Teachers at Multiverse, the 1.6 billion pound tech training company co-founded by Euan Blair, say an AI system that monitors and scores their online teaching has caused "horrendous stress", with some staff losing sleep and seeking therapy, according to an exclusive report by The Guardian. The system analyses transcripts of online classroom sessions and alerts human managers when instructors are suspected of doing something wrong.
The dispute is one of the most detailed looks yet at how AI surveillance is entering white-collar workplaces — and it lands in the middle of a wider debate about latest AI developments reshaping how workers are watched, scored and managed by software.
What the AI watches
The system, introduced in recent weeks, replaces a previous regime in which a human manager observed each instructor once a month. Teachers are now monitored for several hours a day by an AI trained to flag a range of behaviours: failing to fix a disruption to the online connection quickly enough — within about a minute — using too many filler phrases such as "sort of" and "kind of", giving vague or uncertain answers to learner questions, and getting pulled into prolonged one-to-one exchanges that sideline the rest of the group.
The AI tags each instructor with a "risk status", calculates a "percentage confidence score" and produces written comments for managers to review at a glance. Its instructions, quoted by The Guardian, tell it to "judge the PATTERN across the whole transcript, not isolated instances" — though self-correction counts against the teacher too: if an instructor "had to self-correct while giving the instruction, that confusion itself counts as evidence the instruction was not clear the first time", even if it "was eventually straightened out".
'Waking up in the middle of the night'
Several teachers, speaking anonymously, described the effect on their wellbeing. "Since all of this has come in, the stress level has been absolutely horrendous," one said. "It has affected sleep, and not just for me. I've gone through a lot of things in my life, and I haven't ever been in a position where I'm waking up in the middle of the night."
Others said the constant scoring had changed how they teach. "Your attention is no longer delivering the lesson and listening to the learner," one instructor said, "but 'am I saying the right thing so the AI doesn't mark me down for something stupid'." Workers also reported being pulled up by managers for suspected "digressions" that were in fact answers to students' questions. They described the system as "remorseless" and "unnerving".
Multiverse: the AI 'directs human time'
Multiverse rejects the characterisation that the AI has replaced human judgment. A company spokesperson said the system "provides instructors with improved advice on development and feedback — exactly how any learning organisation should be deploying AI", and stressed that "the most consequential performance management action it can take is to recommend that a human personally reviews a session."
The company said the AI "directs human time to where it's needed most" by highlighting problems, that only human managers write teachers' performance reviews, that its introduction was communicated in advance, and that teachers will have access to the data the AI collects. It did not directly address the complaints about stress and anxiety.
A widening surveillance debate
The row at Multiverse fits a pattern of AI monitoring spreading through workplaces. Earlier this year Burger King began using AI to track restaurant workers' customer interactions, and this summer Meta paused tracking of employees' computer keystrokes after data privacy concerns and a staff backlash.
Labour organisers argue the trend runs deeper than any one employer. The United Tech and Allied Workers branch of the Communication Workers Union has concluded that workplace AI produces a "cognitive surrender" as staff defer to machine judgments, and new research to be published this week reportedly finds workers across the wider UK tech industry say AI degrades work satisfaction.
The company behind the system
Multiverse trains thousands of UK workers in computer and AI skills for employers including the NHS, local councils, universities and private companies, with most of its revenue flowing through the government's apprenticeship levy. The company employs more than 800 people and was recently valued at 1.6 billion pounds, though that rests on a turnover of 118 million pounds and losses of 28 million pounds last year.
Blair, the eldest son of former prime minister Tony Blair, owns a large minority stake that puts his personal net worth at an estimated 350 million pounds. He has been one of the loudest corporate voices for 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".
Ofsted, the education inspectorate, found in February that Multiverse failed to meet expected standards in several areas — while praising its instructors as "skilled, effective teachers". Whether the AI watching those teachers helps them improve or simply burns them out is now the question the company will have to answer.
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