Team Blitz India
LONDON: Telecoms giant BT is to shed up to 55,000 jobs by the end of the decade, mostly in the UK, as it cuts costs.
BT has revealed plans to slash up to 55,000 jobs, with 10,000 roles replaced by AI, newspapers in London reported on May 19.
The telecoms giant wants to cull its workforce from 130,000 to between 75,000 and 90,000 by 2030.
Around 10,000 of the cuts will come from what BT called “automation and digitisation”, including in customer services.
BT boss Philip Jansen admitted that would include ramping-up the use of AI – artificial intelligence – to do tasks currently done by humans.
“We will be a huge beneficiary of AI,” he said, adding that “generative AI” tools such as ChatGPT “gives us confidence we can go even further”.
On the future of AI, he said: “I think it will be as big as the internet and mobile phones.”