Almost two-thirds of British jobs could be "enhanced" with AI, Google has claimed, with only a tiny proportion at risk of being "phased out" entirely. Instead of worrying about job losses caused by AI, the focus needed to be on making sure the millions of Britons who could work in smarter and faster ways with AI tech got the support to use it, the company said. "Fewer than 50% of people are actually taking advantage of these tools in their working life on a day to day basis," said Debbie Weinstein, managing director of Google UK. "The uptake of these tools is very low, and I think the only way we're going to unlock the potential of what AI can do is actually by getting people to use them, and to feel confident and capable about them." According to research from the thinktank Public First, commissioned by Google, 61% of British jobs will be "radically" transformed by AI, with just 31% "insulated" from the technology – defined as having fewer than a quarter of their workplace tasks with the potential to be automated. Those insulated jobs would overwhelmingly be in social care, transport, accommodation and food services, where complex and varied physical tasks were achievable only by human workers, Public First said.

Nearly half of British jobs are at risk of being taken over by robots, a report warned last night. Technological advances mean 44 per cent of current roles could be automated, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think-tank found. Employees working in catering, retail and agriculture are most under threat by the march of machines. Nearly half of British jobs are at risk of being taken over by robots, a report warned last night. The report raised the example of how Amazon has used sensors in its warehouses to monitor productivity.

Robots may take four million British jobs in the private sector within the next decade, some business leaders believe. Those surveyed for by YouGov for the Royal Society of Arts said 15 per cent of all jobs were under threat. The most vulnerable fields are finance and accounting, transportation and distribution, manufacturing and marketing and public relations, the survey found. But the research was not all doom and gloom, noting that technological advance creates new jobs, partly because increased productivity reduces prices freeing up consumers to spend money elsewhere in the economy. The RSA added that AI and robotics will mostly automate individual tasks rather than replace whole jobs.

More than ten million workers could be replaced by robots over the next 15 years, it is claimed today. In an alarming vision, a report predicts jobs in shops, offices and factories could be made redundant by advances in technology such as artificial intelligence. Most workers at high risk are in transportation and storage, retail, manufacturing, and administrative and support services, experts found. The report, by accountancy giant PwC, said up to 10.4million jobs – 30 per cent of those in the UK – are very likely to be automated by the early 2030s. The development of driverless cars, lorries and vans means workers in the transportation and storage sector are at particularly high risk.

As many as 30pc of existing roles in the UK could be automated by 2030 with the most at risk industries being waste management, transportation and manufacturing, according to an analysis by PwC. However, the report stressed that automation won't result in rocketing unemployment. "The UK employment rate is at its highest level now since comparable records began in 1971, despite advances in digital and other labour-saving technologies," said John Hawksworth, chief economist at PwC. Mr Hawksworth anticipates that manual and routine tasks will be susceptible to automation, with social skills and creative roles being more protected. "That said, no industry is entirely immune from future advances in robotics and AI," he said.

Rogue One, the latest in the Star Wars franchise, has had mixed reviews but features one undisputed star: K-2SO, a gangly robot with the best lines. Movies of the distant future always tap into current anxieties, and the latest alarm is that the robots are coming. Droids may not conquer the world, but they will take over its work--white-collar as well as blue-collar. Could these filmmakers know something we don't? Previous scares, such as when TIME magazine reported on "the automation jobless" in the early 1960s, were just that.