Throughout history, critical inventions have changed the course of the future in dramatic fashion — the steam engine or personal computer, for example. Today, generative AI has the power to do the same. In fact, it’s so robust and incredible there’s a growing fear it may supplant the need for human workers across a wide range of industries, including IT.

Fear of job displacement has led to apprehension among IT professionals about the role generative AI might play in their careers. But while generative AI can serve as a powerful tool to support and enhance the work of IT professionals, it remains just a tool. By embracing it as a collaborative partner, IT professionals can maximize its potential alongside their own expertise and critical thinking skills to deliver superior outcomes.

Generative AI’s role in IT

Increasingly, generative AI is finding its footing across the landscape of managed IT services. Tools like ChatGPT offer a bevy of benefits that range from simplifying information and contextualizing responses to orchestrating data. Among the most compelling use cases emerging for generative AI include:

• Troubleshooting and issue resolution: ChatGPT and other generative resources provide accurate and relevant information to troubleshoot and resolve customer-specific issues. Generative AI can suggest potential solutions, guide technicians through step-by-step instructions, and offer insights based on its knowledge base.
• Customer support: Managed service providers (MSPs) can leverage generative AI to handle routine queries, provide answers to frequently asked questions, and assist with basic technical support tasks. This helps free up human support agents to focus on more complex issues and improves response times for customers.
• Knowledge base management: MSPs deal with vast amounts of technical documentation, guides, and troubleshooting resources. Generative AI can assist in managing (and expanding) this knowledge base by organizing and tagging information.
• Pre-sales support: When potential clients inquire about MSP services, generative AI systems can offer information about available services, pricing models, and service-level agreements. It can answer common questions, provide relevant case studies, and guide prospects through the onboarding process, converting leads into customers.
• Automation and scripting: Tools like ChatGPT can assist in developing and refining automation scripts, helping MSPs automate repetitive tasks such as software deployments, system monitoring, and backup management. It can also offer insights and recommendations for optimizing existing workflows.
• Training and knowledge transfer: Generative AI can serve as a virtual training assistant, providing on-demand training to MSP technicians. It can deliver interactive training modules, walk through best practices, and assist in knowledge transfer.

The number of uses for generative AI is growing by the month. The common denominator in all these applications is that generative AI has a defined role as a support technology. Without human intervention to stimulate it or to apply generative results, the value proposition is incomplete.

Augmenting IT professionals with generative AI

Managed services are a commoditization of IT functions, so it’s easy to see why service providers might fear the potential of generative AI supplanting them. But with humans still required to harness and guide generative AI, it’s more valuable to consider the potential synergies and ways to leverage AI for better results:

• Data analysis: Generative AI can analyze vast amounts of data to identify patterns, trends, and behaviors, and explain its findings succinctly. This creates actionability on the part of IT professionals, who can then engineer solutions for customers quickly and with greater precision.
• Process optimization: AI is already adept at automating routine IT tasks and workflows. Generative AI takes this a step further to empower process customization that reduces the amount of intervention or workaround engineering required to put results on autopilot.
• Enhanced decision-making: The valuable insights and recommendations generative AI can provide to IT professionals support them in making informed decisions. Generative AI tools can assist IT teams in identifying the root causes of issues, optimizing their approach, and coordinating the necessary resources.

Again, in all these examples, generative AI doesn’t replace human expertise — it augments it. Generative AI offers initial analysis and recommendations, which are reviewed, validated, and acted upon by human experts. This collaborative approach combines the speed and scalability of generative AI with the critical thinking and contextual understanding of IT professionals.

Collaboration between generative AI and IT professionals

To maximize generative AI’s benefits, organizations must foster a collaborative and symbiotic relationship with IT professionals. This starts by empowering them to utilize generative AI rather than fear it.

Managed service providers must separate form from function, delineating automated tasks from those benefiting from assistive AI and those not applicable to AI. Then, they must empower their IT professionals to experiment with generative AI on various tasks. As they learn to use generative AI — its capabilities, applications, and limits — IT teams will begin to see it as the tool it is.

Generative AI can’t replace the skill, will, or effort of well-trained IT professionals, but it can help them do what they do better and eliminate the lowest common denominator tasks consuming their valuable time.

A tool to use

In the same way the steam engine enabled people to travel quicker or the computer allowed us to process information faster, generative AI is ultimately a tool. Without humans to ply and apply it, generative AI can only do so much. Companies attempting to supplant IT teams with generative AI won’t see the results they expect, while organizations teaching their IT professionals to leverage generative AI will find themselves more enabled than ever before.

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