British telecoms giant BT plans to cut between 40,000 and 55,000 jobs by 2030.
The company said the cuts will come as it completes construction of its fiber optic network and replaces AI workstations.
CEO Philip Jansen said the company will be a “beneficiary of AI — definitely.”
British telecoms giant BT Group plans to cut up to 55,000 jobs by 2030 – and at least 10,000 of those jobs could be replaced by some form of artificial intelligence.
BT Group CEO Philip Jansen said on a conference call that the company will be a “beneficiary of artificial intelligence — clearly,” according to CNN. The company employs around 130,000 people.
He said that the chatbot des company with the name “Amy” can already answer most customer questions. The company’s continued experimentation with generative AI, like the popular one ChatGPT from OpenAI, could lead to new products and services, he said.
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5,000 jobs eliminated in one year
The company believes that artificial intelligence and improved networks that require less maintenance will reduce the need for thousands of full-time customer service employees and third-party vendors. A slide in the profit presentation shows that the company will reduce the number of its employees from 135,000 to 130,000 from 2022 to 2023. It expects to employ between 75,000 and 90,000 people by 2030.
Jansen estimates that around 10,000 of the jobs BT will cut can be replaced through processes of “digitization and automation”, such as AI replacements.
Employers inside and outside the private sector have been trying to incorporate AI elements for years. For example, a government agency in New Mexico has been using AI-driven automation processes to support public services for years.
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But the growing interest in generative AI and ChatGPT seems to be attracting more and more interested parties as of late.
AI has increased productivity
Now there’s also some research showing how employees, particularly in customer service, interact with such tools. A study of using an AI chat program involving more than 5,000 customer service representatives from an unspecified Fortune 500 company found that productivity was increased to varying degrees depending on the user.
According to the study, customer service representatives with more expertise could increase their productivity not really increase by using such a tool. One of the study’s authors, Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, told Business Insider that these agents saw a “nearly zero percent” increase in productivity.
According to the study, the tool helped increase the productivity of agents who needed more training and experience. The program increased average productivity by about 14 percent, according to the study.
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