In Conversation with...Nimmi Patel

June 2023

In the sixth episode of our “In Conversation with…” podcast series for 2023, Lucy Lewis, Partner at Lewis Silkin LLP speaks to Nimmi Patel, Head of Skills, Talent and Diversity at techUK and advisory board member of the Digital Futures at Work Research Centre.

“The impact of generative AI is expected to vary from industry to industry and people have said it can cause significant disruption. But, email caused significant disruption, the printing press caused significant disruption, and I think we can handle it as long as we focus on people first solutions.”

The launch of ChatGPT has reignited the debate about how advances in technology could reshape the world of work. In this podcast, Nimmi and Lucy explore the opportunities and challenges that automation and emerging AI technologies present and the extent to which these technologies can be leveraged to create good work and more diverse and inclusive workplaces.

Key takeaways from the conversation:

• Jobs are at risk (but jobs will also be created): more than 6,000,000 people in the UK are employed in occupations that are likely to radically change or disappear entirely by 2030 due to technological progress and changing demographics. However, the adoption and use of AI will generate opportunities for the creation of new innovative jobs.

• Humans will work alongside tech: AI will not be able to replace human judgement and it is the responsibility of humans to decide how to teach it, deploy it and acquire the skills they need to thrive in the workplace of the future.

• Risks of algorithmic bias: while the risk of biases in AI are not new, generative AI’s ready accessibility to public data may magnify the risk. Maintaining trust in AI development will be essential and regulation will play a key role.

• AI can enhance DE&I: deploying AI in recruitment can mitigate biases in traditional decision-making and increase the pool of applicants.

• The metaverse presents opportunities: building the metaverse gives us the chance to better reflect our humanity and remove societal biases.

In Conversation with…Nimmi Patel

Season 3: Episode 6

Lucy Lewis: Hello, and welcome to the Future of Work Hub’s “In Conversation with…” podcast.  I’m Lucy Lewis, a partner in Lewis Silkin’s employment team, and in this podcast series I’ll be hosting exclusive discussions with innovators, business leaders and thought leaders to explore their perspectives on the longer-term trends and immediate drivers shaping the world of work.

Now, speculation about how advances in technology will reshape the world of work aren’t new, but the launch of ChatGPT towards the end of last year has really reignited the debate and we know at a simple level that technology can eliminate routine jobs and tasks, but we also know it can create new jobs and it can improve the quality of existing jobs. And how the impact of technology will be felt in the world of work is going to be dependent on the actions of government, of employers and of course, of employees and workers. And, in this podcast, we’re going to explore the opportunities and challenges that automation and emerging AI technologies present and also talk about the extent to which those technologies can be leveraged to create better work and to create more diverse and inclusive workplaces and I’d like to welcome my guest today, who is absolutely perfectly placed to discuss this with me, Nimmi Patel.

Nimmi is Head of Skills, Talent and Diversity at techUK. techUK is a trade association that brings together people, companies and organisations to realise the positive outcomes of what digital technology can achieve, and Nimmi works on all things skills, education and future of work policy - focusing on upskilling and retraining. She is also an advisory board member of the Digital Futures at Work Research Centre and that aims to increase understanding of how digital technologies are changing the world of work.

Welcome to the podcast, Nimmi.

Nimmi Patel: Thank you so much for having me, Lucy.

Lucy Lewis: Now I wondered if you could start just by telling us a little bit about your role and the work that you do with techUK.

Nimmi Patel: Thanks Lucy. techUK is the UK’s leading tech trade association with over 950 members, which includes Lewis Silkin. The majority of our members, I would say around 60%, are SMEs which are small and medium-sized enterprises and, essentially, what we do is to create a network for innovation and collaboration across business, across government and wider stakeholders to provide a better future for people, society, the economy and the planet – the big four. And within that, I specifically look at people and I work on all things access to talent concerns that tech businesses may have. Now, of course, this access to talent concern is not just limited to the tech sector, but I work on a very small side of things trying to change the world as it were, focusing on upskilling and retraining.

As you mentioned, I’m also an industry advisory board member of Digital Futures at Work Research Centre which is affectionately known as “Digit”. Digit’s research looks at how digital technologies are changing the world of work and the implications for every sector of society, and they were established with an investment from the Economic and Social Research Council until 2025.

What will the impact of automation and AI be on jobs?

Lucy Lewis: Thanks Nimmi.

Now, let’s just start with the big stuff – let’s start with that long standing debate about the impact on jobs that automation and AI is going to have, and we all see new jobs emerging as a result of technological advances. Most of us that are listening will have felt the very real benefit that technology played in facilitating new ways of working during the pandemic, but the speed and significance of advances in AI, particularly over the last decade has really elevated and accelerated this debate about what is the impact of jobs, what’s the impact on tasks that we think of as being traditionally done by people and there are lots of predictions out there, but you know, predictions that we might eventually end up with a shortage of jobs, or a really significant skill divide and we keep coming back to this issue on the Future of Work Hub that the current focus, not surprisingly, is on the role that generative AI will place on that, the metaverse, but I’d just be really interested to hear your views on what you think the impact of automation and AI will be on jobs. What potential it has to create significant job displacement or job losses.

Nimmi Patel: Innovation brings both opportunities and challenges right, we know that, that’s really evident from the Future of Work Hub and I think people have legitimate concerns about what the impact will be on those industries that are disrupted and how we implement these new technologies as they become more widespread and how the nature of work will change and the fact that new industries and roles will be created. It’s really important for us to explore how we can take advantage of these opportunities and prepare the workforce of today and tomorrow to adapt to these changes. I think it’s one of the most crucial policy discussions facing us today.

Of course, the increased use of AI in the workplace means that the nature of many jobs will change but I think it’s important to explore the fact that the adoption and use of AI will also create opportunities for the creation of new innovative jobs. A report by the World Economic Forum  found that while 85,000,000 jobs will be replaced by machines with AI by 2025, automation and AI may prompt an increase in new positions and these new positions may include things like AI trainers, data scientists - people who earn lots of money and are well smarter than me and you – but, with an emphasis on skills such as data handling and modelling and analysis in machine learning, as well as roles where humans will work supported by AI tech.

I think what’s important to note, as you mentioned the pandemic, is that research from Nesta shows that, as a result of technological progress and changing demographics, more than 6,000,000 people in the UK are currently employed in occupations that are likely to change or radically disappear entirely by 2030.  It’s noticeable that the sectors that are most vulnerable to these shifts show great overlap with those hit hardest by the pandemic – the Commission on Workers and Technology found that 61% of those furloughed in the first half of 2020 were in sectors at high risk of automation in the future and that’s scary. I mean what we went through in the pandemic was scary, I know that a lot of people were able to work from home but some people who were furloughed, they didn’t get their jobs back, so what we need to do is focus in on how we can support the training and progression of everyone and upskill people in digital.

What I found particularly interesting when looking at the concept of automation and AI in the future of work is the nature of change expected in job roles is segmented almost by gender. Some insights by McKinsey found that women were more likely than men to have their jobs partially automated, leaving room for women to work alongside machines. This is a really interesting topic and I think more needs to be done to explore the impact of women on automation. Examples have been shown that, in an emergency room in 2030 for example, health workers could spend less time doing clerical work due to the adoption of pre-registration by mobile phones or computerized checking and billing, the use of digital technologies and spend more time interacting with patients and using emotional intelligence.

I personally believe that this new wave of technology is nothing to fear – work is likely to become more interesting and stimulating - but it is scary because of what we’ve previously been through, and that’s why I mentioned that we really need targeted interventions and a focused policy direction to make sure that people can feel like they have the things that need them to train.

The steps employers should consider in order to thrive in the AI-Dominated workplace

Lucy Lewis: Thanks Nimmi. It’s such a fascinating answer and so interesting to draw in a, kind of, continuation from the pandemic and there’s almost too much to unpack but I want to talk a bit about skills because you mentioned that, and I know it’s an area that you’re focused on, and I know it’s something that people listening are also really focused on.

We kind of get it, the impact of technology is far reaching, there are going to be significant implications – generative AI and all the chat around that, that’s a particularly good example, a very current one at the moment. But if you’re an employer, what are the steps that employers can be considering now to take advantage of all the opportunities that will come by ensuring that their workforce have the skills to enable them to thrive in the future?

Nimmi Patel: I think what’s important is for employers to understand that AI will not be able to replace human judgment and that humans will be required to work alongside tech, but they need the skills to be able to implement the tech. I mean, here we’re talking about AI and automation, but I know companies that are still, for instance, learning how to use cloud technologies and that’s been around for ages. As AI develops it’s still the responsibility of humans to decide how to teach it, how to deploy these technologies and it’s crucial that people are equipped with the skills they need to thrive to use this technology to support the workplace of the future.

And I think that’s also the case for generative AI – generative AI tools such as ChatGPT for instance are capable of creating content that are similar or almost indistinguishable from human work and at a faster rate too and we’re talking about AI now that is accessible and included in the public discourse as shown by the fact that ChatGPT has gained over, I think it’s 100,000,000 users, since November – myself included. Lucy, does that include you?

Lucy Lewis: It does include me!

Nimmi Patel: Exactly and we don’t know the effects this will have, but we definitely need to use it as a tool rather than seeing it as something to be feared. The impact of generative AI, it’s expected to vary from industry to industry and people have said it can cause significant disruption but, email caused significant disruption, the printing press caused significant disruption and I think we can handle it as long as we focus on people first solutions.

I saw some really interesting stats from Goldman Sachs that found that, in the legal field, they predict up to 44% of tasks could be automated . Do you think AI is going to take your job Lucy?

Lucy Lewis: I think it definitely could take my job, yes.

Nimmi Patel: I think parts of your job could potentially be automated but I think generative AI doesn’t yet have the context. There are limitations to it because it’s trained on data from a few years ago and it doesn’t have the most up to date information that humans have but, despite these limitations, I think it can be a really fascinating tool.

Salesforce have found that more UK workers are excited about generative AI’s use in the workplace, around 50% and around 38% are worried about it replacing them . I think half the respondents understand how this technology will impact their work but it’s really about how management and senior leadership teams enable their workforce to consider this another tool in their toolbox.

How can we adopt new technology such as AI in the workplace in a way that maintains trust?

Lucy Lewis: Thank you and glad to know that my job’s going to be okay for now. And, actually, it is interesting because Lewis Silkin, I’m sure like other firms, is looking at how we can integrate generative AI into our workplace – how it can be useful to us and how we can help service delivery to our clients by using it. But it’s an experiment, it’s going to take time and I guess that brings me to picking up some of what you said about how it’s implemented, because we know that the approach to implementation is really important, we’ve looked at the relationship between technology and trust before at the Future of Work Hub. So, in February I spoke to Penelope Mantzaris from Edelman, they do the trust barometer as I know you know, and she talked quite a lot about how trust is really critical to operational success. And I think it’s one of the areas that business finds difficult – how can we adopt new technology such as AI in the workplace in a way that maintains trust, in a way that’s ethical, in a way that mitigates legal risk. Do you have any advice for employers looking at how they manage that process?

Nimmi Patel: I think, like all AI systems, generative AI processes a large amount of information to create accurate outputs which learns from data patterns without human direction and the system is dependent on the quality of its training data and it’s susceptible to large ranges of biases which can be introduced at any stage of the AI life cycle. And I think, particularly, there are vulnerabilities often in the early stages of data collection, preparation and model building. Biases in AI typically refer to divergent results across different populations of groups that can be impacted by AI systems but, what we really need to do, is ensure that these biases within the algorithms are combatted and human biases in interpreting the results are rectified.

These risks are not new to AI. This has been happening for a long time and more and more companies are becoming more aware of algorithmic biases and I think generative AI’s ready accessibility to public data may magnify the risk of biases, particularly as users may not be necessarily able to discern fact from fiction. Now that’s not at all new and we have loads of parody accounts across Twitter and people taking on fiction for reality, but there’s a lot that we can do to make sure that people feel safe within using AI systems and that includes having a look at the regulatory landscape. So, the UK has recently outlined some principles in its AI adoption paper. techUK has a number of different reports exploring how trust can be implemented and how the global legal landscape in this space is rapidly evolving and it’s clear that regulators and governments are working at pace to ensure that they don’t fall behind the technology. Another interesting act is the EU AI Act which is expected to be finalised in the coming months and it’s the first comprehensive legal framework for AI.

Lucy Lewis: Thanks Nimmi and I’m going to come back to regulation, but only really briefly. I know it’s not your area of expertise, but I am going to come back to it briefly. Before I do that, I wanted to pick up on something that you said right at the beginning when we were talking about the labour market being tight, access to talent being really tight and there’s an opportunity there for AI to provide really positive benefits, I think. One of the things that we’re seeing is that there’s a real shift in what employees want and expect from their roles, particularly the younger generation but it isn’t just the younger generation – I think society as a whole, particularly post-pandemic is sort of reassessing the role and purpose that work plays in our lives and one of our partners, James Davies, he wrote a report for the Hub  last year and he predicted that in order to attract talent and retain talent (that’s also important in a tight labour market) employers are going to need to satisfy expectations around purpose, reward, engagement, flexibility and belonging. He talks about “PREFAB” jobs and it seems to me that some of these emerging technologies have a really positive benefit to play in building good work, giving people some of what they’re looking for from a role and from work and I’d be interested in your thoughts about that.

Nimmi Patel: We are seeing the exact same things in the labour market. I think what’s interesting is some data from Dell Technologies found that over a third, around 41% of Generation Z, so Gen Z, would be willing to accept short term economic limitation, such as lower GDP growth, if policy makers were to invest in a longer-term strategy that promotes more sustainable growth. That in itself is telling you how much of an organisation’s credibility, culture, company policies, the corporate/social responsibility initiatives that they have, how important it is to the younger generation for instance.

I think the research shows that tech plays an important role in influencing what matters to people and that includes things around identifying actively areas that they want to see change and a clear vision of the role that the younger generation play as individuals in bringing about that change. And for us, who are a little bit older, we need to support them in this.

How technology can boost diversity and inclusion in the workplace

Lucy Lewis: Thanks Nimmi. I wondered if you had any thoughts about whether this sort of emerging technology can also benefit the goal of many businesses in a drive towards greater diversity, so using it to enhance their DE&I offering, and I know you talked a little bit about potential bias in algorithms and how you can address that, but it seems to me there’s also opportunity as well as challenges when it comes to using emerging technologies to be more diverse, to be more attractive to a broader range of people.

Nimmi Patel: For me, a really interesting area is recruitment. So, AI products and services are being used to remove repetitive administrative tasks from recruitment, freeing up more time for HR experts to engage and interact with candidates and respond to employee needs and wants. In fact, we have some companies within techUK’s membership whose sole purpose is to create AI recruitment to deploy it with the purpose of mitigating biases in traditional decision-making processes and ensuring fairness across all stages of processes such as…including job adverts, talent screening, blind recruitment and interviews. So MeVitae, a techUK member, utilises augmented intelligence to offer recruitment solutions around blind recruiting and they found that using these solutions they received over twice as many applicants than when using traditional recruitment methods so, essentially, AI in recruitment is being used to support exploring different talent pools and that’s really important because a lot of tech businesses are fishing in the same pool for the same kinds of talent.

AI Regulation – striking the balance between innovation and regulation

Lucy Lewis: Thanks Nimmi. That’s really fascinating to me because you’re absolutely right – one of the key things when you’re looking to increase the diversity of your organisation is essentially attracting a greater pool of people, because there will inevitably be greater diversity if the pool of people that are applying for roles for you is larger so that’s fascinating and really, really helpful, and I’m sure really helpful to the listeners.

I’m going to nip back quickly to regulation, not really asking for any detail but some sort of high level thoughts because a lot of what we’ve been talking about is the role that employers have, the role and responsibilities of employers when it comes to AI but, right at the beginning in my introduction, I said well it’s not just about that, the role of government and how it regulates the development and adoption of technology, that’s going to be significant too. You talked a bit about how the government could sometimes feel it’s on catch up, that the pace of technology is really fast but, it seems to me, there’s a sort of challenge for the government which is that it’s really critical for economic growth that it’s able to support the growth of this sector in the UK, that its able to invest in the skills it needs in this sector in the UK whilst at the same time ensuring that it’s properly regulated and obviously for our purposes, particularly regulated in the workplace. And I wonder if techUK has any thoughts on that balance between supporting growth and investment in skills but ensuring appropriate regulation at the same time?

Nimmi Patel: It’s a fine balance. What the UK has outlined in its AI white paper  is that it plans to rely on individual sector regulations to consider five principles and that includes safety, transparency, fairness, accountability and contestability. More recently I believe the ICO have updated their guidance on AI and data protection to suggest bias mitigation methods at every stage of the AI life cycle and, I think you’re right, I think it is a balance between getting the regulation right alongside making sure that innovation thrives.

Is the metaverse the key for the future of hybrid working?

Lucy Lewis: Thank you. We’re coming to the end of the time we’ve got but there’s something I feel I have to ask you and that’s covering a bit about the metaverse. I know it’s something that techUK have been focused on, we’ve talked a bit about it on the Hub and last year I chatted to Elizabeth Bieniek, who’s the Director of Innovation at Cisco, and she spoke about the fact that it can be really difficult to replicate that meaningful human contact you get from meeting people virtually but the new and emerging technologies, things like haptic technologies, they’re helping to deliver that. And so I’m really interested in your views on what is, I think, the million dollar question – is the metaverse the technological answer to the problem that employers are facing now, and that’s ‘how you connect teams when they’re increasingly hybrid and increasingly diverse’?

Nimmi Patel: I think that’s a really great question and, if I had all the answers, I would be a multimillionaire! I think the metaverse is really exciting because, essentially, it’s an iteration of Web 3.0 and it’s a new digital world that people are going to live and work in. It’s a change of the internet and we will definitely need to upskill people to use the technologies within the metaverse and to make the best use of it, and Web 3.0 is a direct response to Web 2.0 and the generation that grew up with it. And it’s interesting because now that generation is having more of a say in its creation so we can really build a world on the internet through the metaverse to experience Web 3.0 and that includes both positives and negatives – we want to make sure we get rid of all of societal biases so for instance, racism, sexism within these worlds and we want to make sure that the internet and the metaverse are better reflections of humanity.

What is missing from the current conversation about the future of work?

Lucy Lewis: Thanks Nimmi. Now, I’ve got time for one more question and it’s a question that I’m asking all our guests on this 2023 podcast series: the last few years have obviously shone a spotlight on the future of work and there’s a huge number of opportunities and challenges that lie ahead but what I’d be really interested to hear from you is what you think is missing from the current conversation about the future of work – what are the things that aren’t getting enough attention and why do you think that’s important?

Nimmi Patel: That’s a really great question. I think what’s left out sometimes from the conversation is how new technologies can impact segments of people, so how are these technologies going to impact those who for instance aren’t digitally connected or don’t have connectivity such as 4G or 5G or live in places where those services are unavailable for instance? I’m really all about making sure that we include people in that conversation as we have conversations about growth and progression because we don’t want to leave anyone behind.

Lucy Lewis: Really interesting, and a lovely note on which to end. It’s nice to end a podcast about emerging technology on a human note, it reminds us that, actually, as you said right at the beginning, technology will only succeed if it’s alongside human interaction, it’s lovely to end in that way.

Thank you, Nimmi so much for joining us. If you’re listening and you’d like to find out more about techUK’s work and the issues that we’ve talked about today, you can visit techUK.org. Thank you.