Elon Musk says unemployment caused by automation will be solved by universal income

With automation set to reduce or remove the need for many jobs, Musk sets out his vision to maintain incomes for those out of work

The problem of millions of people facing unemployment as increasing numbers of jobs are automated out of existence can be solved by 'universal income'.

That's the opinion of Elon Musk, tech visionary and founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors. Speaking to US broadcaster CNBC recently, Musk seemed uncertain as to the details.

"There's a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation," said Musk. "I'm not sure what else one would do. That's what I think would happen."

There are many IT disciplines among the raft of jobs set to be automated, and hence reduce or remove the need for humans. The list includes IT project managers, developers without operational skills (and operational staff lacking development skills), as firms move towards DevOps tooling and culture.

Other roles set to disappear include web design, system administrators and tech support.

But the fact that some roles will disappear doesn't necessarily mean that everyone who was previously filling them would be out of work. Instead, many workers will find niches doing less repetitive, easily automated work.

"People would have time to do other things, more complex and interesting things," Musk told CNBC.

According to recent research from Computing, when discussing the primary drivers for automating IT and business processes within their organisations, more than two-thirds (69 per cent) of senior IT professionals said that they were interested in cutting costs, with a similar number looking to improve productivity.

Other reasons for embracing automation included easier management (52 per cent), increased reliability (47 per cent) and improved business agility (35 per cent).