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Businesses are adopting artificial intelligence to improve efficiency, not to cut jobs, according to a bank economist.<\/p>\n
Marcus Wright, senior economist at Royal Bank of Scotland, said feedback from companies employing AI contradicted the popular belief that it would be used to reduce payroll costs.<\/p>\n
Instead, they saw it as a way of achieving better performance, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI is about workforce re-shaping. It is not about mass lay-offs,\u201d he told a gathering at the Royal Highland Centre. \u201cCompanies are not doing it to cut people, it is about better serving their customers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is coming through loud and clear from businesses,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Suspicions around the technology were understandable, he said, because the benefits of the technology, including the productivity gains, will take time to come through, probably not until the 2030s.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt took a while for the internet to generate economic value, but it when it did it was significant. We are at the stage of working out how to use this technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cIs the UK is well-placed to take advantage of AI? Yes, the UK ranks near the top, after the US and Singapore.\u201d<\/p>\n
RBS parent company NatWest declared last month that AI had generated an additional \u00a3100 million in cost savings as the bank employs the technology \u201cat scale\u201d to deliver services.<\/p>\n
However, Rick Haythornthwaite, chairman, told Daily Business<\/em> in an interview: \u201cI don\u2019t think it is a job destroyer, it\u2019s a job changer. There\u2019s no doubt the nature of jobs are changing. Right now we\u2019re seeing roles being enhanced.\u201d<\/p>\n \t <\/div>\n![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/dailybusinessgroup.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Michael-Portillo-and-Kay-Adam-at-RHC.png\")