CAMBRIDGE, England — The chief executive of Raspberry Pi warned Thursday that widespread anxiety over artificial intelligence could discourage a generation of young people from pursuing careers in technology, delivering a long-term blow to economic productivity just as governments are racing to harness AI’s potential. Eben Upton, speaking at the annual TechTalent Summit in Cambridge, said the industry had a responsibility to counter what he called “a creeping narrative of displacement” before it took root among students deciding their futures.
Upton’s comments arrived against a backdrop of mounting concern about AI’s effect on white-collar employment. A recent survey by the Meridian Institute for Labour Studies found that 61 percent of university students in the United Kingdom said they were “actively reconsidering” careers in software development or data engineering because they believed AI would make those roles redundant within a decade. A separate study from the Global Skills Observatory estimated that enrolment in computer science undergraduate programmes across Western Europe fell by roughly 8 percent in the 2025–26 academic year compared with the previous cycle, the sharpest single-year drop in more than fifteen years.
“The irony is devastating,” Upton told the Cambridge audience. “We need more people who understand how these systems work, who can audit them, govern them, build on top of them. If fear drives talented young people away from the field, we will face a skills cliff at precisely the moment we can least afford one.” Raspberry Pi, the low-cost computing platform that has become a fixture in schools and maker spaces worldwide, has long positioned itself as an entry point into technology education, and Upton said the company was fielding growing questions from educators uncertain how to frame AI’s role to pupils.
Economists largely agree that the concern is not unfounded but warn against conflating near-term disruption with permanent contraction. Dr. Priya Nandakumar, a labour economist at the Institute for Economic Futures, said that previous waves of automation — from industrial robotics to cloud computing — eliminated certain task categories while simultaneously generating demand for adjacent skills. “The question is whether the transition period is managed well,” she said. “If governments and employers leave workers and students to navigate the uncertainty alone, the self-fulfilling prophecy becomes real. You get underinvestment in human capital at exactly the wrong time.” She added that sectors such as AI safety, model evaluation, and regulatory compliance were already reporting acute shortages of qualified candidates.
Policy makers are beginning to take notice. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology confirmed this week that it is reviewing its five-year digital skills strategy, with a particular focus on whether current messaging around AI is inadvertently amplifying rather than alleviating career anxiety. A spokesperson said the review would include consultation with education providers and industry bodies and was expected to report findings by the third quarter of this year. Upton said he hoped the review would result in clearer, more honest public communication. “We are not doing young people any favours by pretending the disruption isn’t real,” he said. “But we also aren’t helping them by suggesting the entire sector is about to collapse.” He called for a national campaign reframing AI literacy as a durable competitive advantage rather than a threat, arguing that those who understand the technology will be best placed to thrive regardless of how the labour market evolves.
The debate is expected to intensify in coming months as a wave of major employers prepares to report on hiring intentions for the 2026 graduate cohort. Early signals from technology recruiters suggest that demand for entry-level engineering roles has softened, though senior analysts attribute much of the shift to broader macroeconomic caution rather than direct AI substitution. For now, Upton’s message was simple: the sector should talk to young people, not about them. “Every student who walks away from computing because they are scared is a student we failed,” he said. “And that failure will cost the economy far more than any efficiency gain from automation.”
Separately, a coalition of leading universities and technology firms announced Thursday the launch of a joint initiative called Future Coders UK, which aims to place 50,000 AI-fluent graduates into industry roles by 2029. The programme will offer mentorship, industry placements, and financial bursaries specifically targeted at students from lower-income households, who surveys suggest are disproportionately likely to abandon technology study tracks when labour market prospects appear uncertain. Raspberry Pi has committed to contributing 200 mentors from its engineer and educator networks in the first year. Upton said that tangible demonstrations of employer demand were ultimately more persuasive than any government communication campaign. “Words from ministers are one thing,” he said. “Jobs are another. Show students the jobs, and the anxiety tends to take care of itself.”