There are moments in technology when you can almost hear the gears of history turning.
I remember when having a computer in the office made you “the computer person”. I remember dial-up modems, fax machines, early websites, clunky email systems, and the strange magic of watching a machine do something that previously required a drawer full of paper, a telephone call, and usually someone called Janet who knew where everything was filed.
Artificial intelligence feels like one of those moments, except this time the machine is not just helping us type the letter. It is writing the letter, summarising the meeting, drawing the logo, coding the website, generating the video, and quietly eyeing up half the tasks we thought were safely ours.
A new report from The Policy Institute at King’s College London, AI and the Future of Work, gives a fascinating snapshot of how the British public, workers, students and employers are feeling about all this.
And the overall picture is not simple optimism. It is more like standing in front of a very clever robot vacuum cleaner that has suddenly learned accountancy.
We are wary, but we know it is coming
One of the most interesting findings is that the public are more negative than positive about AI, yet many people still expect to use it.
Almost half of the public say they would rather avoid AI-based technologies, 41% say they are afraid of AI, and only 24% think AI is positive for humanity. Yet 43% agree they will use AI in the future.
That feels very human to me.
It is the same feeling we had when smartphones began taking over our pockets. We complained about them, worried about them, said they were ruining attention spans, then used them to check the weather, order a takeaway, find a route, take photos of the dog and pay for parking.
AI may be following the same path, only with rather larger consequences.
Parents are looking at this very differently
The part of the report that really lands is the section about parents.
Half of parents with children under 30 say they are worried about how AI will affect their children’s career prospects. Yet only around three in ten parents of 11 to 29-year-olds have actually had a conversation with their child about how AI might affect their future career, and a similar number have encouraged them to learn how to use AI tools.
That gap matters.
Because whether we like AI or not, pretending it is not happening is not a strategy. The best advice we can give young people is probably not “avoid AI”, but “understand it, question it, and learn how to use it better than the next person”.
When I was younger, knowing your way around a computer gave you an edge. Then knowing the web gave you an edge. Then knowing social media, search engines, ecommerce, video, and automation gave you an edge.
Now the edge may come from knowing how to work alongside AI without becoming completely dependent on it.
The fear is not just science fiction
The report also shows that concern about jobs is widespread.
Seven in ten people are worried about the economic impact of job losses caused by AI, and majorities of the general public, young people, university students and workers believe AI will eliminate far more jobs than it creates.
That is not a small worry. That is not people muttering about robots in the pub. That is a mainstream concern.
There is also a particularly sharp anxiety around entry-level roles. The report notes that many people believe AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years.
This is where I think the real danger lies. Not necessarily in AI replacing every professional overnight, but in it quietly removing the first rung of the ladder.
Most of us learned by doing the boring stuff first. We answered support calls, updated spreadsheets, wrote simple copy, fixed small bugs, processed orders, filed things, checked things, tested things, and gradually became useful.
If AI takes away the junior work, where exactly do the next generation learn?
You cannot become experienced without first being inexperienced.
Employers are more optimistic, but even they are worried
Employers are generally more positive about AI than the wider public, but they are not blindly cheerful.
According to the report, 63% of employers are worried about the economic impact of job losses caused by AI, even while many are excited about new jobs opening up.
That is the strange contradiction at the heart of this whole debate.
AI is both an opportunity and a threat. It can help small businesses move faster, reduce admin, improve customer service, generate ideas, speed up research and make previously expensive tasks accessible to people working from a spare room.
But it can also concentrate power.
One of the starkest findings is that 65% of the public think the economic benefits of AI will mainly go to wealthy investors and large companies, while just 7% think the benefits will be shared fairly across society.
That is probably the bit we should be talking about more.
The question is not simply “will AI be clever?” It clearly will be. The question is “who benefits?”
My view from the Gadget Man shed
I use AI. I find it fascinating, useful, occasionally infuriating, sometimes astonishing and often a little unsettling.
It can be like having an enthusiastic assistant who has read everything, forgotten where it read it, and sometimes confidently hands you a screwdriver when you asked for a banana.
But used properly, it is powerful.
For people like me who create websites, write content, tinker with servers, make videos, build odd little systems and generally chase ideas down rabbit holes, AI can be a genuine productivity boost.
It can help you get from “I wonder if this is possible?” to “here is a working prototype” much faster than before.
But I do not think we should confuse productivity with progress.
If AI helps a small business survive, brilliant. If it helps a student learn, excellent. If it helps someone with a disability communicate, create, work or live more independently, fantastic.
If it simply allows large companies to employ fewer people while making a handful of shareholders wealthier, then we have built something clever but not necessarily something good.
The future is not automatic
Technology does not arrive with a moral compass fitted as standard. We decide how it is used.
That means schools, parents, businesses and government all have some catching up to do.
Young people need to understand AI not as magic, but as a tool. Workers need training, not vague reassurance. Employers need to think about responsibility as well as efficiency. And the rest of us need to keep asking awkward questions.
AI is coming into the workplace whether we welcome it with open arms or hide behind the photocopier.
The important thing now is not to panic, but not to sleepwalk either.
We have been here before with big technological shifts, but this one feels faster, wider and stranger.
The machine is no longer just on the desk.
It is in the conversation.
Source: King’s College London, The Policy Institute, “AI and the Future of Work”, May 2026.
