Today, however, the trajectory is moving at a different pace: artificial intelligence is entering everyday processes, automating tasks, creating new flows between data and decisions, changing recruitment, and even the landscape of offices.
This isn't just a technological issue: it concerns the resilience of London's labor market, the ability to attract international talent, the transformation of businesses, and the opportunities.
A study cited by the BBC estimates that up to one million jobs in the capital could be affected by the adoption of AI.
Hopefully, affected doesn't mean eliminated, but changed, often profoundly, especially in repetitive or data-intensive tasks.
This fact requires us to look beyond the slogans to understand where and how the transformation is already occurring and what responses we should organize as individuals, companies, and institutions.
London, which in recent years has seen the growth of a robust ecosystem of AI startups, university labs, and investors, remains one of Europe's major hubs.
This means that the risk of displacement coexists with the potential for new professions, especially where automation frees up time and budget for more creative or relational activities.
In this context, artificial intelligence and jobs in London is not just a slogan, but a map worth reading carefully.
The order of its magnitude is provided by the BBC article cited above: up to 1 million positions in the capital could be affected by AI, with strong exposure to back-office roles, data entry, telemarketing, basic accounting, and repetitive tasks.
I know this well because I deal with these things at work myself and I can foresee a national picture in which the adoption of AI tools is growing in medium and large companies, while demand for labor in some administrative roles is slowing down.
The key is to understand the dynamic: not a complete cut, but rather a shift in tasks, reskilling, and redesigning workflows.
Looking at UK market analyses from leading research centers, the most significant trend is polarization: those with advanced analytical, digital, and interpersonal skills see increasing opportunities, while roles with limited cognitive autonomy require a rethink.
At the same time, London continues to concentrate headquarters and decision-making centers experimenting with AI to optimize value chains, compliance, and customer care; in other words, the capital is a laboratory and showcase for transformation, and its response will serve as a benchmark for the rest of the country.
On paper, the most exposed sectors are historically process-driven ones: business services and administrative functions, retail and customer operations, logistics and warehousing, and hospitality with a low level of specialized skills.
But AI isn't just about cutting time and even in skilled professions, such as consulting, law, and finance, it's automating a growing portion of due diligence, research, and analysis, shifting value toward interpretation, client relationships, negotiation, and creative problem-solving.
This is particularly evident in the City, where teams combine large language models with proprietary archives to produce faster research and reduce repetitive errors.
A similar dynamic is observed in creative agencies and professional firms: AI accelerates brainstorming, storyboarding, and content versioning, but the final decision remains human, especially in defining tone, strategy, and legal constraints.
London is also the capital of the creative economy: advertising, design, film, fashion, publishing, gaming.
In this field, AI impacts workflows and production times: automatic versioning of short films for social media platforms, speech-to-text tools for subtitles and translations, image generation for sketches and audio cleanup for podcasts and videos. The best results are seen where AI is part of a toolbox: it accelerates, but doesn't replace, it suggests, but doesn't decide.
London universities and art schools are updating curricula and labs to include machine learning, computer vision, and creative coding.
At the same time, many tech companies with a presence in London are organizing joint workshops and residencies, marking a fertile crossover between applied research and cultural production.
It is the future.
