Ten IT jobs that will be eliminated by AI

Will AI replace or empower us? This is a question that every IT professional should reflect on in the era of artificial intelligence. The following ten IT professions we list cover most IT professionals who are facing the "threat" of artificial intelligence, but they also face a major opportunity, which is to use artificial intelligence to greatly improve job efficiency and achieve both skills and salary upgrades.

1. Customer Service Staff

With the popularity of chatbots, customer service and technical support, which often require high-frequency interactions with customers, are among the IT positions most facing the impact of artificial intelligence technology.

2. System Administrator

System administrators are responsible for system deployment, configuration, maintenance, monitoring, and management. However, driven by the DevOps trend, system administrators now increasingly rely on automated tools and technologies to handle a large number of tedious tasks such as system configuration and software upgrades. In addition, more and more system management tools (such as monitoring) are beginning to integrate machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies, which can significantly reduce false positives and even alert system administrators to potential problems in advance. To be precise, artificial intelligence technology will enhance the capabilities of system administrators rather than replace them.

According to the BLS IT Salary Report, the median annual salary for network and computer system administrators was approximately $79,000 in 2016, and the demand for system administrators in the job market continues to grow.

3. Network Administrator

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Under the impact of artificial intelligence, the fate of network administrators is similar to that of system administrators. In the tide of enterprise digital transformation, the intelligentization of enterprise networks is an inevitable trend, and automated network management tools with a return on investment of up to 350% are popular technologies purchased by enterprises. In the BLS report, the annual salary of network administrators is the same as that of system administrators, about $79,000.

4. Storage System Administrator

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In the era of big data, the status of storage is constantly improving, but for storage administrators, a lot of work on hand will be replaced by more efficient artificial intelligence technologies based on big data analysis, such as storage optimization, data lifecycle management, hardware failure prediction, etc. In the near future, most of the time of storage system administrators will be spent on assigning tasks to storage management software, leaving the execution details to artificial intelligence and automated management tools.

5. QA/Testing Assistant

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Nowadays, automation tools can complete most of the QA process. Companies such as Infosys have begun to integrate machine learning technology into QA solutions to optimize the testing process, analyze test logs, and quickly diagnose and solve problems. The addition of artificial intelligence technology will greatly improve the efficiency of software QA and testing. According to the 2017 Robert Half Technology Industry Salary Survey Report, the annual salary of QA assistants and analysts in the US market is between $67,000 and $100,000, an increase of 2.7% over 2016.

6. Project Management Manager

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It is somewhat unexpected that project management is included in the list of positions to be replaced by AI. Generally speaking, such a complex job as project management does not seem to be easy for AI to master. However, Gartner specifically selected project management as one of the IT positions to be (partially) replaced by AI.

Project managers usually need to spend a lot of time collecting and entering project (team) progress data, and AI can do these tasks better. In terms of project cycle and cost forecasting, machine learning tools trained with a large amount of similar case data will also perform better. Similar artificial intelligence project management tools have already appeared in the market.

7. Data Analyst

As the big data trend sweeps across all industries, data scientists and senior data analysts are in short supply and hard to find. Companies are beginning to seek the help of artificial intelligence to lower the talent threshold for data analysts.

Nowadays, a large number of predictive analysis tools have integrated machine learning functions, which can greatly improve the work efficiency of data analysts. In fact, AI has not replaced the role of data analysts, but has increased the market demand for skills in using data analysis tools.

8. Database Administrator

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Database administrators, or DBAs, are responsible for tasks such as database deployment, configuration, optimization, debugging, monitoring, management, and troubleshooting. Some computer scientists believe that artificial intelligence will be able to complete some of the work of database administrators, especially performance monitoring, diagnosis, and troubleshooting. Although there are no such artificial intelligence products on the market yet, the demand for artificial intelligence technology in the database field is growing, which in turn drives the demand for DBAs.

9. Network Security Administrator

As ransomware and malware continue to mutate and grow, becoming increasingly difficult to defend against, companies are beginning to seek new security solutions, and artificial intelligence is the "salt" behind all of today's new security solutions.

Whether it is the next-generation security information and event management (SIEM) or user and business behavior analysis (UEBA) solutions, they have integrated machine learning capabilities to make up for the blind spots and shortcomings of traditional security technologies such as firewalls and antivirus software.

Although artificial intelligence will play an increasingly important role in future security solutions, the demand for various information security positions, including security administrators, will continue to grow rapidly. Machines will not replace people, but will improve their work efficiency and skills.

10. Software Developer

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In the past few years, the market demand for software developers has continued to rise, and salaries have also risen. Therefore, many companies have begun to look for development tools that can write less code or even no code, so that business personnel can also develop simple applications. Researchers at Microsoft and Cambridge University have been conducting experimental work on writing code with artificial intelligence. Although the level of AI tools is far from sufficient to independently complete the code development of a complete application, it can effectively expand the number of corporate developers and alleviate the pressure of development talent shortage to some extent.