BT Group has implemented AI Accelerator to speed up testing and reduce rollout times from six months to six days.
AI Accelerator is a Machine Learning Operations (ML-Ops) platform developed by the Group’s Digital unit to aid the company’s data community in assessing AI models and creating value from its 29-petabyte estate.
The new platform enables the Group to accelerate its building, measuring, and learning processes for AI use cases, such as churn and propensity models, or test models to personalise its apps and services for customers.
Adrian Joseph, Managing Director, Data & AI, for BT Group, said: “A core driving principle for BT Group is to find a way to safely accelerate the time to value, pound per petabyte, of data.
“AI Accelerator gives us a path to more rapid value with clear oversight of AI use case parameters and performance.”
AI models are the building blocks of AI, which derive value from classifying data and using it to make predictions.
For the next five years, Digital’s aim is to improve customer experience and efficiency for all of the Group’s business units, as well as drive transformation for the Group long-term.
Using common frameworks and templates, AI Accelerator will cut the number of technical and administrative processes needed to progress an AI use case into production.
The platform will reduce these processes for the Group from six months to six days. As a result, months of time is freed up for data scientists and analysts, enabling them to work on other projects.
AI Accelerator has made created in accordance with the Group’s Responsible Tech principles, and it has in-built triggers to ensure that use cases are assessed in keeping with the company’s data privacy, ethics, and security policies.
The AI Accelerator will flag unusual activity in the way AI is gaining insights from data. It will essentially become a scanner for the Group’s Digital Brain, assessing its health and informing data scientists of any issues.
A number of models are now live, creating value for the Group, such as customer propensity models in the Group’s Global business. It has also added efficiency to the Group by, for example, fibre and ethernet optimisation models for Openreach.
Dr Zoe Webster, Artificial Intelligence Director in BT Group’s Data & AI team: “Thanks to the work the team has done accelerating our migration into Google Cloud, we have a healthy testbed for AI Accelerator and are seeing it catalyse AI acceleration across the Group.
“As we progress, we’ll be able to track the health and the performance of our AI use cases in real-time, ensuring consistent, safe, ethical delivery of value from our phenomenal data resources.”
BT recently released a report providing insight into the UK Channel, including the discovery that nearly three-quarters of channel partners have inadequate in-house marketing and finance skills.
In August, more than 30,000 BT Openreach workers planned industrial action over a pay dispute, following months of discussion between the CWU (Communication Workers Union) and BT Group.
