The British telecom giant has replaced 10,000 jobs with artificial intelligence

What is the impact of the artificial intelligence revolution on employment? This question is being asked more and more often, including by experts who warn of the disappearance of millions of jobs.

For example, British Telecom (BT) wants to replace about 10,000 employees with “digitization and automation” processes, such as replacement by artificial intelligence.

CEO Philip Jansen asserts that the company will benefit greatly from artificial intelligence and that the technology can also create jobs to replace lost jobs. The CEO acknowledges the risks, but essentially sees AI as an emerging force comparable to the internet and mobile phones.

The telecom giant wants to use artificial intelligence, among other things, to handle customer questions, more specifically with its chatbot Ami. The company’s experiments with generative AI, such as OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT, could lead to new products and services, according to the CEO.

BT aims to reduce its total workforce by 40 percent by 2030, which equates to about 55,000 jobs. The company currently employs about 130,000 people.

Productivity is not always higher

Meanwhile, it’s becoming increasingly clear how employees, especially in customer service, interact with tools like generative AI and ChatGPT. From an AI chatbot usage study involving over 5,000 customer service representatives at an undisclosed Fortune 500 company (Ranking of US companies based on their annual turnover, ed.).to increase worker productivity to varying degrees depending on who uses them.

However, actors with more experience haven’t really seen their productivity increase with this tool, Study said. One of the study’s authors, Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the Stanford Institute for Human Centered Artificial Intelligence, Tell from the inside that these workers experienced an increase in productivity of “nearly 0 percent”.

The tool has increased the productivity of the actors who need more training and experience. The study found that the program increased average productivity by about 14 percent.