Everyone take a deep breath and calm down. The likeliness of a robot taking over your job any time soon is very low. Yes, artificial intelligence (AI) is a growing trend, and machine learning has improved by leaps and bounds. However, the information technology career field is fairly safe, and if anything, AI/machine learning will only make things better for us in the future. However, a few IT jobs already have experienced the impact of AI, and I want to cover those here. Now, take this with a grain of salt, since AI/machine learning technology is fairly young and a lot of the news out there is
simply conjecture.
Help Desk/IT Support
Think about the last time you called a support desk. Did your call get answered by a human or a robot? OK, maybe not an
actual robot (that would be awesome), but an interactive voice response (IVR) system. How annoying is that? How often do we just start yelling, “Representative... representative... REPRESENTATIVE!” It can take several routes from an IVR system before we get a human who can help us out. This is all too often the situation when we call support or the help desk. Unfortunately (for help desk specialists),
AI is only making IVR more efficient. AI enhances the capability of the IVR system to better understand and process human interaction over the phone. With IVR systems configured for automatic speech recognition (ASR), AI essentially eliminates the need for input via the keypad as it can more intelligently process the human voice response.
Data Center Admins
This one hurts because I’ve done a lot of data center admin work and still do some today. The idea of machine learning or AI replacing this job hits close to home. The truth is automation tools are already replacing common tasks data center admins used to carry out daily. Monitoring tools have used AI to improve data analytics pulled from system scans. Back when I started in IT, the general ratio was around one hundred systems to one administrator. With advances in monitoring, virtualization and AI, it’s now closer to one thousand systems to every administrator. While this is great for organizations looking to cut down on OPEX, it’s not great news for administrators.
Adapt or Die
Yeah, maybe that’s a little exaggerated, but it’s not a bad way to think. If you don’t see the technological advances as a hint to adapt, your career likely will die. AI and machine learning are hot topics right now, and there’s no better time to start learning the ins and outs of it and how you can adapt to work with AI instead of becoming obsolete. Understanding how to bridge the gap between humanity and technology can serve you well in the future. One way you can adapt is by learning programming, thereby gaining a better understanding of automation, AI, and machine learning. Maintain your creativity by implementing new ideas and using AI and machine learning to your advantage.
In the end, I don’t believe AI or machine learning will eliminate the need for a human workforce in IT. The human brain is far more adept at storing, processing, and analyzing data than any robot or machine will ever be. The human brain can adapt, learn, and connect with other humans in ways machines can’t. There might be an influx of jobs being taken over by AI, but we’ll always need humans to program the software and design the machines.
