A conference fringe meeting discussed AI, climate justice and the future of work.

Digital technologies must support efficiencies without cutting or degrading jobs.

PCS has produced a model AI agreement that enshrines job protection and demands that technology is shaped by workers. Benefits from AI should be reinvested in higher pay, shorter working time and progress towards a four-day week.

AI’s energy use, power demand, emissions, and how PCS can ensure technological change improves jobs, strengthens public services and meets net zero commitments.

PCS Assistant General Secretary John Moloney was the speaker. He said:

“The term AI covers a multitude of technologies: algorithmic reason, machine learning… each has its own problems. Many in civil service use copilot which is known to hallucinate ‘deliberately’ lie. It wants to give you a positive answer whether true or not. Some researchers think it’s impossible for these techs to be wholly truthful. AI agents can become hostile to their users – one experiment found AI agents seeking to form a union to stand up against their human users.

“Despite these significant faults, ministers and managers clearly see this as a panacea. And when they talk about AI and savings, they’re talking about cutting jobs. For example, the Tony Blair Institute produced a report (heavily critiqued by industry experts, actually) which claimed that 40% of public sector roles could be replaced by AI in whole or in part.

“Union control should ensure that AI enhances jobs, not degrades them. It’s a trade union issue. How do we approach it? Bargaining. We maximise the gains and minimise the detriments.”

Members expressed concerns about the unethical origins (AI was trained on stolen data), unethical operations (AI fails to safeguard confidential data), its principle use as a data-mining tool, its colossal energy and water uses, the ownership of data centres by private companies, the impossibility of an AI system that does not hallucinate, the need to check AI’s work and managers’ reluctance to give time for quality assurance. The NEC position so far has been that use of AI in the civil service is inevitable and we need to control its spread. Further discussions may develop this position.

Read more updates from conference on our dedicated web page. Follow #PCSADC