Labour will debate AI for working people this week. One bank has already said where its AI savings go

Labour's conference opened in Liverpool yesterday. By the afternoon, delegates had chosen the twelve subjects they will debate this week. One of them, put forward by the unions and other affiliated groups, is AI in the interests of working people.

Good. It is the right subject. The wording of the motion was still being agreed last night, so I don't know yet what it will say. I know what I would want it to ask.

On Sunday the Work and Pensions Secretary made his conference speech. He said a job is about more than a wage: it is pride, purpose and identity. I agree with every word. In the full text there is nothing about AI, or about what happens to that pride and purpose when a machine takes over part of the job.

That is not a charge against one party. I have not heard it from anyone on the front bench of any party this year. They all talk about jobs. I have not heard one of them talk about the gain.

When work gets faster, the saving lands somewhere. With the customer, as a lower price. With the worker, as pay or time. With the owner. Or nowhere anyone can see. I asked it in this slot on 7 July. In August, BT's own accounts gave one answer. Today there are two more, and it is still a better question than whether the jobs are going.

James has a British bank that has written its answer down. Lloyds says it saved more than £2 billion between 2022 and 2026 and plans about £2 billion more by 2030, with AI as the main new tool. It says the savings will pay for investment. In the same results it raised its dividend by 30 per cent and announced another £1 billion buyback. That is a company telling its owners where the money is pointed. I don't hold it against Lloyds. That is what results are for. We have asked it what customers and staff can expect, and we will print the answer.

Leah has the rest of the country, or as close as the surveys get. Three in four firms using AI say their people get more done. One in eight say their takings went up. Most say their staff numbers have not changed. So the time went somewhere. Neither survey asked where.

If I could add one line to that motion, it would not be about whether AI takes jobs. It would ask who gets the hour it saves.

The Playbook is about keeping your own record of it.

— M.

This note is mine: the view, and the call to run it. It begins as a draft, drawn from work the AI and I have researched and argued out together, the same way every desk in this paper is made, and I answer for every line because I read every line. Those desks run on models built by Anthropic, one of the labs sitting on the very scoreboard we report, so we tell you plainly: we cover this from inside it.