Elon Musk says universal income will solve automation job loss problem

Many tech roles will be automated out of existence, and universal income could be the answer

Many jobs will become automated in the near future, and some experts have suggested that a system of universal income is the most likely solution to the resulting unemployment.

Elon Musk, tech visionary and founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, is the latest to voice this opinion, but he seemed uncertain as to the details.

"There's a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation. I'm not sure what else one would do. That's what I think would happen," he told US broadcaster CNBC recently.

There are many IT disciplines among the jobs expected to be automated, hence reducing or removing the need for humans. The list includes IT project managers, developers without operational skills (and operational staff lacking development skills) as firms move towards DevOps tooling and culture.

Other roles likely to disappear include web designers, system administrators and tech support staff.

But the fact that some roles will disappear doesn't necessarily mean that everyone who was previously filling them will be out of work. Instead, many people will find niches doing work that is less repetitive and less easily automated.

"People would have time to do other things, more complex and interesting things," Musk told CNBC.

Recent research from V3's sister title Computing showed that two thirds of senior IT professionals cited cutting costs and improving productivity as the primary drivers for automating IT and business processes in their organisations.

Other reasons included easier management (52 per cent), increased reliability (47 per cent) and improved business agility (35 per cent).