Licensing Information Technology: Guiding AI Down a Safe Path of Human Enablement

For decades, information technology (IT) has been the quiet backbone of modern life. IT keeps planes in the sky, hospitals online, banks balanced, and even our streaming queues humming along. And yet, unlike doctors with their boards, lawyers with their bars, or architects with their stamps, IT professionals can build the digital scaffolding of society without a formal licensing process. Strange, isn’t it, that the very profession holding up our digital world is one of the few without a formal license to practice? Would you trust an unlicensed surgeon with your grandmother's operation? Probably NOT. Much the same way cities, states, and federal governments would not commission an unlicensed architecture firm to build a new bridge. So the question then becomes, is it time for the field of information technology to create a formal licensing process?

I know that many who just read the opening paragraph are already annoyed at the notion of controls being introduced into IT. But consider how quickly the field has evolved! In 1999, VMware’s breakthrough in virtualization transformed computing by making it possible to run multiple operating systems on a single piece of hardware. Before organizations could fully adapt and implement strategies to manage and automate virtualization, Google popularized containers in 2007 (via Linux kernel innovations), and soon after, AWS and Azure brought cloud computing into the mainstream. Then came the Docker wave in 2013, followed by Kubernetes in 2014, which cemented a paradigm shift toward containerized, orchestrated infrastructure. In just over a decade, we leapt from physical servers to hypervisors, to containers, to orchestrators of containers. The pace of innovation has far outstripped our ability to standardize, govern, and manage these systems. In fact, today, Kubernetes expertise rivals AI in scarcity and compensation, which is a sign of just how critical (and complex) IT roles have become.

And now, as we enter the age of artificial intelligence (AI) and cybernetics, the stakes have never been higher. If society wants to harness AI as a tool of human enablement rather than suffer from its runaway consequences, this is the exact moment to define and enforce a licensing framework for IT professionals. Just as medicine, law, and engineering evolved professional standards when their impact on society became too great to ignore, so too must IT.

Let's take a brief look at how other professions have earned public trust through the creation of a standardized training and licensing system, and then move on to a simple framework of how IT professional licensing might look.

How Other Professions Earn Public Trust

Doctors: Spend at least 8 years in formal education, must pass a battery of standardized exams, must complete residencies under direct supervision, and commit to lifelong learning through continuing medical education. Their licenses can be suspended or revoked for ethical breaches, ensuring patient safety remains paramount.

Lawyers: About 7 years of education, followed by state bar exams. They face strict codes of professional conduct, and risk disbarment for malpractice or misconduct. The system ensures that those entrusted with defending rights and interpreting laws are competent and accountable.

Architects: 5-7 years of education, then log 3,740 hours of documented experience across six key practice areas: Practice Management, Project Management, Programming & Analysis, Project Planning & Design, Project Development & Documentation, and Construction & Evaluation. Only after passing rigorous board exams and demonstrating knowledge of building codes can they stamp drawings. Licensure is not one-and-done, it requires renewal, with compliance to codes and professional standards.

Despite their differences, these professions share five pillars of public trust:

1. Rigorous education that establishes foundational competence.

2. Supervised practice where skills are honed under licensed mentors.

3. Standardized examinations that test readiness before independent practice.

4. Ongoing accountability through ethics boards, continuing education, and disciplinary actions.

5. Oversight and transparency that build and maintain public trust.

Now let's compare this to what it takes to work in the field of IT. Well, the loose criteria would be if you:

1. Are of legal working age.

2. No high school diploma or college required.

3. Bonus points if you have setup WiFi, plugged in an HDMI cable, or know how to operate the TV remote better than most.

And on the other end of the spectrum: if you possess amazing programming skills, know Kubernetes inside and out, and/or have fine tuned your own large language model (LLM) you can get a job tomorrow.

Building the IT Licensing Framework

Borrowing from these models, IT licensing would rest on Five + One Pillars:

1. Education – Accredited degree programs or equivalency pathways for nontraditional entrants, as well as equivalency via completed projects such as: open-source project contributions (ie, not 1 line commit to fix a bug, but rather a MR/PR merged in to add or extend a feature of an existing project.), or verifiable work portfolios. We should avoid gate keeping, while also setting a rigorous educational and work experience standard.

2. Supervised Practice – Apprenticeships under licensed mentors with documented casework. This is critical. Just like a professional engineer will take on aspiring engineering apprentices, this needs to be formalized in IT. Ideally the training would cover all areas of information technology similar to the process Architects go through to obtain licensing.

3. Standardized Examination – Written and practical exams covering networking, cybersecurity, software engineering, data integrity, and ethics. Yes there are loads of certifications out there, but certifications are simply software vendors telling you how proficient you are at using or working with their proprietary technology. Licensing is independent, and is more difficult to attain.

4. Duty of Care & Ethics – Binding code covering privacy, secure defaults, transparency, and public interest. This is another incredibly important aspect. Up until 2018 human society relied upon the good graces of corporations to define and uphold a code of conduct and ethics in IT. Then Google decided to remove "Don't be evil" as part of its' guiding motto. It is clear that the industry requires duty of care and ethics independent of corporations and governments. Or, just think of the myriad of negative consequences stemming from data breaches, AI bias, privacy violations, and the list goes on.

5. Continuing Competency – Periodic renewal via education, incident reporting, and skill updates. Without continuing competency, IT risks reinventing the wheel every few years.

6. Chaos as Validation (New Pillar) – Live-fire scenarios where systems fail unpredictably. Candidates must restore order, demonstrating resilience in practice, not just in theory. I am not sure I need to say anything on this except, we have all been in this position before. If you have not, you need to. :)

The Beginning is the End is the Beginning

The IT industry has reached its inflection point. Our systems now rival medicine, law, and architecture in societal impact, yet IT remains the only critical profession without formal safeguards or licensing. With AI accelerating complexity and consequence, the time has come to establish a licensing framework for information technology before we are completely written out of the AI loop.

Licensing IT professionals, validated by chaos, grounded in OSI fundamentals, renewed through ongoing practice, and bound by ethics, is how we evolve from a trade into a profession. It is how we ensure that AI does not outrun humanity, but instead remains a tool that amplifies it.

Because here is the tough truth that we as IT professionals need to chew down to the bone: the beginning of AI is also the end of information technology as we know it. Whether that end is collapse or transformation depends on what we do next.

The moment is now. The loop is ours to keep. I am just saying.