Khan backs £30m plan to shield London jobs from AI

TL;DR:

  • Mayor Sadiq Khan has accepted the recommendations of the London AI and Jobs Taskforce and added £18m for youth skills, bringing City Hall’s AI-related commitment to £30m.
  • The taskforce found around 600,000 Londoners work in roles with high AI exposure but low capacity to adapt — disproportionately women, in clerical and administrative jobs paying below the London average.
  • Khan is seeking devolved powers from central government over skills commissioning and AI transition incentives.

The taskforce, chaired by Baroness Martha Lane-Fox and run with the Institute for the Future of Work, calls itself the largest study yet of AI’s employment impact in the capital. Its central message is that a “jobs apocalypse” is “not inevitable” but that London should act before disruption arrives, not after. Just over half of London’s workforce sits in roles with high exposure but above-average ability to adapt; the concern is the minority with neither advantage.

From warning to policy

The announcement turns last month’s alarm into action. Resultsense reported when London employers warned of a widening AI skills gap; this is City Hall’s structured response. Khan has agreed three flagship measures: an AI Early Action System to spot labour-market shifts before they become crises, an AI at Work Partnership to redesign jobs with employers and unions, and a Future Ready Guarantee connecting young Londoners to emerging roles.

Khan framed the intervention as a corrective to a stale debate: “Some claim it will solve everything. Others predict mass unemployment. Neither view helps Londoners prepare.” Lane-Fox warned the real risk is “not a sudden shock, but a quieter drift — fewer entry-level roles, weaker career ladders and growing inequality.”

Looking forward

The devolution ask is the part to watch. The taskforce wants flexibility over skills funding, the ability to test employer incentives, and a share of public savings from successful employment outcomes — and Khan has requested a meeting with newly cabinet-ranked AI minister Kanishka Narayan. Whether Whitehall cedes that ground, amid its own machinery-of-government upheaval, will determine if £30m becomes a template or a one-city experiment.

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