AI causes 10,000 telecommunications workers in the UK to lose their jobs

Currently, BT Group has a total staff of about 130,000 people. Thus, BT Group is planning to lay off up to 42% of the total number of employees.

Philip Janse, CEO of BT Group, said that digitization, automation and AI will help improve work efficiency. BT Group is the company that filed the most AI patents in the UK. AI will help BT replace some employees in the IT and digital services departments.

Currently, BT Group is using chatbot to conduct many customer service conversations and get good feedback from users. In addition, traffic to the corporate network is also being managed by AI, previously these were labor-intensive tasks.

BT Group's plan to lay off staff comes after the UK's largest network operator completed the rollout of fiber optic cable nationwide. Accordingly, when the plan is completed, the company's workforce will be reduced from 130,000 to 75,000-90,000 employees.

According to the explanation of many experts, BT Group's move was made to save business operating costs in the context that network operators still have to invest heavily in network development despite the decline of the whole industry.

Lesley Montoya

Update 01 June 2023