Daniel Susskind
Boards know AI is coming for the workforce. They do not know which roles, on what timeline, or what to do with the people whose work changes underneath them. The conversation defaults to either fear or hype. Neither helps with the workforce design, capital allocation and growth decisions that need making in the next two budget cycles.
Daniel Susskind is an Oxford and King’s College London economist whose work helps leaders make defensible decisions about AI, labour and growth before political and operational pressure forces their hand.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Daniel Susskind
- A rare voice arguing the economics of AI rather than the technology, drawing on academic work at Oxford, King’s College London and the Stanford Digital Economy Lab.
- Author of two of the most serious books on the subject leaders are now wrestling with: A World Without Work on AI-driven labour displacement, and Growth: A Reckoning on what economic growth itself should be for.
- Independent recognition from credible bodies. Growth: A Reckoning was runner-up for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2024 and selected by Barack Obama among his favourite books of the year. A World Without Work was also an FT Business Book of the Year runner-up.
- Sits inside the policy conversation, not just the academic one. Member of the UK Government Expert Panel on AI and the Future of Work, with prior roles in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, 10 Downing Street and the Cabinet Office.
- Speaks directly to the question every professional services firm and large employer is now asking, which is what happens to the work, the workforce and the business model as AI absorbs more of what experts used to be paid for.
Biography highlights
- Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Business, Gresham College.
- Research Professor in Economics, King’s College London.
- Senior Research Associate, Institute for Ethics in AI, Oxford University, and Associate Member of the Oxford Economics Department.
- Digital Fellow, Stanford Digital Economy Lab.
- Author of “Growth: A Reckoning” (2024), “A World Without Work” (2020), and co-author of “The Future of the Professions” (2015). Two FT Business Book of the Year runner-up nominations.
- Member of the UK Government Expert Panel on AI and the Future of Work. Former Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, 10 Downing Street Policy Unit, and Cabinet Office. Kennedy Scholar at Harvard.
Biography
The economic question AI poses to boards is not whether it will take jobs. It is which tasks, in which roles, at what pace, and what that does to the wage bill, the talent pipeline and the growth model the business has been built on. Most public discussion stops at the headline. Daniel Susskind’s work starts where the headline ends.
“The Future of the Professions”, co-authored with Richard Susskind in 2015, argued that AI would unbundle expert work in law, medicine, accounting and consulting into tasks that machines, paraprofessionals and software would absorb. A decade on, the prediction reads as conservative. “A World Without Work” then took the argument into the wider labour market, asking how societies should distribute income, status and meaning when paid work becomes scarcer for more people. The New York Times called it “required reading for any potential presidential candidate thinking about the economy of the future”.
“Growth: A Reckoning”, a Financial Times Business Book of the Year runner-up in 2024 and chosen by Barack Obama as a favourite book of that year, sits behind both. It treats economic growth as a deliberate choice about what societies value, not an inherited assumption. For corporate leaders the relevance is direct. Capital allocation, productivity claims and ESG narratives all rest on growth assumptions that no longer hold without examination.
Susskind’s institutional base is unusually broad: Research Professor at King’s College London, Senior Research Associate at Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI, Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Business at Gresham College, and Digital Fellow at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. He sits on the UK Government Expert Panel on AI and the Future of Work, and previously advised inside the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, 10 Downing Street and the Cabinet Office. His TED Talk on the future of work has been viewed more than 1.7 million times.
Key speaking topics
- Artificial intelligence and the future of work
- The future of the professions
- Economic growth and its limits
- Labour market disruption and workforce redesign
- AI policy and regulation
- Productivity, automation and the firm
- Technology, inequality and the social contract
Ideal for
- Boards and executive committees of professional services firms grappling with AI’s impact on the expert business model
- CHROs and chief people officers planning multi-year workforce design around AI
- CEOs, CFOs and chief strategy officers debating growth, productivity and capital allocation
- Government, regulator and public-sector leadership audiences working on AI and labour-market policy
Audience outcomes
- A grounded economic view of how AI changes work, distinct from the consultancy version
- Sharper questions to put to the firm’s own workforce and productivity assumptions
- A working frame for distinguishing AI hype from the shifts that will actually hit the P&L
- A clearer position on what growth means for the business, and where the inherited growth model is breaking
- Vocabulary and reference points senior teams can use to brief their own boards on AI and workforce strategy