Introduction
For many businesses, the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is welcome. It can speed up menial tasks across a company and relieve employees’ stress. However, the introduction of AI will have both positive and negative impacts across industries, especially the IT industry. The ramifications include human jobs being replaced by machines, but the overriding concern is that machines are more than capable of taking away even creative jobs. Back in September last year, an artist entered the Colorado State Art Fair’s competition and won with a piece of AI-generated art. This proves that AI is more than capable of replacing humans in the workplace.
For Managed Service Providers (MSPs), the opportunity to automate tasks with AI will relieve the stress of their engineers and free them to work on big projects. However, with many conflicting headlines about how AI will/won’t revolutionise the IT industry, where will it fit into your business? Naturally, MSPs are intrigued by how AI could transform their business. However, there are bound to be drawbacks. In this blog, we want to explore and weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of Artificial Intelligence replacing humans in the tech industry. Furthermore, we want to examine why keeping your business’s human element could keep you ahead of your competition.
Advantages of AI
Let’s start with the pros of AI and how it could help streamline your IT processes.
Reduces Human Error
Eradicating human error is a key advantage for MSPs utilising Artificial Intelligence. With AI, the decisions are based on the data from previous choices, and it can take time for the machine to learn to implement it correctly. AI leads to consistency, efficiency and speed for the MSP and their customers, which could, in turn, improve their service. Reducing costly human errors will save your business time and money.
Improved Efficiency & Productivity
Machines are the ideal employee in many ways because they are on hand 24/7 to assist your customers. They also don’t mull over decisions quite as long as a human and often make a decision instead of weighing it up. Furthermore, AI is constantly working, increasing productivity and ensuring tasks are completed as fast as possible.
Predictive Maintenance & Issue Detection
AI is proactive and often tries to fix issues before they become critical customer problems. It minimises downtime by predicting and preventing system failures. This greatly reduces the cost of any reactive maintenance or emergency repairs your engineers do. The way AI works means it will continuously improve its processes based on previous data, meaning your services will evolve over time.
Disadvantages of AI
In this section, we will explore some of the cons of AI as well as the negative impacts it could have on you and your MSP.
Job Losses
Artificial Intelligence is so proactive, efficient and cost-saving that it removes the need for humans to do the job in some industries. This can be particularly true in the tech industry. For example, do you need an L1 engineer to do the work when a machine can do it twice as fast and work 24/7? A report by investment bank Goldman Sachs reveals that AI could replace the equivalent of 300 million jobs. Replacing that L1 engineer with AI reduces the opportunity for learning experiences for this person to progress.
Losing That Human Touch
Do you ever have a problem with a product or service and see they have a live chat, great! However, the longer you speak to it, you become unsure whether you’re talking to a human or a bot. Losing that human touch with your services as an MSP means you could turn customers away. Utilising AI to automate repetitive tasks, however, having people on hand where customers can speak to a human can keep that human side of your service. Sometimes the problem is tricky to explain or requires that personal interaction. AI isn’t capable of the same creativity as humans regarding problem-solving. Again, it is only as good as the data it is fed. This is shown in companies like OpenAI and Meta being named in a copyright claim regarding the unauthorised use of the work of authors.
Overreliance on AI
Over-relying on AI could lead to your business not staying ahead of your competition with the lack of emphasis on human expertise and critical thinking. MSPs shouldn’t be replacing the experience and knowledge of engineers and technicians. Often situations can be unique or complex, meaning that human intervention is likely. Additionally, Artificial Intelligence is only as effective as the data they’re trained on, meaning they could have some technical limitations.
Conclusion
While AI technology advancements are fantastic for MSPs when it comes to automating repetitive tasks, it’s a good idea to proceed with caution. Ensuring your business holds that human touch is vital to keeping customers feeling valued and listened to.
How Can We Help?
At Uptime, we believe in keeping that human touch within your business. Our award-winning Remote-based Dedicated Tech service gives you access to our bench of highly-skilled engineers. We take on the burden of HR responsibilities, holidays and sickness, so you don’t have to.
"We have been using the Staff Augmentation Service for over a year and have been very happy.
Selecting a technician is a simple process with so much of the hassle removed by Uptime. We have had an excellent offshore technician join our team, and his commitments and skills have been key to delivering our service. "
Stuart Willcocks, Co-Founder
Urban Network