Euan Blair co-founded Multiverse, which supplies AI and digital skills training to workers in the NHS, local councils, universities and the private sector. Photograph: Dan Joseph/Alamy View image in fullscreen Euan Blair co-founded Multiverse, which supplies AI and digital skills training to workers in the NHS, local councils, universities and the private sector. Photograph: Dan Joseph/Alamy AI (artificial intelligence) Teachers at Euan Blair firm report ‘horrendous stress’ after AI used to rate their work Exclusive: Instructors at tech training company Multiverse hit out at ‘remorseless’ and ‘unnerving’ monitoring system
Prefer the Guardian on Google Teachers at Euan Blair’s £1.6bn tech training company, Multiverse, have blown the whistle about “horrendous stress” and feeling constantly watched after bosses started using AI models to surveil and rate their teaching.
Staff delivering apprenticeship training in computer and AI skills to thousands of UK public and private sector workers now have transcripts of online classroom sessions analysed and scored by an AI programmed to alert human managers when they are suspected of doing things wrong.
The AI is trained to flag problems in their performance ranging from not fixing a disruption to the online connection quickly enough – within about a minute – to using too many “filler” phrases, such as “sort of” and “kind of”.
Teachers called the newly introduced system “remorseless” and “unnerving”, and said some staff were on edge, losing sleep and seeking therapy.
Multiverse was co-founded by the eldest son of the former prime minister Tony Blair and employs more than 800 people. It supplies AI and digital skills training to workers in the NHS, local councils, universities and the private sector, mostly funded through the government’s apprenticeship levy.
View image in fullscreen Euan Blair owns a large minority stake in Multiverse, putting his personal net worth at an estimated £350m. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA Alongside his father, Blair is a supporter of wider AI adoption in the UK economy, claiming last week that “every single worker is going to need to be retrained” and that employers want their workforces “as AI-pilled as possible”. Multiverse uses a mix of AI models including Anthropic and OpenAI products.
Its new AI teacher monitoring system tags each instructor by their “risk status”, calculates a “percentage confidence score” and produces written comments about teachers’ work for managers to see at a glance.
It is only the latest example of employers using AI to track worker behaviour. Earlier this year Burger King started using AI to track restaurant workers’ customer interactions and this summer Meta paused tracking of employees’ computer keystrokes amid data privacy concerns and a staff backlash.
Read more With critics warning AI monitoring risks eroding human agency, one study has suggested it can backfire by turning workers rebellious and new research to be published this week reports that workers in the wider UK tech industry are finding AI degrades work satisfaction. The United Tech and Allied Workers branch of the Communication Workers Union concluded AI causes “cognitive surrender” as workers lose skills and confidence and often intensifies rather than eases work.
“Since all of this has come in, the stress level has been absolutely horrendous,” said one of several Multiverse teachers who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It has affected sleep, and not just for me. I’ve…