- The telecom industry is embracing AI, but next-gen AGI is a new beast to grapple with
- AGI has the potential to not just augment human performance but replace it entirely
- The logical conclusion is job displacement - even if operators aren't ready to admit it
A much more powerful – and, for workers, potentially dangerous – version of AI is on the horizon. And operators aren’t prepared for the AI workforce transformation that’s coming.
As New York Times columnist Ezra Klein noted in a recent episode of his podcast, the world is teetering on the edge of a new inflection point for AI: the rise of artificial general intelligence (AGI). AGI is super-powerful AI that can perform better than humans at almost any cognitive task. By extension, that AI can replace humans in key parts of cognitively demanding jobs — including network engineers.
Klein said his discussions with a wide range of experts – including former White House AI advisor Ben Buchanan – indicate AGI will become a reality within the next two to three years.
“We’re not prepared in part because we don’t know what it will mean to prepare,” Klein said in his video. “We don’t know how the labor market will respond, we don’t know what country will get there first.”
The rise of AGI
Klein and his contacts aren’t the only ones who think AGI is imminent. AvidThink Founder Roy Chua told Fierce that he recently tried out the DeepResearch model from OpenAI. He said the responses that came back to his prompts were “remarkably good” and on par with those he’d expect from a junior industry analyst with limited domain knowledge. Moreover, those responses – which would normally take an analyst a week to compile – came back in 10 minutes.
According to Chua, telcos have no choice but to embrace AI. He noted they need the cost reduction, efficiencies and revenue-generating opportunities it can bring. But AI needs to be implemented in a way that treats employees fairly. That’s easier said than done, and Chua said he doesn’t see operators putting enough thought into what the deployment of AGI really means.
The implication of AI that can not only perform human tasks but do them better is not only the transformation of jobs but also a reduction in the workforce.
AI’s impact on the workforce
“It is possible for AI to make workplaces worse in a way that is dehumanizing and degrading and ultimately destructive for workers,” Buchanan said on Klein’s podcast. “I think we want to have AI deployed across our economy in a way that increases workers' agencies and capabilities. And I think we should be honest that there’s going to be a lot of transition in the economy as a result of AI.”
Chua added that AGI also has the potential to stall human knowledge growth. How? Well, if AI is infused with the knowledge of 20-30-year industry veterans and new graduates are simply listening to what the AI tells them, then “there’s no learning going on,” he said. That, in turn, raises questions about “how do you grow the next batch of engineers” and whether operators might become a little too dependent on AI.
“The more you depend on AI the less your reasoning capabilities develop,” Chua said.
How operators are responding
We took these questions and more to a range of operators to see how they are thinking about the ways in which AGI will impact the telecom workforce. Their responses ranged from borderline blithe to thoughtful.
The most common sentiment from operators was that humans are at the heart of their AI efforts and will remain so.
Verizon, for instance, told Fierce in a statement it “believes that AI is not about replacing humans – it’s about enabling humans to work better, smarter, more efficiently, and have increased ability to test, learn and innovate."
Meanwhile, AT&T (which, by the way, is the sixth largest holder of AI patents in the U.S.) said it plans to use AI to both make work easier and more efficient, and help drive new products and service offerings.
“Although AI is a non-human system mimicking human intelligence, it still belongs to people, and people still have responsibility for the outcomes generated by AI,” a spokesperson told Fierce.
Similarly, an Orange spokesperson told Fierce, “AI will profoundly change the nature of the roles and tasks our employees perform today, but we do not believe AI will replace humans.”
The representative added, “Our analysis of the adoption of this technology in our telecoms sector reveals a future where AI's augmentation of human capabilities should take precedence over the simple replacement of work.”
Preparing telecom workers for the AI future
That said, Orange is at least preparing its workforce for the AI wave. The representative said the operator has trained 75,000 employees on “data AI content” and 40,000 as part of its generative AI acculturation program. It plans to step up its training with a focus on “advanced practical applications” in 2025.
Japan’s Rakuten is in a slightly different position. While its parent company Rakuten Group was founded much earlier, Rakuten Mobile was born less than 10 years ago in 2018 and Rakuten Symphony even more recently in 2021. Thus, Rakuten Group’s Chief AI & Data Officer Ting Cai told Fierce, those companies have fewer and younger employees than legacy telcos.
At a higher level, Rakuten Group is pushing to use AI to boost performance by 20% each in marketing, operations and client engagement. To that end, Ting said the company launched an internal platform called "Rakuten AI for Rakutenians" alongside a training program and implementation targets.
“Already, 30,000 Rakuten employees are using Rakuten AI for Rakutenians, with 8,000 using it daily to work smarter and faster,” Ting said. “AI will reduce the current workload so it is important to be curious, learn what AI can do and then innovate further.”
For his part, Chua said he's worried that such takes – that AI will only ever help humans rather than replace them – are naively optimistic. As telcos and businesses run more efficiently, the logical conclusion is that there will be “less human workers,” he argued. After all, cutting headcount is one of the major ways companies cut costs. Why wouldn’t telcos do so if they had the means to replace workers with AGI?
That question is one Chua said he's concerned about.
“What happens to the people telcos let go – and they will have to to gain efficiencies from AI…That’s a discussion we probably need to start having,” Chua concluded. “That’s not just a telco problem. That’s a national and societal problem that I don’t think we’re ready for.”