Why IT leaders think generative AI will create jobs

AI: more production, fewer people… or both?

This week: good news about AI. (Really.)  

This is the age of AI and as IT leaders pursue digital transformation, they’re having to rethink how they run their departments and invest in technology platforms. No one really knows where this road leads — and one of our columnists recently asked CIO.com readers is this the end of IT as we know it? 

Not surprisingly, it is a popular article. And it prompted CIO readers to ponder a further philosophical question: is the goal here to increase productivity, or cut costs? Or maybe, as is so often the case, it is a bit of both. 

Smart Answers lives for these questions, parsing generations of reported insights from CIOs to come up with conclusions. But where there is no consensus there are no definitive answers. From Smart Answers, we learn that while many company boards are pushing for AI to cut workforce costs by approximately 20%, most IT leaders anticipate increasing headcount in response to the fast-evolving technology. 

Find out: Do IT leaders see AI reducing headcount or improving productivity? 

How AI is changing developer roles

Certainly, it’s good news that IT leaders at least think generative AI will bring jobs to IT. But what about the affect of agentic AI, in particular, on developer roles? 

Over at InfoWorld we recently published a story addressing that question. It suggested that instead of working with a single coding agent, developers will soon realize gains by guiding a team of them.   

But if multi-agent AI workflows are the next evolution of AI coding, what does that mean for developers? Not for the first time, this was a question top of mind for our developer audience.  

Smart Answers has collated all our human reportage and detects another positive outcome. It suggests that agentic AI is poised to significantly transform the roles of software developers, shifting their focus from routine coding and debugging to more strategic and creative tasks. Furthermore, it says that most practitioners see this as a positive development. 

Find out: How will agentic AI change developers’ roles? 

What about those productivity gains?

So far this week we have learned that — at least, potentially — generative AI is going to increase IT roles, and agentic AI is going to make developers more creative. That’s all well and good, but will someone please think of the software platforms? 

Another big CIO.com article in the past week asked: What parts of ERP will be left after AI takes over? Many organizations use agents and copilots to take out the drudge work often associated with ERP systems, while others see an evolutionary alliance. 

This caused readers to ask Smart Answers whether all of this is driving measurable productivity gains. More good news: according to our tool, recent studies and industry observations indicate significant measurable productivity gains from AI agents. 

Find out: What measurable productivity gains are recent studies showing from AI agents? 

About Smart Answers 

Smart Answers is an AI-based chatbot tool designed to help you discover content, answer questions, and go deep on the topics that matter to you. Each week we send you the three most popular questions asked by our readers, and the answers Smart Answers provides. 

Developed in partnership with Miso.ai, Smart Answers draws only on editorial content from our network of trusted media brands—CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World—and was trained on questions that a savvy enterprise IT audience would ask. The result is a fast, efficient way for you to get more value from our content.