If we’re not careful, AI could hollow out the UK’s service economy the same way globalisation hollowed out manufacturing.
In the 90s and 2000s, production went overseas. Now, the same risk applies to productivity.
As agentic AI matures, we’ll see entire categories of digital labour completed by autonomous agents. Completing tasks that today sit with accountants, lawyers, lenders, underwriters, and countless other professionals.
Here’s the concern:
If those agents are built, owned, and hosted offshore, then the revenue, productivity, and value they generate will be too.
It’s not about resisting globalisation 2.0.It’s about ensuring the UK captures the productivity gains from the next wave of transformation onshore, by backing British companies developing and deploying agentic systems locally.
The service economy was our answer to manufacturing loss. Let’s not make the same mistake twice.
