British Telecom to cut 55,000 jobs with up to a fifth replaced by AI | Hacker News Reader

British Telecom to cut 55,000 jobs with up to a fifth replaced by AI

bbc.co.uk

49 pointsrwmj30 comments

The essence of this, and every news article I’ve read lately about a specific, tangible economic impact of AI, has the benefits accruing solely to capital (shareholders of a company). If this pattern continues unabated, we are in deep shit.

Exactly. What is lost in all these AI discussions is that owners of capital (often quasi-monopolies), can just reap all the profits of their legalized ownership. They can just use robots, AI and machines. Don't need to pay humans for anything.

So what do humans do to survive in this society? I can only see either UBI or a revolution that ends capitalism.

> or a revolution that ends capitalism

Which is why companies like Anduril are flooring the accelerator on autonomous defense tech. I've wondered lately if Anduril is a product of Thiel once again playing 4D chess. It's not hard to see where this is all headed.

Yeah, my gut feeling is the rich see the writing on the wall. If they can keep a grip on things for a couple more decades then they can just replace all the poors with robots and either stick us all in UBI slums or find a more final solution.

Most of the rich is 80. They don't have a plan to get out of this, because they expect to be dead.

Some are trying to become immortals... :o)

They will try UBI with the new CBDC, if that fails then countries could see civil wars.

If Stalin or Mao didn't need people I'd wager the common man would be worse off. If they didn't have the labor camps they probably would've just directly executed anyone who would've gone.

FWIW, this is how computers have always been: every time we manage to make the world more efficient--and we have done a LOT of that over the past 50 years--that efficiency most directly accrues to capital. I like to think we make the world a better place with our efforts, but the improvements we pull off pretty much always seem to make inequality worse :(.

Computers are the malignant exception. Up to 1975, the enormous value created by the agricultural and industrial revolutions, electrification era, transport and communications revolutions, etc were broadly shared by ordinary citizens and the owners of capital.

Standards of living skyrocketed. It paid for things in the US like the TVA, social security, and the national highway system.

Since the computer revolution in 1975, capital captured all of the value creation. Wages are flat. Standard of living declining. Inequality at its worst since the gilded age.

The staggering wealth created by the computer revolution could have easily paid for universal healthcare and lowered the SS retirement age in the US, while leaving mountains of value intact for capitalists.

Now we’re going to do the same thing with AI?

This 50 year experiment in market fundamentalism has been bad for society and needs to come to an end.

These essence of this is loose intangible promises years in the future. It's incredibly easy to write down "we plan to be better in the future once I've retired". Doesn't mean much.

> Mr Jansen said BT would become "a leaner business with a brighter future", with the firm planning to get rid of between 40,000 and 55,000 jobs by 2030.

> The cuts break down as:

> More than 15,000 cuts as BT completes building fibre networks in the UK

> More than 10,000 as new UK networks require less maintenance

> More than 10,000 from using new tech including AI

> About 5,000 from restructuring

I see no difference between this and any other game changer such as steam or electricity. I'll grant that the pace of innovation in ai is a singular phenomenon but labor saving in and of itself should not be a cause of fear

What I’m wondering is, what happened to those people whose work were replaced by steam or electricity - Were they able to quickly up-skill?

With AI it maybe good in macro terms but what about the folks impacted by it? Will it be possible from them to find another job without significant training/education?

> Will it be possible from them to find another job without significant training/education?

This to me is the core problem. We give people in their lives really one chance to skill up. Basic skills through secondary education and then a period afterwards when you have no social responsibilities to go to college. If you need to retrain 15 years down the road, there is no support for supporting your family for you. If you try to pad your costs to sandbag for the eventuality of having to leave your industry for a couple of years to upskill, then some will take that as your margin and undercut you.

> Will it be possible from them to find another job without significant training/education?

Or at all. If a large percentage of jobs go away, there's a very real chance that there won't be enough new jobs at any training/education level to make up for it.

> labor saving in and of itself should not be a cause of fear

True, but the prospect of widespread loss of the ability of people to earn a living absolutely should be -- even if you're not one who will lose that ability.

The problem isn't labor savings as such, it's the speed of the change. Losing too many jobs too quickly is a recipe for disaster.

AI used to replicate and replace specific worker tasks is much different than steam or electricity.

A better comparison is the telephone switch operator industry, whose jobs (peak in 1950) were replaced directly by technology.

It is allowed to feel fear about losing a job-- there is no safety net, and rebounding is difficult.

The theory is that the government should enforce competition, so savings go to the consumers. Or tax the monopolists to fund the democratic government.

Unfortunately, this kind of requires that the government actually be functionally democratic. Its not really democratic if the people with money decide who gets on the ballots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opiiaLCBBok&ab_channel=GoodP...

When no one has a job... Money will become worthless... Overtime, A(G)I will become the great equalizer by destroying the economy as we know it, removing work from the equation.

It will require nuclear fusion or anything that makes the energy problem trivial though.

Yup, the problem with cascade failures is when it becomes obvious its often too late to do anything about it but watch.

I've been talking about this for a long while now. It pretty much follows the AI economic doomsday scenario to a tee, where AI destroys factor markets replacing workers, people can't get food, unrest then happens as people die, and then its the end for a large portion of us. Won't happen overnight, but slow and full of suffering. It has happened this way every time the economic cycle stalls, and we currently have at least 5B people over-provisioned for the planet when certain food systems fail there's only one thing that can happen.

Very predictable too if one were properly educated with a decent amount of economics and actual history and not the trite crap they teach these days in public education.

Support systems are in place, but the only way to fund them is to print money from nothing, and anyone that knows anything knows this runs fiat straight into an economic calculation problem (non-market socialism) which doesn't work. Its just a matter of time before debasement reaches a critical threshold (which we are close to already).

'Up to a fifth of those cuts will come in customer services as staff are replaced by technologies including artificial intelligence.'

BT could easily lose all of those staff and it would make no difference at all. BT are one of those service providers where everything is fine until you have a problem and then you really do have a problem.

They're talking about improved chatbots aren't they. How long before the customer frustration sets in.

Not only that, OpenReach is still BT even if it is "at arm's reach".

How long before other service providers have to deal with Chatbots to report technical faults?

I really hope reality is better than I expect.

Having been been employed as an ISP phone support tech... AI can have that job ... It absolutely sucks.

I tried to get open reach installed, 4 months after the original estimated install date I threw in the towel. But customer services treat them like a separate company. There was no way for me to contact open reach but BT relayed notes to the. It was a very frustrating experience.

BT being allowed to hold onto OpenReach is criminal IMO.

This sort of core infrastructure needs to be in a separate non-profit organisation. Even if BT "ring fenced" it as a separate entity, they have played extremely dirty over the decades.

When all employees are allowed to do is strictly follow a script it doesn't make much difference if said script comes from a chatbot instead. Customer frustration set in long ago, it was just found to be cheaper to have it that way.

The current script runs something like this, assuming you can get past the first hurdle of actually speaking to someone...

1) I am very sorry to hear of these problems and I will do everything I can to get the issue resolved for you..

2) Please hold whilst I carry out some checks...

3) It does seem there is a problem and I can get this fixed for you, to identify your account I will send you a text message with a code...

4) Have you received the code?

5) I will send the code again...

6) Have you received the code?

7) I have to identify you before going further, have you received the code?

8) I will send the code again... (it never came)

This was my last experience, bearing in mind I did pass the code test at the outset in order to speak to someone. My resolution was to go elsewhere.

I moved my contract to Andrews and Arnold, they have an actual email address and do actually reply within an hour. In today's world, this is miraculous.

This right here is a good example of the fact that AI really is just a way for the worst people in society to continue to skate until they land someone where else to mess it up.

It'd be nice if the market actually worked for once and we got better services, not just more profit for suppliers for worse services.

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