AI systems get more impressive every day.

Today’s AI can automate the

tasks of many information workers, so those in cloud jobs worry they're next.

As I mentioned a few times in this blog, I’ve been working with and teaching about
artificial intelligence since the start of my career. This drove much of my interest in cloud
computing because AI was not economically viable or accessible until “the cloud” came
along.

Interest in AI and its applications inflected about five years ago. Then the pandemic
happened and some budgets shifted to speedy cloud migrations. Now that things are
returning to normal, AI is back. Most enterprises grasp the fundamental possibilities of
AI and are looking to weaponize the technology for their own business.

The technology got way more impressive along the way. Generative AI, for example,
went from PhD dissertations to an accessible and free reality with the advent of
generative AI services such as ChatGPT.

Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that generates new and unique outputs,
such as text, images, or audio based on input data and learned patterns. This can
include tasks such as text generation, image synthesis, and music composition.

A wide variety of inputs can be made through a chatbot or an API that results in an
impressive response. The responses are so impressive that I’ve been fielding calls from
journalists who are writing stories on AI replacing workers. It’s a question I’ve heard for
the past 20 years but now there’s a modern twist. Colleges and universities have new
concerns about college students using ChatGPT or similar services to write papers for
them. AI creates output that plagiarism detection systems can’t quickly identify because
it’s not plagiarism.

AI ethical and bias concerns could emerge from certain types of learning data. Will
those biases cause unintended negative consequences, such as an automated pattern
that denies loans to certain groups of people?

I’m hearing the following core questions: What types of human tasks can AI replace now
or soon? Should I be planning a career change to a job that AI can’t automate? Is it safe
to be a cloud computing architect, cloud developer, cloud operations engineer, devops
engineer, cloud project leader, etc.? Those are the job titles of most of you reading this
article. Are you at risk?

I think the reality is we’re well on our way to replacing many human tasks with AI-fueled
automation. It’s just what happens as technology progresses, and it’s nothing new.
Technology is why we no longer have dozens of people in a field to pick crops in the
fall. We can check out of the supermarket without interacting with a human. Our cars
and trucks can drive themselves.

One thing that I’ve been frustrated with is how the whole IT design and deployment
process lacks helpful automation. Oh sure, we have tons of tools, processes,
methodologies, and other assets to speed up our journey to an optimized cloud
architecture and deployment. However, they don’t make critical decisions for the
architects. Cloud architecture must typically be determined through deep analysis and
judgment, which only come through experience. More importantly, creativity and
innovation are still required—things humans bring to the table.

Of course, humans make many architectural mistakes, such as picking the wrong
platform, tools, and services. Humans create architectures that are wholly
underoptimized and fail to return value to the business. I addressed that issue recently.

If we turned solution creation over to AI, perhaps we’d get better decisions. Imagine if
the AI system had training data that simultaneously reflected the knowledge of
thousands of good cloud architects. Such an AI system could effectively process that
knowledge into solutions based on provided business and technology requirements. It
may not get you the final answers required to build something, but it could get close
enough that it could remove a great deal of the work and potential mistakes.

The most likely path is that tactical AI tools will continue to appear. These tools will
focus on specific architectural areas, such as network design, database design, platform
selection, cloud-native design, security, governance, use of containers, etc. The output
should be as good as, if not better than what we see today because these tools will
leverage almost perfect data and won’t have those pesky human frailties that drive
some architecture designs—emotions and feelings. Of course, some of these AI tools
exist today (don’t tell me about your tool) and are progressing toward this ideal.
However, their usefulness varies depending on the task.

Tactical AI tools must still be operated by knowledgeable people who understand how
to ask the right questions and validate the designs and recommendations the tool
produces. Although it may take fewer people to pull off the tactical component design of
a large cloud architecture, the process will not likely eliminate all humans. Remember,
many of these mistakes occur because enterprises have difficulty finding skilled cloud
pros. Tactical AI tools may also help fix that problem by better syncing the demand and
supply of talent.

It’s easy to predict how this will progress, and it’s nothing earth-shattering. Design,
development, and deployment tools will evolve. They will provide more value and
usefulness. Fewer people may be needed overall, but these tools will require talented
operators to work correctly. They will focus primarily on the tactical design of cloud
architecture components, such as network and security.

So, we still must rely on humans, such as yours truly, to build sound cloud solutions.
The smaller problems may have AI solutions, but the larger problem of poetically
automating cloud architectures remains a problem not yet solved.

I suspect we’ll still need human cloud architects and solution designers for some time to
pull all of this together and ensure that we’re deploying optimized solutions that return
the most value to the business. I don’t see that being something that can be replaced
entirely by AI, but I’m under no illusion that it’s unlikely forever.

But let’s ask ChatGPT: “Will AI replace cloud computing architects?”

“It is unlikely that AI will completely replace cloud computing architects in the near future
as while AI can assist cloud architects in tasks such as automated provisioning,
monitoring, and scaling of resources, it still requires human oversight and decision-
making to ensure that the systems are configured correctly and to ensure that the AI is
working as intended. Cloud architects also play a crucial role in overall strategy and
design of a cloud computing environment, and tasks that are difficult to fully automate
with current AI technology. However, it is possible that AI could automate some of the
repetitive and routine tasks that cloud architects currently perform, allowing them to
focus on more strategic and higher-level responsibilities.”
I agree.