AI will replace SysAdmins

[Tim Casey 3]

If you think one job that software is likely to replace is your everyday SysAdmin.

The question is not whether it will happen but when. 

You would have one system controller on the network that would take care of provisioning, secure configuration, patching, testing etc. on other systems.

What do you think?

[james mckinlay 116]

before AI - rundeck will replace sysadmins 🙂https://www.rundeck.com/new-to-rundeck

 

rundeck + stackstorm = no need for L1 SOC or sysadmins 🙂 🙂

<reaches for flameproof suit>

https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/introducing-winston-event-driven-diagnostic-and-remediation-platform-46ce39aa81cc

 

 

[Steve Lord 9]

17 hours ago, Tim Casey said:

If you think one job that software is likely to replace is your everyday SysAdmin.

The question is not whether it will happen but when. 

You would have one system controller on the network that would take care of provisioning, secure configuration, patching, testing etc. on other systems.

What do you think?

Surely people would need to be able to do those things successfully with sysadmins before replacing them?

[Kevin Beaumont 111]

My view is: won't happen.  Automation is and will continue to happen, e.g. most (but not all) orgs have invested in SCCM etc to automate PC deployment for example, but they still need people to build those images for deployment, set the Group Policy etc. I think sysadmins will end up doing slightly more interesting work.

[james mckinlay 116]

I have scripts that do all this -> "build those images for deployment, set the Group Policy "

 

..but agree with this  "I think sysadmins will end up doing slightly more interesting work."

22 minutes ago, Steve Lord said:

Surely people would need to be able to do those things successfully with sysadmins before replacing them?

if you're not part of the solution - you are part of the problem 🙂

[Michael D 11]

This makes sense when you look at cloud orchestration or virtualization automation. But you still have to maintain those systems and do work inside those systems and get initial images set up.

That's also a different set than anyone maintaining endpoint systems for end users, which won't go away any time soon or even later.

And by the time that 'sysadmin' is being really threatened, that's when our centralized-decentralized-centralized cycle will come back around to decentralized again. You know, like mainframes to PCs to virtualization/cloud to...neural?

[Kevin Beaumont 111]

Aye, for me it’s a similar one to hype execs have nowadays about AI replacing the need for security people. Yeah: but no. 

[Tim Casey 3]

Think longterm. 100 years. True, we’ll need humans to manage the AI-SysAdmin system; and this will be true for large organizations, but small orgs will need human sysadmins for sure.

I also think near term we’ll get better voice/command AI. There is so much potential for growth. I’m talking about having a conversation with your computer. Cortana/Alexa is a joke right now.

 

[Steve Lord 9]

In 100 years we'll all be dead, and I suspect those that will be around will be tackling different problems in a very different world.

If anything I see applied AI handling low hanging fruit for sysadmins rather than replacing them, freeing them up for more interesting work as Kevin put it. We've seen this already in other ML applications like Bayesian spam filtering instead of having people forward spam to be blocked (which was a thing in the late 90s for some people).

[Kevin Beaumont 111]

43 minutes ago, Steve Lord said:

In 100 years we'll all be dead, and I suspect those that will be around will be tackling different problems in a very different world.

If anything I see applied AI handling low hanging fruit for sysadmins rather than replacing them, freeing them up for more interesting work as Kevin put it. We've seen this already in other ML applications like Bayesian spam filtering instead of having people forward spam to be blocked (which was a thing in the late 90s for some people).

I work in a SOC where people forward spam to be blocked 😄

[james mckinlay 116]

49 minutes ago, Kevin Beaumont said:

I work in a SOC where people forward spam to be blocked 😄

You need to talk to @Ed Tucker

[Mark Parry 2]

If your thinking about the future of AI, I recommend reading the book "Our Final Invention" by James Barrat.

@Kevin Beaumont - I'm in the same boat! 

[Kevin Beaumont 111]

Every company I've worked as has had a manual spam mailbox thingy, due to spam filtering not working as well as it should.  It's good for us as Microsoft are so bad at securing Azure and Office365 we get O365 phishing hosted by Microsoft getting through, keeps me in a job.