Big U.K. Retailer Predicts AI, Automation Will Lead to Huge Job Cuts

One of the U.K.’s largest e-commerce retailers will slash its workforce by two-thirds within the next three years because of predicted automation and artificial intelligence (AI), the company’s boss predicts. 

Nick Glynne, CEO and founder of Buy It Direct which owns Appliances Direct, told BBC 5 Live’s Wake Up To Money that he expects to get rid of 500 of the company’s current 800 workers.

Glynne said that, although the workforce reduction was not a “fixed plan,” the process was being sped up by extra costs placed on the firm by the government, including increases in the national living wage and national insurance contributions (the U.K. equivalent of social security), which came into effect in April.

HM Treasury said higher taxes on employers had allowed it to “deliver on the priorities of the British people”.

Buy It Direct is a global company, employing another 150 staff overseas, with a customer service operation in the Philippines. 

“A mixture of AI on the office side, and technology involving robots and automation and mechanization in the warehouse, means that the future for employing U.K. people is very bleak for someone like us,” Glynne told the BBC.

The retail chief executive’s comments come at a time of increasing concern about jobs – especially entry level positions – being lost to AI.