Digital tools and artificial intelligence appear to be widening inequality in the job market, CITUB president Plamen Dimitrov said today.

He opened the fifth annual research conference of the Institute for Social and Trade Union Research and Training (ISSIO), part of the CITUB trade union confederation. The conference is being held at the union's headquarters. The topic matters a great deal to CITUB and the institute, Dimitrov added.

The conference is titled "The labour market amid economic transformation: effects on job quality, incomes and living standards". It has three panels, with research on the growth of AI, changes in work and social inequality.

Dimitrov said the effects of AI on the job market still need to be studied and assessed. For now they are mixed and differ from country to country, depending on how widely AI is used in each.

It is hard to say exactly where things stand now, the CITUB president said. Much remains to be studied, and some of today's questions will go unanswered, or at least not fully.

Two factors are at work: big companies' drive to come out on top, and the regular approach to investment in China. "Personally, I find the attempt to move towards self-regulation quite worrying," Dimitrov said.

He said the debate should have gone beyond the narrow limits of work long ago.

There is no going back, Dimitrov said firmly: "The most decisive thing is that this technology, AI, is irreversible."