own positions in a way that creates new opportunities.

The post AI Job Risks: Finance and Insurance appeared first on Quayside Technical Services.

What Happened? 

Communications app Zoom updated its terms of service in March. These have only recently been publicised on a popular forum in recent weeks, and now Zoom has faced criticism. Many tech commentators have expressed alarm that the changes in the terms of service appears to go against its policy to not use customer data to train AI.

The Update In Question 

The update to Section 10 of is terms of service, which Zoom says was to explain “how we use and who owns the various forms of content across our platform” gave Zoom “perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license and all other rights” to use customer content, i.e. data, content, communications, messages, files, documents and more, for “machine learning, artificial intelligence, training, testing” (and other product development purposes).

The Reaction 

Following the details of the update being posted and discussed on the ‘Hacker News’ forum, there was a backlash against Zoom, with many commentators unhappy with the prospect of AI being given access to what should be private Zoom calls and other communications. This includes generative AI chatbots, AI image generators and Zoom’s own AI models, namely Zoom IQ and more.

What’s The Problem? 

There are several concerns that individuals, businesses and other organisations may have over their “Customer Content” being used to train AI. For example:

• Privacy Concerns. Worries that personal or sensitive information in video calls could be used in ways the participants never intended.
• Potential security risks. For example, if Zoom stores video and audio data for AI training, it increases the chance of that data being exposed in a hack or breach. Also, it’s possible with generative AI models that private information could be revealed if a user of an AI chatbot asked the right questions.
• Ethical questions. This is because some users may simply not have given clear permission for their data to be used for AI training, raising issues of consent and fairness.
• Legal Issues. For example, depending on the country, using customer data in this manner might violate data protection laws like GDPR, which could get both the company and users into legal trouble. Also, Zoom users or admins for business accounts could click “OK” to the terms of service without fully realising what they’re agreeing to, Employees who use a business Zoom account may be unaware of the choice their employer has made on their behalf. It’s also been noted by some online commentators that Zoom’s terms of service still permit it to collect a lot of data without consent, for example everything that is grouped under the term ‘Service Generated Data.’

Another Update Prompted 

The backlash, the criticism of Zoom and the doubtless fear of some users leaving the platform over this controversy appears to have prompted another update to the company’s terms of service which Zoom says was to “to reorganise Section 10 and make it easier to understand”. 

The second update was a sentence, in bold, added on the end of Section 10.2 saying: “Zoom does not use any of your audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments or other communications-like Customer Content (such as poll results, whiteboard and reactions) to train Zoom or third-party artificial intelligence models.” 

On the company’s blog, Chief Product Officer, Smita Hashim, reiterated that: “Following feedback received regarding Zoom’s recently updated terms of service Zoom has updated our terms of service and the below blog post to make it clear that Zoom does not use any of your audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments, or other communications like customer content (such as poll results, whiteboard, and reactions) to train Zoom’s or third party artificial intelligence models.” 

The Online Terms of Service Don’t Affect Large Paying Customers 

Smita Hashim explains in the blog post that the terms of service typically cover online customers, but “different contracts exist for customers that buy directly from us” such as “enterprises and customers in regulated verticals like education and healthcare.” Hashim states, therefore, that “updates to the online terms of service do not impact these customers.” 

What Zoom AI? 

Zoom has recently introduced two generative AI features to its platform: Zoom IQ Meeting Summary and Zoom IQ Team Chat Compose, available on free trial and offering automated meeting summaries and AI powered chat composition.

To customers worried that these tools may be trained using ‘Customer Content’ Zoom says, “We inform you and your meeting participants when Zoom’s generative AI services are in use” and has specifically assured customers that Zoom does not use customer content (for example poll results, whiteboard content, or user reactions) to train Zoom’s own or third party AI models.

Criticism 

In 2020, Zoom faced criticism over only offering end-to-end encryption as a paid extra feature after saying paying users would have it anyway. Also, with Zoom being the company whose product enabled (and is all about) remote working, it was criticised after asking staff living within a “commutable distance” (i.e. 50 miles or 80km) of the company’s offices to come to the office twice a week when it was reported to have said previously that all staff could work remotely indefinitely.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

This story shows how, at a time when data is now needed in vast quantities to train AI, a technology that’s growing at a frightening rate, and has been the subject of dire warnings about the threats it could cause, clear data protections in this area are lagging or are missing altogether.

Yes, there are data protection laws. Arguably, however, with the lack of understanding of how AI models work and what they need, service terms may not give a clear picture of what’s being consented to (or not) when using AI. There’s a worry, therefore, that boundaries of data protection, privacy, security, ethics, legality, and other contraints may be overstepped without users knowing it in the rush for more data as clear regulation is left behind.

Zoom’s extra assurances may have gone some way toward calming the backlash down and assuring users, but the fact that there was such a backlash over the contents of an old update shows the level of confusion and mistrust around this relatively new technological development and how it could affect everyone.

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