Will AI kill off the "sexiest job of the 21st century"?
11 Jan 2017
Will AI kill off the "sexiest job of the 21st century"?
In 2012, Harvard Business Review (HBR) called the Data Scientist the “sexiest job of the 21st century”. It could already be about to become obsolete.
In the first half of last year, there was a 45 percent increase in the number of data scientist roles across European Union countries, according to Procorre. But experts say that Artificial Intelligence (AI) could soon replace the people that made it possible in the first place.
“The principle is simple,” says Bernard Marr, an author and speaker on big data and analytics. “If computers can run algorithms to do just about anything our brains can – surely they can be taught to look at a dataset, work out what sort of data it might contain and how it could be useful, then decide what algorithms are likely to extract that value?
“After that, all that’s left is the ‘final step’ – putting those insights into a format that’s useful for the person (or indeed machine) responsible for making the changes that the insights suggest.”
Marr quotes Jeremy Achin, CEO and co-founder of DataRobot, as saying that up to half of data scientists are “petrified” of software that they think is automating their job.
Max Kanter, whose MIT master’s thesis in computer science is the basis of the Data Science Machine, said at the time, “We view the Data Science Machine as a natural complement to human intelligence. There’s so much data out there to be analyzed. And right now it’s just sitting there not doing anything. So maybe we can come up with a solution that will at least get us started on it, at least get us moving.”
What does automation mean for jobs?
Automation and its impact on jobs is a hot topic right now. A report from the Bank of England warned that up to 15 million jobs in Britain alone are at risk of being "lost to an age of automation".
But as TM Forum’s Dawn Bushaus recently put it, the future is already here.
She writes, “The future is automation, machine learning, artificial intelligence, NFV, SDN, driverless cars and Amazon Go grocery stores. Instead of sticking our heads in the sand and pretending it’s not going to happen, we need to plan for our automated future. It can be brilliantly bright, but only if we figure out how to adapt our economies.”
Andrew Milroy, SVP ICT Asia Pacific, Frost & Sullivan, says, “The lack of manpower needed to enable the transformations that are expected will slow down technology adoption and automation. So, the argument that new technologies will only destroy jobs is nonsense. It will also create jobs. New higher skilled jobs will emerge together with the use of new, disruptive technology. The implementation of this technology is impossible without them.”
An award-winning TM Forum Catalyst project is exploring the use of cognitive computing or artificial intelligence technologies, such as natural language processing and machine learning, to create the next generation of customer care services. One aspect of their investigation is looking at how artificial intelligence and machine learning can augment – rather than replace – the human workforce. Find out more here. What do you think? Will Data Scientists be phased out by AI, or will their role simply evolve?
