Top 5 tech jobs most under threat from automation
It's not just drivers and cashiers who are under threat from AI. Here are the first jobs likely to disappear from IT
Iain M Banks' Culture series of sci-fi novels imagined a civilisation almost entirely devoted to leisure. Almost all jobs were performed by super-intelligent AI ‘minds' and their robotic drones, and humans were left to fill their time in the pursuit of fun.
And rapid developments recently in AI mean that we can see this starting to happen today as some jobs start to be automated, or are severely at risk. Sadly, we don't live in a sci-fi novel, and we still need to earn money. So rather than the gateway to a life of leisure, your job going to an algorithm is more likely to lead to a lot of stress and job hunting.
So to give you a head start, here are the top five technology jobs most at risk of being automated out of existence.
5. IT project/programme managers
Really? A job that's entirely based around communication, negotiation, whip cracking and ego massaging? Going to a computer?
Hard as it may seem to credit, what's coming for some blue collar jobs is also coming for traditional white collar work, including IT project and programme managers.
Project management is all about managing information, and APIs make it relatively simple for computers to route information to where it's needed, and track results and progress of all elements of a project.
A service like Uber shows how easy it is for an app to co-ordinate people, facilitate their communication, and manage a financial transaction. Extrapolate that to the workplace, and you can see how most PM functions will go to an API suite in the not too distant future.
Top 5 tech jobs most under threat from automation
It's not just drivers and cashiers who are under threat from AI. Here are the first jobs likely to disappear from IT
4. Devs without ops skills, ops without dev skills
As more organisations move towards a culture of DevOps (where developers and operational staff collaborate on software delivery and infrastructure projects), staff who resist the change are going to find themselves left behind.
Research conducted by V3's sister site Computing found a year-on-year increase in the number of firms adopting a DevOps culture, with 16 per cent of respondents claiming to have begun merging, or completed merging, the functions in 2015, and 25 per cent in 2016.
So those people who prefer to stay on one side of the fence are going to find fewer and fewer companies over time prepared to offer them a position.
Top 5 tech jobs most under threat from automation
It's not just drivers and cashiers who are under threat from AI. Here are the first jobs likely to disappear from IT
3. Web designers
On the face of it, any function that involves a degree of understanding of aesthetics seems a bad fit for a robot. Just look at this piece of robot art, for instance.
OK, actually we quite like it, but the point is that computers are good at calculations, and people are better at anything requiring creativity. Except that this view is increasingly inaccurate, as computers improve their understanding of what works and doesn't for human tastes.
Take The Grid service, for instance, which promises to get a feel for clients' needs from a few photos, then builds them a fully-functioning, professional grade website.
A recent study from Oxford University and accountancy firm Deloitte may have listed ‘web design and development professional' way down at number 252 in its list of jobs most likely to be automated out of existence (one below IT support, incidentally), but don't rest on your laurels, web designers. The robots are coming.
Top 5 tech jobs most under threat from automation
It's not just drivers and cashiers who are under threat from AI. Here are the first jobs likely to disappear from IT
2. Sys admins
System administrators, the people responsible for the upkeep, configuration and day-to-day running of computers, and especially servers, are a well-known threatened species.
The reason is simple: the cloud. In the past every company, depending on its size, needed people in the role. Anything with an operating system needs regular patching, especially anything running any version of Windows, it seems.
But as systems, applications and even entire data centres get farmed out to the cloud, that leaves the internal sys admin with precious little to do, and thus ushered out the door.
The good news is that the need hasn't completely vanished as those systems still need maintaining, they've just gone somewhere else. Then there's the fact that many firms today advocate a hybrid cloud strategy, with some applications and data maintained on-premise, which again will require maintenance.
But the fact remains that with a handful of companies (looking at you, Amazon and Microsoft) essentially running the IT departments of a vast number of organisations, fewer sys admins will be needed.
Top 5 tech jobs most under threat from automation
It's not just drivers and cashiers who are under threat from AI. Here are the first jobs likely to disappear from IT
1. Tech support
Quite apart from the classic The IT Crowd gag of tech support being mostly about telling users to ‘turn it off and on again' over the phone, this is one career with a highly vulnerable future.
Today, intelligent systems can learn the most common causes for almost any type of technical problem, and walk users through various possible fixes without any interaction from another human.
And the good news is that an intelligent system will never be off sick, away from the phone, or nakedly hostile to irritating users who've forgotten their passwords again.
Worried that your job is one of those listed here? Fortunately new technology brings opportunity too. Check out our list of the top 10 job roles being created by new advances.