UK telecoms giant BT plans to slash 55,000 jobs, with 10,000 being replaced by AI 'by the end of the decade'

The move comes as the company readies to roll out its next-gen full-fibre and 5G networks across the UK. Which would mean that by the end of the decade, BT would need fewer engineers on its payroll.

“For a company like BT there is a huge opportunity to use AI to be more efficient,” said Philip Jansen, the BT chief executive.

“There is a sort of 10,000 reduction from that sort of automated digitisation, we will be a huge beneficiary of AI. I believe generative AI is a huge leap forward; yes, we have to be careful, but it is a massive change.”

Announcing its financial results for the year, BT group said that its full-fibre broadband services had reached 10.3 million households and businesses, and they have been able to reach 68% of the UK population through 5G.

The news isn’t exactly surprising

There have been major tech layoffs happening around the globe. Google's parent Alphabet cut 6% of its workforce in January, about 12,000 jobs, as it faces "a different economic reality” and doubled down on AI.

Companies like LinkedIn, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft have also had massive layoffs in the past six months.

In fact, in a recent report by Goldman Sachs, it was revealed that 300 million full-time jobs will be lost to automation. “The recent emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) raises whether we are on the brink of a rapid acceleration in task automation that will drive labor cost savings and raise productivity,” said the report.

Interesting Engineering had earlier reported that a study conducted by OpenAI, in partnership with Open Research, found that implementation of large language models (LLMs) like GPT could affect as much as 80 percent of the workforce in the U.S and European countries.