Workers worried about machines replacing them should focus on what their brains can do that computers can’t, said Chris Bedi (pictured), chief information officer at ServiceNow Inc.

“I think a lot of times what we call a decision — it’s not a decision. We’re coming to the same conclusion over and over and over again,” Bedi said in an interview during the ServiceNow Knowledge17 event in Orlando, Florida.

If a computer arrives at the same answer consistently, based on the the same inputs, it’s an algorithm; in the case of human brains, we should basically call that an algorithm as well, he told Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-hosts of of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio. (* Disclosure below.)

The term “decision,” on the other hand, should be reserved for thought outcomes that require complexity and nuance not possible in computing, Bedi stated. And this is the exciting and innovative vista of thought labor that automation at work is opening, he said.

Within ServiceNow, for example, filing applications for software patents typically involved management edicts and other tedious human processes that the company has recently automated. “We saw an 83-percent increase in the number of patent applications filed by the engineers,” he said.

IT gains need new yardstick

This underscores the new way that information technology must be measured in companies’ financial calculations, Bedi stated. IT can change employees’ experience at work so they can add value in new ways. “The right experience can give you the right desired economic behavior,” he said, adding that this holds true for a company’s customers as well.

This is why looking only at the cost of IT is quite wrongheaded, he said. “IT needs to proactively measure its contributions and express it in terms of margin,” Bedi added.

ServiceNow is working on automating tasks for its customers to deal with possible hiccups from its biannual platform upgrades.

“There is a cost to them, and the cost is associated with business risk. You want to make sure you’re not going to disrupt your business, so there’s some level of regression testing you just have to do,” he said.

With the cloud, ServiceNow is helping customers automate 80 to 90 percent of that testing, Bedi stated.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of ServiceNow Knowledge17. (* Disclosure: ServiceNow Inc. sponsored this Knowledge17 segment on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither ServiceNow nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE