The political editor of ITV News and former BBC reporter has predicted trouble ahead. But, despite his downbeat ideas of what lies ahead, he insist he is not being totally negative
ITV star Robert Peston, who predicted the 2008 financial crash, has warned of a looming AI-driven market crash.
The political editor of ITV News, 66, previously foresaw not only incoming money issues of the UK, but also warned the government about a flu outbreak in China which led to the covid pandemic.
Now his concerns are around Artificial intelligence. Peston told Radio Times: “I am genuinely anxious that we’re going to get a serious financial crash, globally, in the next year or two, because there is the most astonishing amount of money going into building the data centres and power plants for AI and as we saw when SpaceX floated on the stock exchange, a late-1920s degree of breathless excitement on the markets.
“And I worry that the profits aren’t going to be delivered on a scale to justify all this, so businesses will go bust, investors will take fright and we will have a significant market shock.”
Making things sound even worse, he added: “Despite that, the AI industrial revolution will be possibly the most important one since the Steam Age.
“Even if there is a financial crash, the AI infrastructure will survive it, much like we had a railway boom and bust [in the 1840s], but the railways themselves were still there after. AI and robots will displace incredibly large numbers of jobs, and there may not be conventional productive employment to replace those lost jobs, so how are people going to live?
“And if vast numbers lose their jobs, nobody pays income tax, so the government can’t pay for public services, and society collapses.”
Peston has incorporated some of his feelings and predictions into his latest novel, The Kill Switch. And despite his downbeat ideas of what lies ahead, he insist he is not being totally negative.
He said: “I’m actually a great optimist, but I also think we need to look at possible dystopias in order to prevent them happening.”
Peston was previously a senior journalist for the BBC between 2006 and 2015 and whilst there some viewers ‘hated’ his distinctive intonation. It was his exclusives, particularly with regards to the Northern Rock crisis, that ultimately saw audiences forego their initial hesistance towards him, Peston claimed in 2024 on the podcast Walking the Dog.
At the time, he explained: “Broadly, what happened was I broke a series of important stories, did some investigations, got some scoops. From the middle of 2007 onwards I was giving people information that was directly relevant to their lives (and) which they weren’t getting from anywhere else.“I think at that point people concentrated more on what I was saying rather than on how I was saying it. It is interesting for me looking back on it: I must have a very thick skin because, even though there was a lot of criticism, I didn’t feel particularly anxious. I just kept doing what I was doing and fortunately I then had this breakthrough.”
The broadcaster was appointed the BBC’s business editor in 2006 in what was his first TV role: he had previously worked in print journalism at the Independent, The Financial Times, The Telegraph, and The Sunday Times. He left the BBC in 2015.
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