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Will artificial intelligence take over your job one day?


Johannesburg, 28 Jun 2018

Few technologies are as polarising as the phenomenon known as artificial intelligence (AI). While debates about whether social media is dumbing down the planet are proving to be valid, a tweet-addicted globe doesn't pose nearly half the prophesied threats posed by AI: that's if you believe the doomsday warnings of certain camps.

Endgame scenarios that see AI-powered bots patrolling city streets looking for the last human life to snuff out aren't coming from Hollywood alone. People who have spoken out against the potential threats of AI to human existence include Elon Musk, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the late Stephen Hawking.

At the other end of the spectrum are a distinguished list of people who predict a very different future. Many envision a future in which AI will help to curb the outbreak of disease, warn entire populations about natural disasters and spare humans long hours of tedious labour as smart bots allow us to focus our smarts on more productive matters.

But that's all far down the line. A more urgent debate between the doomsday prophets and the AI-friendly crowd is the question about jobs. Will chatbots, smart algorithms and AI-powered software applications make the human resource obsolete? Will our university degrees and experience be outdone by machine-learning platforms that will beat us to getting that next big promotion?

More specifically, will AI erode the need for human intervention and oversight when it comes to the computing world?

The IT crowd: A threatened species?

Talks of job obsolescence among IT workers aren't new. Technology's evolution is primarily fuelled by the human need to move away from the mundane to use our creativity, intelligence and reasoning more productively. Take the humble login script for example. Scripts are the first iterations of automation in the tech sphere and have saved IT admins immeasurable time on allocating network resources with other tasks that previously required manual input.

Yet no script has ever threatened the livelihood of an unsuspecting IT admin as it quietly evolves and hatches plans for network-wide domination. And so it is with most other technologies. The cloud may have caused massive disruptions to the status quo regarding server rooms, but it has also managed to give IT professionals, and companies at large, unimagined freedom to leverage time, talent and other resources to the benefit of larger business objectives.

There's no question that the structure and priorities of in-house IT has changed almost unrecognisably since the inception of the cloud, but the result has been more value-based work (instead of routine maintenance) by IT staff and a more capable organisation as a result.

Will AI's potential upset the applecart?

AI's astonishing ability to accelerate and automate tasks such as complex decision-making, accurate predictions and the analysis of large data sets is unmatched by any other technology. We're seeing smart algorithms being deployed in fields as diverse as IT security and monitoring, marketing, healthcare, crime prevention, financial risk management, production environments and customer service.

But on closer inspection, it becomes clear that in practice AI technology is helping people across industries to perform more high-value tasks instead of replacing people outright. This augmentation of human effort is often confused for the replacement of human capital and fuels a misguided belief that AI will take away our jobs. In truth, the technology will create more jobs than what it will consume while freeing humans from the monotony of daily routine.

Research giant Gartner predicts that by 2020 AI will have created 2.3 million jobs, exceeding the 1.8 million that it will make obsolete. It states that by then, companies investing in AI will outperform their peers by four times and will have large numbers of technology workers dedicated to evolving neural networks and expanding AI's capabilities.

So what do these changes mean for the "endangered" IT worker? In a word: Opportunity.

At the rate things are progressing, IT workers will face a range of new KPIs as the long shadow cast by AI continues to make certain aspects of their job obsolete. And from what we can see so far, the jobs that have been made obsolete are the ones people should not be doing in the first place.

A future determined by people, not bots

There's no doubt that artificial intelligence will continue to replace certain aspects of human functions in the workplace, which will result in a more intimate coexistence between people and technology. Like two reluctant cops forced to work as partners in a typical Hollywood movie, IT pros and algorithms will be forced to get along and focus on the task at hand.

And while human trepidation over the threat of AI to their pay cheques are setting an uneasy tone, it should not come as a surprise. The nervous frenzy about new technology is usually followed by acceptance and inclusion from society. Not too long ago, there were unfounded fears about the impending cloud posing a massive existential threat to organisations. Today, no company that takes its longevity seriously will ignore the myriad benefits of this technology.

How AI fits into the big picture unquestionably depends on how people will put it to use. Fears that it will outdo human creativity, comprehension and the ability to adapt is generally unproven. While its capacity to make calculations based on enormous amounts of data is unmatched by any human, it doesn't quite stack up to the vast untapped potential of the human mind.

SynergERP has been a Sage Platinum Partner since 1993 and is dedicated to the Sage Business Cloud Enterprise Management product suite (formerly known as Sage X3 and Sage X3 People). We pride ourselves on delivering affordable, relevant and agile ERP solutions that empower businesses to maintain a steady growth rate and run an agile organisation. Visit SynergERP's website to learn more.

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Editorial contacts

Amy van der Merwe
League Digital
amy.vandermerwe@league.co.za