BT Group chief happy that AI will allow firm to cut more jobs than planned

Allison Kirkby, the CEO of the British telecoms giant BT Group, is touting an opportunity for the firm to cut even more jobs than initially planned, all thanks to “the full potential of AI.”

Already in 2023, BT Group said it was planning to cut as many as 55,000 jobs, or 42% of its workforce, by 2030 in order to boost profit margins. This would reduce headcount from 130,000 to 75,000.

In a way, the announcement wasn’t entirely unexpected because all these extra engineers who are currently contracted to bring fiber within reach of 25 million UK properties probably won’t be needed once the project is done.

But now, BT Group CEO Kirkby told Financial Times that the company’s plans to cull more than 40,000 jobs and strip out 3 billion pounds ($4 billion) of costs by the end of the decade “did not reflect the full potential of AI.”

“Depending on what we learn from AI, there may be an opportunity for BT to be even smaller by the end of the decade,” said Kirkby.

Already in 2023, the firm suggested that around 10,000 of the cuts could be made in customer services, signalling this might be the area where AI could effectively replace humans.

We’ll see how it goes, of course. But there are some uninspiring examples of poor AI-related planning in the recent past.

For example, language learning app developer Duolingo announced an “AI-first” strategy, detailing plans to shift to AI-automated operations in place of regular contractors (translators).

A customer backlash followed, and Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn had to clarify on LinkedIn that he didn’t “see AI as replacing what our employees do” and that the company was, in fact, hiring workers at the same speed as before.

Another company, Klarna, also announced in February that its new AI assistant was doing the equivalent work of 700 full-time customer service agents. But customers again revolted, and the firm began to hire humans again a few months later.

The problem might be that people don’t actually want their customer-service questions handled by machines. Last year, investment bank Morgan Stanley asked their interns about using AI-powered customer-service agents, and 93% said they preferred to talk to a human.