Work & careers

Should we believe the warning that AI is about to upend the jobs market? Chris Stokel-Walker reports Over the weekend, Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, arguably Open AI’s greatest rival, issued a stark warning. He claimed that AI’s rapid advancement could lead to the disappearance of half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next one to five years, as well as 10-20% unemployment levels in the United States by the end of the decade. “Everyone I’ve talked to has said this technological change looks different. It looks faster, it looks harder to adapt to … We’re not going to prevent it just by saying everything’s going to be OK.” Continue reading...

Is artificial intelligence coming for everyone’s jobs? Not if this lot have anything to do with it The novelist Ewan Morrison was alarmed, though amused, to discover he had written a book called Nine Inches Pleases a Lady. Intrigued by the limits of generative artificial intelligence (AI), he had asked ChatGPT to give him the names of the 12 novels he had written. “I’ve only written nine,” he says. “Always eager to please, it decided to invent three.” The “nine inches” from the fake title it hallucinated was stolen from a filthy Robert Burns poem. “I just distrust these systems when it comes to truth,” says Morrison. He is yet to write Nine Inches – “or its sequel, Eighteen Inches”, he laughs. His actual latest book, For Emma, imagining AI brain-implant chips, is about the human costs of technology. Morrison keeps an eye on the machines, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and their capabilities, but he refuses to use them in his own life and work. He is one of a growing number of people who are actively resisting: people who are terrified of the power of generative AI and its potential for harm and don’t want to feed the beast; those who have just decided that it’s a bit rubbish, and more trouble than it’s worth; and those who simply prefer humans to robots. Continue reading...

The series in which readers answer others’ questions on subjects ranging from flights of fancy to profound scientific concepts. Here, responses on the ‘cab rank’ rule This week’s question: Should back gardens be sacrosanct or is playing music OK? Is the “cab rank” rule for barristers fair? It means every accused party in the UK gets the legal representation they’re entitled to – but it also means barristers may have to defend people who have done things they feel are indefensible. J McBride, Birmingham Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com. Continue reading...

Ever since lockdown we’ve supposedly all been in it together, doing conference calls in our slippers. But in straight couples, guess who gets the spare bedroom and the proper desk? I’m wary of gendered generalisations. They rightly raise hackles: we are unique, not defined by gender, not all men! But I was struck by one I read from Ella Risbridger in her review of Jessica Stanley’s recent novel, Consider Yourself Kissed. Exploring one of its themes, Risbridger wrote: “I have long noticed that in a house with one spare room and a heterosexual couple who both work from home, the spare room is where he works – with a door that shuts and perhaps even a designated desk – and she works somewhere else. (Always for good reasons, but always.)” This stopped me in my tracks. Not because it’s my experience: my husband and I are lucky enough to have an office each, and mine is bigger and objectively nicer. I get the garden view; he has the ballet of Openreach and Amazon vans. (See – not all men.) It’s not Stanley’s experience either: she uses the spare bedroom; her husband has half the living room, she told the Cut’s Book Gossip newsletter. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

One reader has not been able to find work years after she reported a sexual assault by her boss, while another had to quit because of discrimination by powerful women. Plus a letter from Graeme Booth, also replying to a Gaby Hinsliff column I’m writing in response to Gaby Hinsliff’s column (White men are apparently terrified of doing the wrong thing at work. I have some advice, 26 May). I was sexually assaulted at work by a man twice my age – my boss. I reported it to my company and to the police. I pursued legal justice. I spoke openly about what had happened. And I lost my job and haven’t worked since. This isn’t from a lack of trying. I would love to be working again. I’m a well-educated woman in my 30s – I have a postgraduate degree, I’ve worked for the Foreign Office and the BBC, I speak Arabic and French. I’ve been working since I was 13. Even as I changed countries and careers in my 20s, I was never unemployed – until now. Continue reading...

Heathrow boss missed emergency calls as his phone was on silent – but things can also get missed on live TV You would normally expect the role of Heathrow chief executive to be a fairly anonymous position away from the public eye, but Thomas Woldbye is in danger of becoming a household name after it emerged he slept through two emergency notification calls and “several” phone calls after a fire at a substation knocked out power supplies to the airport in March. He would not be the first person to be entirely unaware of what was going on around him. Here are some other well-known examples. Continue reading...

Alison McGovern promises long-term career support in wake of Labour’s significant cuts to disability benefits Jobcentres will no longer force people into “any job” available, the employment minister has said, promising there will be long-term, personalised career support for those losing out due to welfare cuts. Alison McGovern said she was ending the Conservative policy under which jobseekers were obliged to take any low-paid, insecure work and that the service would now be focused on helping people to build rewarding careers. Continue reading...

London judge says IT director unfairly dismissed over request to attend important meeting by video call The question of when working from home is acceptable – and when you really should be at an office desk – is becoming one of modern life’s conundrums. An employment tribunal has suggested it may be OK to remain at home if you need to supervise workers, even if it means attending an important meeting remotely. Continue reading...

Fears of being sacked or saying something unwise are near-universal. What’s striking is that men in this new polling can’t see that Are you living in a pit of worry at work, frightened of getting fired for doing the tiniest thing wrong? Do you fear that your kids will be worse off than you? Have you ever suspected that you’ve been denied a promotion at work because of who you are, not what you can do? Well, join the club. Or maybe not, because this particular club was apparently founded for white men and white men only. “Millions of men are walking around on eggshells at work too scared to speak freely, while knowing that being male can now be a disaster for your career,” according to Tim Samuels, a former BBC documentary-maker turned presenter of a YouTube show called White Men Can’t Work!, which launches this week. Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Do you die a little every time you sit down with your workmates? Try asking them about their first ever concert, or the last time they blew up a balloon Is there enough magic in your meetings? I can hear the hollow laughter from here. Research from the London School of Economics found that more than a third of meetings are considered unproductive, which seems awfully low to anyone who has been to a meeting, ever. “People throw meetings at problems,” Priya Parker, meeting specialist and author of The Art of Gathering, lamented on the Fixable podcast recently, before offering her solution. Asked for a quick fix, she suggested kicking off with “a magical question”: one that everyone would be interested in answering and in hearing others answer. Her suggestion: “What was your first ever concert, and who took you?” Continue reading...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts. This week, a legal issue Is the “cab rank” rule for barristers fair? It means every accused party in the UK gets the legal representation they’re entitled to – but it also means barristers may have to defend people who have done things they feel are indefensible. J McBride, Birmingham Post your answers (and new questions) below or send them to nq@theguardian.com. A selection will be published next Sunday. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Staff in Britain now average 1.8 days a week of remote working, above global average of 1.3 days UK workers continue to work from home more than nearly any of their global counterparts more than five years after the pandemic first disrupted traditional office life, a study has found. UK employees now average 1.8 days a week of remote working, above the international average of 1.3 days, according to the Global Survey of Working Arrangements (G-SWA), a worldwide poll of more than 16,000 full-time, university-educated workers across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa that began in July 2021. Continue reading...

IMF is urging countries globally to act to ease stress on public finances, sparking mainly outrage but also support As French workers stage yet another public show of discontent about president Emmanuel Macron’s raising of the state pension age from 62 to 64, the International Monetary Fund has urged governments to encourage fit, older workers to delay retirement. Its recommendation is that people of the baby boomer generation should stay in work for longer to help balance public finances amid fiscal pressures caused by an ageing global population. Continue reading...

More than half of women in the workplace feel pressure to be liked, compared with only 36% of men. Just imagine what women could be doing if they didn’t have to smile all the time? Name: Likability labour. Age: The phrase is new, but as a thing it’s almost certainly been going on for ever. Continue reading...

Fed up with being inside all day? Missing fresh air and nature? Five people who ditched their desks reveal the truth about their new lives Steve Kell, 59, countryside ranger, Warwickshire Country Parks I always loved being in nature. But I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I was 18, so I got a job at a high-street bank. My grandfather was made up – he was convinced I was going to be the governor of the Bank of England. But over the years I became disenchanted. Then, in my early 30s, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer and had to take months off work. I couldn’t help thinking about how finite life is. I decided I wanted to do something I really enjoyed. Continue reading...

We’d like to hear from people in the UK looking for work, how they have experienced visiting a Jobcentre branch, and whether they’d found it helpful We’d like to hear how people in the UK looking for work have experienced visiting Jobcentre branches. Have you found your visit to a Jobcentre helpful? Did the support offered by the Jobcentre match your expectations? Has the Jobcentre helped you find work? Tell us. Continue reading...

Readers respond to an article by Gaby Hinsliff on declining employment opportunities for young graduates The university degree was never a guaranteed ticket to a good career. I graduated from Cambridge about the same time as Gaby Hinsliff (We told young people that degrees were their ticket to a better life. It’s become a great betrayal, 13 May). Without middle-class connections, or “professional” work experience, I returned home after graduation to a neighbourhood counted among the 1% most deprived in England, in a post-industrial northern city with a crumbling social infrastructure. I had £30 to my name and took a job worse than the one I’d had while at school in order to live. To get to London, where there was a greater range of jobs, I did non-graduate work for a few years, sofa-surfing to begin with. Like today’s graduates, I had to do further study to get a decent job, and I was just shy of 40 when I managed to get a career job. I guess it is a better life in the end, as the alternative may well have been a cycle of bad jobs and unemployment. Continue reading...

Jane O’Regan writes that the happiest part of her day is when a care visitor arrives to help her husband. Plus, a letter from Jonathan Erskine Thank you, Zoe Williams (‘Cheap foreign labour’ – this is how Keir Starmer denigrates the migrant carers looking after your loved ones, 12 May). My husband suffered a severe stroke 14 years ago. Every day since, a care worker has visited us to get him up and wash and dress him. We live in east London and every single care worker we have met has been born abroad. They are kind, supportive and reliable. The happiest moment of my day is when I hear them turn the key in our front door. How dare you suggest that we risk becoming an “island of strangers” because of them, Keir Starmer? I have voted Labour for 60 years. No more. Jane O’Regan London • As a trustee of a charity that employs people to help older citizens remain independent, active and fulfilled in life, I know that care work is demanding and highly skilled. Some of our staff may not have higher education qualifications (although many do), but they are all well trained, empathetic and dedicated to their work. Yvette Cooper should spend a week doing some care work shifts, or simply ask our clients about the service they receive, and then tell us whether the job is “low-skilled”. Jonathan Erskine Trustee, LifeCare Edinburgh Continue reading...

Richard Assan tells employment tribunal he left Vigilant Security due to ‘continuous bullying and racism’ A black security manager who was called a “slave” and left his job due to “continuous bullying” has been awarded £361,000, an employment tribunal has heard. Richard Assan started his career with Vigilant Security in 2007 and was promoted to security manager in May 2018. Continue reading...

Prevalence of hybrid over fully remote roles dashes hopes of greater geographical spread of talent The post-pandemic shift to greater home working among highly skilled professionals has failed to level up Britain’s economy and help struggling regions as many had predicted it would, according to academic research. Hybrid working – where workers split their time between the workplace and another remote location such as home – has surged since the height of the Covid pandemic, yet is mostly available to older, high-skilled professionals based in London and other major cities. Continue reading...