What are the three biggest ways that AI will impact the future of IT?
We are currently in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution – one that is enabled by self-driving vehicles, multilingual virtual assistants, drones delivering parcels and robots soon joining soldiers on the battlefield. As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to impact businesses all over the world, it is probably fair to say that one of the biggest industries to be impacted will be Information Technology (IT). But how will AI affect the role of developers, analysts, or engineers within the space? And could it re-shape the landscape of IT as we know it? We spoke with Arzum Shahettin, Recruitment Specialist within the IT Architecture space at Progressive Recruitment to share with us three of the biggest ways that AI could impact the IT industry.
1. Shifting employees’ focus to high-cognitive tasks
Many people think that AI is synonymous to job loss. However, this is only true to a certain extent. AI-enabled machinery are most likely to replace low-cognitive, repetitive tasks such as data entry clerks and high-risk jobs such as coal mining. Research conducted by global research and advisory firm Gartner reported that whilst 1.8 million jobs will be lost by 2020, 2.3 million new jobs will be created. It is unlikely that people working in IT will be affected as their roles cannot be fully replaced by machines. What robots can do is make humans more productive and help IT professionals become better at their jobs. The World Economic Forum predicts that machines will be able to perform approximately 42% of all current tasks in the workplace by 2022, compared to the current 29%. Humans’ average task hours are also expected to decrease by 13% from the current 71% by 2022. By automating day-to-day low-level cognitive tasks, IT professionals will have more time to shift their focus on high-level cognitive tasks – thereby allowing themselves the opportunity to improve their technical skills and allocate more attention to critical projects. It is important to note that technology and human talent are not mutually exclusive and that human intelligence remains extremely relevant.
2. AI will push companies to seek IT specialist skills
According to the Future of Jobs Report 2018 released by the World Economic Forum, the top emerging jobs by 2022 are expected to include Data Analysts, Data Scientists and AI/Machine Learning Specialists as set out below:
With AI enabling a faster pace of digital transformation, the demand for specialist roles such as software developers and other IT professionals will substantially increase. This is due to employers seeing the exponential value of having IT experts in their business to develop and monitor a wide range of AI applications. On this note, Arzum shared that “AI will open up new careers for those working in the IT industry. By replacing pattern-based tasks with AI, employees’ productivity will also increase as a result and allow for the resources to be reinvested into the business in other areas such as the on-boarding of more streamline experts or training and development”.
AI operations will likely lead to an increase in productivity in software development as well. As areas such as adapted software, speech and facial recognition, deep learning, and big data become more sophisticated, the demand for specialists across these areas will also grow. Jobs in big data and machine learning fields are already in high demand and are expected to only increase. For opportunities in these fields, please have a look at our website.
AI will help IT companies make better-informed business decisions
AI can predict the success of projects, employee productivity,help companies be more cost effective and allocate more of the budget towards the hiring of IT experts. Arzum expands further on this, “AI will help managers make more informed decisions based on more accurate information. The automation process will allow businesses to carry out more precise demand forecasting and provide tailored products and services to customers. Some jobs will be automated but I expect that operating efficiency will largely improve as machines will be able to service their own equipment without any downtime”. AI is likely to make IT more trust-worthy and therefore a more integral component of the business.
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