Telco progress in autonomy vs other verticals

The diagram below shows telcos’ position on an autonomy maturity model (see previous post for more details):

Looking at the positioning of these verticals, the following was observed:

1. New revenue opportunities were strong motivators The two leading verticals have distinct yet aligned reasons for moving forward.  For science and research, the ability to run trials repeatedly and swiftly can be both cost-effective and accelerate revenue from new discoveries.  Similarly, the ability to generate code faster and potentially autonomously offers new revenue opportunities, from faster software creation and improved maintenance to the potential huge money generators of Artificial General/Super Intelligence.
2. Latency makes humans a bottleneck Cybersecurity and financial services both offer use cases that would benefit from agents increasing the speed at which a system reacts. For financial services, the ability to do a good deal quicker than the competition makes the use case about generating new revenues; with cybersecurity, it is about minimising potential financial (and other) risks by outmanoeuvring the bad actors
3. Scale and complexity make humans a bottleneck Every vertical has an example of a long and complex workflow (e.g. supply chain, order management or customer management).  Agents offer a long-term solution to improve efficiency and increase customer satisfaction.
4. Improvements in complex coordination A factory is fundamentally a coordination problem with materials, machines, labour, quality, and maintenance all interacting. This creates opportunities for bottlenecks and other inefficiencies that could be mitigated with agentic planning.
5. Opportunities to improve customer experience Healthcare is an example where there will be some financial benefits from agentic deployments.  However, a focus on improving operational capacity, consistency, and continuity of care by improving some (currently) very fragmented processes, which are administrative-heavy, offers opportunities for improved patient experience.
6. Autonomous movement in space Self-driving vehicles are one of the very few clear Level 4 use cases.  The value of this seems mostly in the reduction in large workforces such as taxi or lorry drivers.