Why Labour faces war with left-leaning writers over AI threat to their livelihoods

More than 50 creative industry organisations have formed an alliance to protect the rights of writers, artists, photographers and performers

Anyone getting on the Docklands Light Railway into Central London from City Airport for the first time usually experiences a small start, as the train comes into the station with no driver.

Of course, the driverless train stops as scheduled and thousands of passengers reach their destinations every day without incident as they have been since the line opened in 1987. At nearly 40 years old, the technology is hardly revolutionary, yet beyond a few airport terminal shuttles, British trains still have a driver, and a guard for that matter.

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Glasgow Subway’s new £288 million rolling stock can operate without drivers, but it won’t happen until platform screens are installed. Meanwhile around the world’s metro systems, driverless trains are becoming standard.

It's against such sluggish embracing of technology to improve services that Sir Keir Starmer’s new enthusiasm for all things driven by artificial intelligence (AI) must be set. Launching his AI Opportunities Action Plan this week, at least he recognised the danger of a path of most resistance, calling for a “rewiring of government” to take more risks.

In a speech at University College London this week, Keir Starmer set out his plan to us AI to drive economic growth and improve public services (Picture: Henry Nicholls/WPA pool)In a speech at University College London this week, Keir Starmer set out his plan to us AI to drive economic growth and improve public services (Picture: Henry Nicholls/WPA pool)
In a speech at University College London this week, Keir Starmer set out his plan to us AI to drive economic growth and improve public services (Picture: Henry Nicholls/WPA pool) | Getty Images

Small risk, massive opportunity

“Our Plan for Change also sets down a gauntlet for public services, and the blunt truth is we’ve got to be much bolder,” he said. “New technology can provoke a reaction… And because of fears of a small risk, too often you miss the massive opportunity.”

All true, but in spelling out what AI could achieve ─ producing lesson plans for schools, helping people with medical appointments, speeding up planning applications, reducing form filling ─ all also represent the opportunity to slash the public sector workforce which the unions will fight tooth and nail.

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AI will help spot potholes quicker, but here in Edinburgh the council won’t buy modern equipment to speed up repairs. He was right to extol the virtues of considerable private sector investment in the fast-evolving new technology, but to expect the public sector to suddenly awake from decades of torpor ─ a single IT system for the justice system would be a start ─ sounded more like wishful thinking.

One Scottish quango board member recently told me he could run his organisation more efficiently with better use of technology on two-thirds of the budget, but the headcount can’t be reduced.

Mass extinction of skilled jobs

The truth is every benefit AI might bring to public services for the unions represents a threat to their members’ livelihoods. It’s deeply ingrained in the movement, and those of us who’ve been in the news business long enough remember how the print unions’ opposition to new computer technology provoked the year-long Wapping dispute in 1986 which resulted in violence outside News International’s new plant, with over 500 police officers injured and 1,500 arrests.

While sustained extreme confrontations like that might not be repeated today, the impact of AI on thousands of private sector jobs should not be underestimated and will almost certainly be followed by the same mass extinction of what until now would be regarded as skilled occupations, just as newspaper typesetters were history less than four years after the National Graphical Association’s defeat at Wapping.

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If AI can write essays in a matter of seconds, it can also produce digital coding, and will replace repetitive tasks like code generation, debugging, and testing currently performed by software engineers. I know this because I lifted it from AI-generated abstract at the top of my Google search; checking the sources led to a recent American study which gives software engineering just 15 more years.

What AI cannot replace, however, is genuine, original, human-generated creativity. It will bring great benefits because of the extraordinary speed with which it can complete complex tasks as well as repetitive work, but it is inherently parasitical with a constant demand for new data.

Intellectual property rights

That brings its own problems for the work’s originators, and to Labour’s apparent shock, over 50 organisations representing the UK’s creative industries have formed an alliance to protect the rights of writers, artists, photographers and performers against the unlicenced use of their material.

The reason they have been moved to act is not to fight AI itself, but because part of Keir Starmer’s vision is a loosening of the UK’s intellectual property laws so that AI systems would be more free and cheaper to operate, while riding roughshod over the UK’s previously secure copyright regime.

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Strangely, just as Keir Starmer seemed to signal in his speech that Britain was able to take advantage of Brexit by setting its own rules, the government proposes to follow the European Union’s new AI laws and its “opt-out” approach to copyright which it is still working out how to implement.

The AI Opportunities Action Plan pays no attention to what should be a basic fact that strong protection of intellectual property rights is not a barrier but an essential foundation without which the new industry could easily end up attacking itself.

Creative crown jewels

From the way in which the headlong pursuit of wind energy on the altar of net zero threatens valued landscapes, and community views are being sidelined to accelerate house building, there is every likelihood that, in Labour’s desperation to spark the economic growth promised before the election, copyright concerns are also ignored.

But in this instance, the Creative Rights in AI Coalition (CRAIC, geddit?) has brought together groups representing those which Labour had previously regarded as “their” kind of people, particularly left-leaning writers who fear their work will be pillaged at will without recognition or, more to the point, payment.

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For publishers, it represents a clear threat to already fragile revenue streams and this week a letter was published to demand that the government guarantees the existing copyright regime will be enforced.

“UK copyright law does not allow text and data mining for commercial purposes without a licence,” says CRAIC. “The only uncertainty is around who has been using the UK’s creative crown jewels as training material without permission and how they got hold of it.” The other uncertainty is if the government will listen.

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