BT Group plans to let go of up to over 50k workers by 2030, with at least 10k jobs replaced by some form of AI

5/22/2023

Per CNN

The BT Group, a British telecommunications giant, has recently revealed its plans to let go of a massive chunk of its company slowly. The company said it wants to let go of over 50,000 workers by 2030.

To be specific, BT Group wants to bring its employee count from 130,000 at present to around 75,000 to 90,000 by 2028 to 2030. This means letting go of over 55,000 employees.

The layoffs are expected to affect not just full-time staffers but also contractors that third parties supplied. BT Group CEO Philip Jansen gave a statement regarding the layoffs.

Jansen: “By continuing to build and connect like fury, digitize the way we work and simplify our structure, by the end of the 2020s BT Group will rely on a much smaller workforce and a significantly reduced cost base,”

Jansen then revealed that out of the total employees they plan to let go, 10,000 roles would be replaced by "digitalization and automation." The CEO also mentioned AI and how it would be integrated into the company.

Jansen: “We will be a beneficiary of AI unequivocally... in a more seamless way... Our chatbot Amy deals with lots of customer queries already."

Aside from telecommunications, voice actors are already experiencing the effects of AI, with some saying they were "shocked" to find how the tool could replace their speech and tone. With the developments in speech tech powered by AI, voice actors are among the many groups that fear how the tool could take over their jobs.

Aside from voice actors, there are also fears of how AI could replace software engineers.

It was also recently reported that should ChatGPT's technology replace software engineers, India would become the most impacted. This was due to the country having the most coders, with over 5 million of them already.

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