SLMs vs LLMs: 10% of the cost, 100% of the accuracy?

NEXT with John Koetsier · Feb 10, 2026 · 18m

Large language models have dominated the AI conversation — but are small language models (SLMs) actually the future?

In this episode of TechFirst, host John Koetsier sits down with Andy Markus, SVP & Chief Data and AI Officer at AT&T, to unpack how small language models are delivering enterprise-grade accuracy at a fraction of the cost and latency of massive LLMs.

Andy explains how AT&T uses SLMs for:

• Contract analysis at massive scale

• Network analytics and outage root-cause analysis

• Fraud detection and enterprise knowledge systems

• AI-driven “field coding” and agent-based workflows…