Raspberry Pi founder warns AI hype is hurting UK tech jobs
Key Points
- Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton has warned that AI hype could damage UK tech careers and the wider economy
- Upton told the BBC's Big Boss Interview podcast no one has the data to advise children on GCSE choices for an AI future
- He rejected claims AI will destroy large numbers of computing jobs, saying the technology is being overstated
- Raspberry Pi floated on the London Stock Exchange in June 2024 at £542 million and is now worth more than £1.3 billion
- Upton said high UK energy costs are now the biggest threat to British manufacturing
Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton has warned that overestimating AI could deter young people from engineering careers and worsen the UK’s tech skills shortage.
Speaking on the BBC’s Big Boss Interview podcast, Upton said current enthusiasm around tools such as ChatGPT and Claude risks distorting the decisions of students and parents weighing up GCSEs, A-levels and university courses against an AI future.
He rejected claims that AI is on course to wipe out large numbers of computing roles, and said no one has enough data yet to advise children on how to prepare for an AI-shaped workforce.
The example he gave was parents asking which GCSEs to pick to protect their children from automation.
“You read in the paper: ‘What guidance should you give your child about what GCSEs to choose in the context of an AI future?’ We have no data to inform a rational decision on that,” said Upton, Founder and Chief Executive of Raspberry Pi.
“The answer is: wait five years, wait 10 years, and then maybe we might know something,” he said.
Upton said overestimating AI could undo years of work by Raspberry Pi and other organisations encouraging young people into computing and engineering.
He warned that the current moment of enthusiasm risks doing real damage to recruitment into technical careers at exactly the point the UK needs more engineers, not fewer. The founder argued that the technology is genuinely capable but not a substitute for engineering skill or technical understanding.
“It’s possible to get caught up in this,” he said. “This is the risk of damage right in this moment of incredible enthusiasm for what are genuinely incredible tools.”
Amazon, Meta and Microsoft have collectively blamed tens of thousands of layoffs on AI over the past year, fuelling predictions of large job losses among tech workers and recent graduates.
Some industry analysts have argued the technology is being used to justify cuts that were already coming after a post-Covid hiring spree by major corporates. Upton sided with that view, saying overstated claims about AI replacing engineers risked distorting the choices of young people considering their futures.
Raspberry Pi was founded in 2012 to address falling computer science applications by giving children affordable programmable computers. Its devices are the best-selling computers produced by a UK firm and remain popular with hobbyist programmers.
The company floated on the London Stock Exchange in June 2024 at a valuation of £542 million, since rising to more than £1.3 billion, and designs its computers in Cambridge, builds them in Bridgend, and runs plastics moulding in Dudley.
Upton said high domestic energy costs are now the biggest threat to UK manufacturing, with Britain near the top of the G7 for energy prices in recent years. He said Raspberry Pi is fortunate to be making relatively low-energy electronic products rather than running heavy industrial operations, and added that the cost of energy in the home feeds through to wage demands and the cost of labour.
“About the only reason I wouldn’t do engineering build objects in the UK is the high cost of energy, and we need to do something about that,” he said.
Asked whether overstating AI’s capabilities could damage UK economic growth, Upton returned to the question of where future workers will come from.
“Absolutely. We need a supply of engineers,” he said.
