Artificial Intelligence will create more jobs than it will take away, leading experts in the field have said during Work Avenue’s first “Power of AI” event.

Martyn Redstone, who helps HR and recruitment teams with AI, responded to concerns that AI would make most people superfluous in the future by offering an analogy with street lamplighters.

“When the lightbulb was invented,” he said, “the sensible lamplighters learnt how to become electricians. With every industrial revolution that happens, what we see historically is more jobs being created than are displaced. There are a lot more electricians nowadays than there were lamplighters 150 years ago.

“What Work Avenue does so well is upskilling people with what will be needed in the future and AI is now a big part of that.”

More than 100 business people and jobseekers attended the event at Work Avenue’s office in Finchley to hear from four experts about how the technology can be used to assist people at work and how to allay fears over the threat to jobs.

Gabriel Kissin, a data scientist and AI researcher, talked about how parts of our jobs will be automated but there will always be elements that require the human touch.

“If every person looks at the different aspects of their work,” he said, “there will always be some things that a computer is going to be better at but some where it won’t be so good. The best person to work out how each job can be subdivided, and how to use AI to deliver a superior service, is you.”

Craig Hartzel, an e-commerce specialist, spoke about how he uses AI to power his businesses and increase profit margins, while Deborah Gruenberger, a graphic designer, talked about the evolution of her field from pen and paper to digital design programmes.

She said we “cannot pretend that this new technology is not happening, [everyone] has to adapt”.

Work Avenue will be running a series of events about AI and its impact in the coming months.