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This will be our last newsletter before we head into the break through August, so we want to wish everyone a great summer, and hope that you find some time for rest, reflection and renewal.
We would like to extend a warm welcome (a ‘heat-wave’?) to our new Prime Minister, who has hit the ground rewiring the machinery of government – with AI, work and growth at its centre, and a promise of good growth ‘in every postcode’. A mayor’s-eye view of how technological change lands in real places and real jobs is exactly what this moment needs – and places him well to lead on the AI and good jobs agenda.
At IFOW, we've been doing the reverse – zooming in the UK-wide focus of our Pissarides Review to the scale of the capital, leading on the research that the Mayor of London commissioned into the impact of AI on jobs and opportunities. The report – just released – emphasises that however inevitable AI may seem, how work changes is not. We are very pleased that the Mayor has accepted all of our recommendations, backed by £30m investment – £18m of new funding for young Londoners’ skills, training and routes into work, and £12m to support SMEs in adopting AI well.
Sending huge thanks to the Taskforce, all our partners and advisors and the IFOW team for their amazing work, now ready to serve other cities and the new PM too. See you in September.
Anna and the IFOW team
One of the most immediate changes that the new Prime Minister has made is to announce that the functions of DSIT are to be broken up and ‘redistributed to align with our core economic and social agenda, embedded as vital engines of growth exactly where they can have the most direct impact'.
This signifies the vital need for innovation and technology to be directed ‘for people, by people’ and serve the agendas of every department and policy domain, particularly DBIST. That need has been at the heart of our cross-sector work for the Mayor of London’s AI and Jobs Taskforce, too.
The findings made it clear that the future is not pre-determined – but depends on choices being made now by employers, government, and educators, and by institutions that support good transitions for all Londoners.
The work found that:
We are delighted that the Mayor has accepted all of the Taskforce’s recommendations, and backed three flagship responses:
These sit alongside a £30m skills and training package and a push for greater devolved powers over AI transition policy.
We hope they also offer food for thought for the new AI Task Force and new Minister for the Future of Work – a role that we have been building the case for since IFOW was founded. We look forward to working with Kate Dearden MP as she gets started in the role. Just as work is the golden thread that runs through society, a Minister of State for the Future of Work role could be the cross-cutting function needed to maintain alignment and action on AI to – as the new Prime Minister put it - ‘change people’s lives for the better’.
For some summer reading for Burnham and his team, here's a selection of IFOW's key research pieces – alongside some wider reads in the future of work space - all exploring how we can practically deliver on that priority of shaping AI to change people’s lives for the better.
AI adoption is a people challenge - not just a technology challenge. Our latest case studies, conducted with CIPD, show how good work design can help organisations experience the benefits of AI while supporting better outcomes for workers. This builds from our Pissarides Review into the Future ofWork and Wellbeing, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, which undertook a series of cross-sector AI adoption case studies:
AI systems learn from the knowledge created at work - but who benefits from that value? This research explores how governance, industrial strategy, and worker voice can help ensure the benefits of AI are shared more widely.
This new study shows that AI's effect on job quality depends less on how much AI a worker uses than on the organisational control surrounding it: workers with genuine autonomy over AI tools see earnings boosted, with autonomy remaining intact, while those under heavy algorithmic management see work intensify and autonomy shrink with no wage gain.
Great to see IFOW board member, Professor Gina Neff, publish a new paper exploring how unions are largely confronting AI in the absence of any real governance infrastructure. The risk is this forces unions into are active, compliance-driven posture rather than a proactive one, with reps conceptualising risk more holistically than typical AI-ethics frameworks do.
We hope that you enjoy a good break over the coming month. Lots of great events coming in September:
The inaugural AI Nurses Network Conference at Kings College will present progress and best practices in AI development, and inspire debate on the development of different forms of AI and its use in nursing practice, education, and research across the United Kingdom and globally.
The author of The End of History discusses his new book, In The Realm of the Last Man, at LSE. In this powerful political memoir, he outlines how he came to change his mind on a number of issues, and analyses his life alongside the seismic political shifts of the last thirty years - from Bush to Obama to Trump, from the War on Terror to Russia's invasion of Ukraine
Timely for the new drive of the AI Taskforce, this conference from Westminster Insight will bring together experts from across Cabinet Office, Government Legal Department, DEFRA, NHS Digital Academy, TechUK, BBC and more to understand how AI and agentic AI can help to drive transformation in the public sector.
Nobel Laureate Philippe Aghion will deliver the 2026 IFS Annual Lecture on "Are Ideas Harder to Find, Overall?". Philippe Aghion is a Professor at the College de France, at INSEAD, and at the London School of Economics, and a fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on the economics of innovation and growth.
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