Artificial intelligence is no longer something businesses can file under “future technology”.
It is already changing how people research, communicate, create, analyse information, solve problems and make decisions.
But the transformation taking place is more complicated than many of the headlines suggest.
The immediate story is not simply one of jobs being replaced by machines. It is increasingly about people working alongside technology, individual tasks changing, businesses redesigning processes and new differences emerging between organisations that have the capability to adopt AI and those that do not.
For Liverpool Chamber, that makes AI an economic, productivity and skills issue, not simply a technology issue.
And it is one we need to understand through the experiences and challenges of businesses across Liverpool City Region.
What is actually happening?
New research from Google gives us an important insight into how AI is beginning to affect the economy.
Its first AI & Economy ATLAS study analysed 15 million aggregated and de-identified interactions with Google’s AI products, covering more than 150 countries, 140 languages, 800 occupations and 4,000 different tasks.
One of its most interesting findings is that workplace AI adoption appears to be broad but relatively shallow.
AI use was identified across every industry sector and within 68% of occupations, collectively representing around 90% of US employment. But within a typical occupation, AI was being used for only around 21% of tasks.
And less than 10% of workplace AI interactions involved the complete automation of a task.
Far more common were collaborative uses such as researching information, developing ideas, learning, problem-solving and strategy.
That distinction is important.
The question facing most businesses today is not:
“When will AI replace my workforce?”
It is:
“How is AI going to change the work my people do?”
And closely behind that comes another question:
“How do we make sure that change actually makes our business better?”
What we hear from businesses in the Liverpool City Region
At Liverpool Chamber, we are already having these conversations with members.
There is curiosity and excitement around AI, but there is also uncertainty.
Businesses want to understand where the genuine opportunity sits amongst an extraordinary amount of noise.
Where should they start?
Which tools should they use?
What should they allow employees to do?
How should they protect commercially sensitive information?
Where could AI genuinely improve productivity?
What happens to existing roles and processes?
What skills will they need in two, three or five years?
And crucially, what is worth investing in?
Those are sensible questions.
Businesses are not making decisions about AI in isolation. They are doing so while managing skills shortages, employment costs, competitiveness, productivity, investment decisions and changing customer expectations.
For a small business, being told to simply “adopt AI” is not an answer.
The starting point has to be the business problem.
Could AI remove repetitive administration?
Could it help people retrieve information more quickly?
Could it improve customer service?
Could it support sales teams?
Could it help a manufacturer diagnose an issue?
Could it analyse information that currently takes somebody hours to work through?
Could it give a small team capabilities that previously sat beyond its resources?
When we begin with those questions, AI becomes less about hype and more about business improvement.
The adoption gap matters
There are signs that AI is becoming mainstream within UK business.
British Chambers of Commerce research published in March found 54% of SMEs were actively using AI, up from 35% in 2025 and 25% in 2024.
That is a substantial shift in a very short period.
But beneath the headline figure is something we should pay close attention to.
Adoption is uneven.
Larger SMEs and professional services businesses are further ahead, while smaller companies, consumer-facing businesses and manufacturers are more likely to be uncertain about AI or have no immediate plans to adopt it.
That presents both a business challenge and a regional economic challenge.
If businesses with greater resources, stronger digital capability and access to specialist expertise are able to adopt AI significantly faster than everybody else, existing productivity gaps could widen.
The same is true between sectors, communities and places.
The next digital divide may not simply be between those who have access to technology and those who do not.
It could be between organisations that know how to turn AI into value and those that do not.
For Liverpool City Region, we should be determined to avoid that.
Productivity makes this particularly important for our City Region
Liverpool City Region has set an ambition to grow its economy by around £10 billion over the next decade.
Productivity is central to achieving that ambition.
The City Region Growth Plan estimates that bringing productivity up to the national average could itself add approximately £6 billion to our £43.3 billion economy.
AI therefore needs to be part of our productivity conversation.
Not because every organisation needs to become an AI company.
But because almost every organisation is likely to encounter AI somewhere within its operations, workforce, supply chain, customers or competitive environment.
The opportunity will also look different across our economy.
Liverpool City Region has significant strengths in advanced manufacturing, health and life sciences, digital and technology, creative industries, maritime, logistics, professional services and the visitor economy.
AI will not affect each of those sectors in the same way.
For professional services it may transform research, analysis and knowledge work.
For manufacturing it could support diagnostics, quality assurance, process optimisation and predictive maintenance.
For health and life sciences it can accelerate research and help professionals interpret increasingly complex information.
For creative businesses it is already changing ideation, production and the economics of content creation.
For logistics and maritime businesses it offers increasingly sophisticated forecasting and optimisation capabilities.
Google’s research even identifies mechanics and industrial technicians using conversational AI alongside physical work for troubleshooting, diagnostics and real-time learning.
Increasingly, the distinction between an “AI job” and a “non-AI job” becomes difficult to make.
But productivity cannot be separated from people
There is another important finding within the British Chambers research.
Despite the rapid increase in adoption, 95% of SMEs using AI said it had not affected the size of their workforce during the previous year, while 86% reported no change to job roles.
That should temper some of the more dramatic predictions about the immediate disappearance of work.
But it should not make us complacent.
Businesses investing in deeper, bespoke AI systems are beginning to experience more substantial organisational changes than firms simply using generic tools.
We are moving from a first phase in which individuals experimented with ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and other tools towards a second phase where businesses begin redesigning processes around AI.
That will inevitably change work.
Some tasks will become quicker.
Some will disappear.
Others will become more valuable.
New responsibilities will emerge.
And the balance of skills required within many occupations will change.
One area we should watch particularly carefully is entry-level employment.
Junior roles have traditionally given people opportunities to research, prepare documents, undertake administrative work, analyse basic information and gradually build professional knowledge.
If some of those tasks can increasingly be performed with AI, employers, educators and training providers will need to think differently about how people acquire the experience required to become tomorrow’s specialists, managers and leaders.
The objective cannot simply be to make today’s experienced employees more productive.
We also need to create the pathways through which the next generation gains experience.
That is why LSIP matters
Skills therefore need to sit at the heart of our response to AI.
Through the Liverpool City Region Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP) 2026–2029, the Chambers are helping give employers a direct voice in shaping the future skills system.
The latest LSIP has been developed through engagement with employers, education and training providers, local authorities and other partners, with a clear objective of ensuring skills provision responds to both the current and future needs of our economy.
AI makes that relationship between employers and education even more important.
We need businesses to tell us how roles are changing.
We need educators to understand which capabilities are becoming more important.
And we need to avoid reducing the AI skills conversation to simply training more software engineers.
The skills increasingly required will exist throughout organisations.
People need to know how to work effectively with AI, how to question its outputs, how to apply professional judgement, how to protect data, how to recognise its limitations and when not to use it.
Technical capability matters.
But so do creativity, communication, critical thinking, problem-solving, leadership and human judgement.
In an AI-enabled economy, those human capabilities may become more important rather than less.
Moving from awareness to capability
The Chamber also has a role in helping businesses act on this.
Through our partnership with the British Chambers of Commerce, the BCC AI Academy provides Liverpool Chamber members with practical training designed to help organisations understand AI, identify opportunities for efficiency and automation, address responsible use and apply tools to real business challenges.
That practical emphasis matters.
For many SMEs, transformation does not begin with building an advanced AI platform.
It might start with one team identifying a repetitive process that could be improved.
It might be an employee learning how to research more effectively.
It might be developing an AI policy so staff know what they can and cannot put into public tools.
It might be experimenting with a workflow and measuring whether it genuinely saves time.
Small experiments can build confidence.
Confidence creates capability.
Capability makes more ambitious adoption possible.
And eventually, adoption needs to translate into measurable business value.
That journey can be thought of simply:
Awareness → Experimentation → Adoption → Capability → Productivity
Our role as a Chamber is to help more businesses make that journey successfully.
Our position
We believe Liverpool City Region should be ambitious about AI.
But ambition should not mean uncritical adoption.
Our approach should be based on five principles:
- Business-led: Start with genuine business challenges rather than technology looking for a problem.
- People-centred: Use AI to enhance human capability while preparing people for the ways work will change.
- Inclusive: Make sure SMEs, traditional industries and organisations with fewer resources can participate, not just the businesses already closest to technology.
- Responsible: Build understanding of data, security, intellectual property, governance and accountability alongside adoption.
- Evidence-led: Measure whether AI genuinely improves productivity, customer outcomes, jobs and competitiveness rather than assuming that it will.
This is not something any single organisation can deliver.
It requires businesses, educators, colleges, universities, technology companies, local government, training providers and organisations such as the Chamber to work together.
Liverpool City Region already has many of the ingredients.
We have world-class universities and colleges, major employers, entrepreneurs, creative businesses, manufacturers, researchers and an increasingly ambitious innovation ecosystem.
The opportunity is to connect those assets more effectively to the thousands of businesses that make up our everyday economy.
Because ultimately the measure of the AI economy in Liverpool City Region should not be how many AI companies we can count.
It should be whether technology helps our businesses become more productive.
Whether people gain new skills and opportunities.
Whether smaller businesses can compete.
Whether innovation spreads beyond the organisations already equipped to access it.
And whether increased productivity translates into better businesses, better jobs and higher living standards.
Google is right about one thing in particular: the outcomes of AI are not automatic or guaranteed. They will be shaped by the choices we collectively make.
The AI economy is already taking shape.
Liverpool City Region should not simply prepare to live in it.
We should help shape what it becomes.
