Citigroup CEO Predicts AI Will Replace Tens of Thousands of U.S. Call Center Jobs

Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat said tens of thousands of the bank's U.S. call center workers could be replaced by cost-cutting A.I. With 209,000 workers worldwide, Citi (c) is under pressure to rein in its costs. The fourth-largest U.S. bank, it spends $8 billion a year on technology, the Financial Times reports, but this is the most explicit the CEO has been about how that investment might affect jobs. "When you think of data, A.I., raw digitization of changing processes, we still have tens of thousands of people in call centers, and we know when we can digitize those processes we not only radically change or improve the customer experience, it costs less to provide," Corbat told the FT. While the most common customer questions are easy for A.I. to handle, Citi has no plans to get rid of humans in its call centers altogether.