Is Automation a Threat to IT Jobs
As machines accomplish more tasks that once required human beings, jobs are lost and workers displaced. Numerous historical cases illustrate that fact, leading to a certain unease with the idea that the latest victim on the chopping block may be the IT workforce. But is that fear justified?
Paying the Price for Automation—and Reaping the Benefits
Patrick Thibodeau, who regularly reports on labor issues such as the H-1B visa program, wrote at Computerworld about the potential for automation to take a large chunk of human IT jobs and give them to machines. “That automation will take jobs is a well-established labor market truism….A similar fate is about to befall people who do back-office IT services work. Thanks to automation improvements, dramatic cutbacks in IT services personnel are being forecast, according to [an Information Services Group] survey of representatives of about 170 global sourcing firms. This includes the IT services industry.”
The survey, conducted at the Sourcing Industry Conference, found that 32% of respondents expect their company’s workforce to drop more than 25% by 2020 thanks to automation. Over half—55%—expect at least a 15% decline, and 83% expect at least a 5% decline. These numbers may sound shocking, but in so far as that’s the case, it points to a prejudice that today is somehow fundamentally different from yesterday. No doubt people in the past looked with suspicion at machines that automated certain tasks—whether transportation, household chores or any number of other jobs. Do we have any basis for expecting IT to be immune? After all, how many jobs have computer networks destroyed, with IT professionals shedding nary a tear for the workers they displaced?
Of course, automation also comes with a number of benefits that improve the standard of living, so it’s not all bad. Who, for instance, would want to give up their washing machines and dryers so that people could have more jobs washing clothing? To be sure, the changes come with some pain, particularly for older workers who have developed skills in a displaced industry and who find learning new skills to be a daunting task. Such situations can be addressed, however, through a number of means that don’t require reversion to Luddism.
A Bigger Question: What Happens When Progress Slows?
If we were to believe the doomsayers each time a new technology displaces a group of workers, we might think the unemployment rate should have reached 90% or so by the end of the twentieth century. Yet even despite a steadily rising population, the unemployment rate has shown no obvious increase over time.
The labor-force participation rate is another story, but the decline over the past decade and a half seems to be related more heavily to financial conditions, including low interest rates and the resulting boom-bust cycle. Either way, however, technological development was still fast during preceding decades, yet the labor-force participation rate rose steadily from the 1960s on.
Generally, the argument is that although technological developments may displace workers from industries that suffer declining demand thanks to newly enabled products and services, these developments create at least as many new labor opportunities as they destroy. The above graphs tend to bear out that argument, as the development of automobiles, robots of various kinds and computers haven’t led to mass unemployment. But what will happen if technological progress slows or stops? That is, could the advent of much greater automation, followed by much less further progress, mean that numerous jobs may be destroyed with nothing new to take their place?
The answer is that such a situation is unlikely, if not impossible. First, the fast pace of technological development probably means that the potential of the technologies we have has a long way to go before it is fully realized. Even were Moore’s Law to cease right now (and some have argued it has), the possible applications of the computing power available today leaves numerous applications within reach—and that means jobs.
Second, even if technological progress slows to a crawl or ceases, the human appetite for novelty won’t abate. It so happens that this appetite leads now to strong demand for the latest iPhone (regardless of whether the latest model actually offers any substantial benefit over previous ones), but it could easily turn to other venues (art, literature or any number of endeavors beyond just technology) if the Apples of the world fail to deliver. Such a shift would lead to job creation elsewhere. And since machines are incapable of producing anything truly novel, automation will never irrevocably destroy jobs.
Will progress slow? Probably, although it likely won’t stop. Exponential curves, as any physicist will tell you, are unsustainable in the long term. But the human desire for novelty is something that can never be sated. Automation just can’t cut it in that regard, and where there’s demand for limited resources, there will be markets—and that means jobs. Where those jobs will be in the future is difficult to say; that they will be there, however, is certain.
What It Means for IT
IT is subject to the same forces that have displaced workers from numerous other segments of the economy. That means automation can and likely will affect certain portions of the market. The question for now is which tasks are most amenable to automation over the next decade or so. Thibodeau said, “It’s not clear whether the jobs replaced by automation in the years ahead will be offset by growth in new technology areas. While demand is expected to increase for higher-skill jobs, there could be fewer overall jobs.” Historically, however, jobs haven’t declined in number, and there’s no obvious reason to expect they will this time. The remaining positions in the IT industry specifically, however, may become higher in quality, reflecting the broader societal move to a higher standard of living.
One conceivable development that could throw a monkey wrench into a historical analysis is artificial intelligence (in the stronger sense of the word, meaning conscious machines that resemble humans in their capacity to think and reason). But AI will probably forever remain the stuff of science fiction. Brains can’t be replicated in silicon if they’re not even remotely understood. Moreover, a purely mechanistic view of the mind reduces consciousness and even thought to an illusion, rendering humans and computers essentially the same as they stand now. Thus, the likely future is a continuing automation of IT, but also continued growth in jobs—even if that just means jobs beyond IT. (That is, of course, barring more-extreme meddling by central banks and their government enablers.)
Conclusions
IT can’t expect that automation will go out to affect all other industries but never return home. Surveys regarding declining IT jobs may be right, but they may also reflect a failure to anticipate new technological or even cultural developments. That is, a company that foresees declining IT rolls may quickly shift course if technology, business goals or customer demand change. Thus far in the U.S., fast technological growth—even with an increasing population—hasn’t led to mass unemployment. The burden of proof is therefore on those who wish to claim that this time is different. Given that machines can only perform monotonous tasks, and given that humans have an insatiable hunger for novelty, the idea that machines can ever displace the only creative entities on the planet is virtually unthinkable. Individual industries may increase or decrease, but there will always be work to be done—and people willing and able to pay others to do it.
Leading article image courtesy of Steve Jurvetson under a Creative Commons license
Is Automation a Threat to IT Jobs? was last modified: October 20th, 2015 by Jeff ClarkAIartificial intelligenceautomationeconomyemploymentITjobsmachinesunemployment
