In recent days, many CEOs have warned about the impact of AI on office work. The latest to join the list is Allison Kirkby, CEO of British network operator BT.
In an interview with the Financial Times , Kirkby said advances in AI could lead to more layoffs for the telecoms giant.
In 2023, BT announced it would cut up to 55,000 jobs by 2030 to reduce costs. However, she said the plan did not fully reflect the potential of AI.
“Based on what we know about AI, there could be an opportunity for BT to be even leaner by the end of the decade,” she told the Financial Times.
BT has been relying on AI to reinvent processes like customer service. For example, by 2024, the company said it was using generative AI to support sales and other operations at BT and EE (its mobile network division).
By December 2024, EE's virtual assistant Aimee will handle 60,000 customer conversations per week.
BT is not alone in automating such tasks. Swedish payments firm Klarna has also spoken publicly about its efforts to use AI to do paperwork.
Last year, Klarna revealed that its AI assistant was doing the work of 700 full-time customer service employees. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has been a vocal advocate of AI, but he has softened his stance in recent years, saying the cost-cutting effort went too far. Klarna is now hiring again for some customer service positions.
Still, Siemiatkowski believes AI is a major threat to white-collar work. Earlier this month, on a podcast, he said technology has played a big role in Klarna’s efficiency. The company’s workforce has shrunk from about 5,500 to 3,000 in the past two years.
AI developers themselves have warned about the impact of their products. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicts that the technology could eliminate half of all white-collar jobs in the next five years.
“We have a responsibility and an obligation as the makers of this technology to be honest about what’s coming. I don’t think people know about that,” he told Axios in May.
(According to Insider)
Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/mot-nha-mang-du-dinh-sa-thai-55-000-nguoi-nhung-ai-con-khien-no-toi-te-hon-2411820.html
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