AI threatens jobs in Glasgow and Edinburgh more than any other UK city, adding to ‘brain drain’ fears

That’s the equivalent of 300,000 roles scrapped.

The Generation AI report from the King’s Trust warns Edinburgh and Glasgow will feel the brunt of scrapped roles, as the Scottish cities have a high concentration of ‘knowledge economy’ sectors.

“The highest impact is in those roles like finance, insurance, professional services,” Louise Goodlad, director of delivery in Scotland for the King’s Trust, told LBC.

“A lot of is from graduate kind of roles disappearing because a lot of the work they do could be automated. They have quite a lot of repetitive tasks or tasks that AI could complete.”

The report indicates more than half of the roles young people currently hold will be transformed by artificial intelligence.

London is likely to see the most roles ‘augmented’ rather than lost, meaning some tasks could be automated, allowing the worker to focus on higher value tasks that increase productivity.

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But that could make competition for skilled roles in the capital even higher.

“There's definitely a risk there that we further that north south divide and that we see more of the kind of ‘brain drain’, as they say, of people leaving Scotland to go and try and obtain those roles,” Ms Goodlad said.

“It could be that we see escalating youth unemployment and we know that there'd be so much wasted potential within that. So that's why we want to see the right interventions.”

The analysis by the King’s Trust suggests if nothing is done to mitigate against 10% of entry level roles disappearing, it will cost the UK economy £12 billion.

The predicted impact has left one University of Glasgow graduate wondering what’s next.

“It has shocked me quite a bit,” Jon-Paul Arjoon told LBC. “It’s made me more aware to focus on jobs that are more in the augmented or insulated space, you know, build the skills that are not going to be replaced by AI. I see it as kind of both positive and a threat - I think it comes down to how we use it.”

Around a year after finishing his degree, Mr Arjoon is working in customer service while applying almost daily to graduate roles. Artificial intelligence is already a fixture of his day.

“I use it a lot in my everyday life when it comes to job applications or even entertainment. And even now in my current role we just started implementing AI into our calls. It listens to our calls and summarises our notes.”

“It’s huge, obviously,” Ms Goodlad said. “And that doesn't even include the cost of benefits or other societal costs that we would obviously see from 300,000 young people suddenly being unable to get into the labour market.

“But on the other side, if every role that a young person holds that could be augmented by AI, if that transformation happens, then that could mean an additional 16 billion to the economy.”