SINGAPORE – While boardroom conversations about artificial intelligence (AI) have focused largely on its potential to lift productivity and profits, companies must also confront a more consequential question: What happens to the workers whose jobs AI displaces, and who is responsible for helping them adapt?
Yet, most companies still do not fully understand how a poorly conceived AI strategy could affect their workforce, Rodney Kinchington, regional managing director, Asia-Pacific, Japan and Greater China at BT International, told The Straits Times.
For Kinchington, these risks became apparent on a recent trip to the Philippines.
The country is one of the world’s largest hubs for business process outsourcing (BPO) and is widely known as the call-centre capital of the world. But rapid advances in generative AI and automated customer-service systems could sharply reduce demand for human operators, threatening an industry that employs large numbers of Filipinos and plays an important role in the economy.
Now, multinational companies operating there are not only asking how AI can improve their businesses, but how the government can help them retain and retrain workers at risk of displacement.
These concerns extend beyond economies heavily dependent on call centres. As companies across Asia embrace AI, they must consider not only how the technology can improve profits, but also how jobs will change, which workers will require retraining and how employees can continue to contribute, Kinchington said.
Many businesses, however, remain poorly prepared.
While a small number of large companies are using AI to make “a massive difference” to their operations, most have yet to identify how the technology can deliver tangible benefits or support the development of their workforce.
“Everyone’s talking about AI, but the number of companies that have adopted it is very small,” Kinchington said.
He added that most companies still do not fully understand how a poorly conceived AI strategy could affect their workers, noting that technological improvements should extend beyond digitalisation and business growth to include a culture shift that ensures “people’s journeys have to go on”.
Although more businesses are approaching technology providers such as BT International to discuss possible AI strategies, meaningful adoption remains limited and highly uneven across Asia, he added.
Changing company culture
Since July 2025, Kinchington has led the regional global enterprise division of British telco BT Group, overseeing the roll-out of network, cloud and security solutions for major multinational companies here.
Having spent the last 16 years in Singapore, and a further eight in Thailand and China, he has had a front-row seat to to how technology has reshaped businesses across Asia.
Many of BT International’s customers are listed companies whose management teams are under pressure to generate revenue growth and healthy profits for shareholders, and are exploring the use of AI to help them deliver.
But building an effective AI strategy can be expensive and time-consuming, and may not produce immediate financial returns.
Pressure to demonstrate quick results and justify that spending can encourage “AI-washing”, where companies exaggerate the role of AI in their operations before developing a coherent strategy for using it.
“It’s like a washing machine where they throw everything in,” said Kinchington, noting that companies that are struggling to roll out their AI adoption strategies are likely also facing increased pressures from their boards.
“Some will say they have incorporated Microsoft Copilot in their workflows, for example, and that is a tick in the box. But it’s not right, there is so much more to AI adoption.
“The impact of AI is not just a digital transformation journey, it’s a change in company culture.”
Setting clear goals for AI
What companies need to do, he stressed, is to first understand their goals for AI adoption and how it will affect operations and employees.
This could include growing revenue or reducing costs, although how AI can directly lead to an increase in sales should not be the only focus.
Companies should also consider how AI can help to increase productivity or upskill their workforce, as this would drive greater customer satisfaction and ultimately lead to higher business growth, Kinchington said.
“It’s a conversation at the board level on what a company needs to do to still be a differentiator in the market.”
An engineer by training, Kinchington began his career in the ‘90s sailing around the world to lay undersea optical fibre cables. He cited the transition from copper cables to fibre optic ones as a massive gamechanger that gave birth to the Internet and the rise of so many companies.
“We are now connected everywhere, my children wouldn’t know how to survive without the Internet,” he said. “It’s going from where we had nothing previously to that.”
Similarly, AI will have a profound impact that will bring human civilisation to a new era, where it will become an intangible part of consumers’ lives, in the same vein that water is essential to everyone.
For now, society is only just scratching the surface of where the advancement of AI is headed. “I just can’t imagine what the next generation will be, because AI will become a commodity going forward.”
But it takes more than just companies running a suite of AI programmes to transform society, and Kinchington stressed the importance of governments, industry players and customers working together in the ecosystem.
“You can’t just deploy a tool and then expect results. This is absolutely a journey where you can’t do things in silo. It really needs to be a collaboration across so many different towers.”
