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Tencent Says There Are Only 300,000 AI Engineers Worldwide, But Millions Are Needed (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: It's well-established that talent is in short supply in the AI industry, but a new report from Chinese tech giant Tencent underscores how great the need might be. According to the study, compiled by the Tencent Research Institute, there are just 300,000 "AI researchers and practitioners" worldwide, but the "market demand" is for millions of roles. These are unavoidably speculative figures, and the study does not offer much detail on how they were reached, but as a general trend they fit with other, more anecdotal reports. Around the world, tech giants regularly complain about the difficulty hiring AI engineers, and the demand has pushed salaries to absurd heights. Individuals with just a few year's experience can expect base pay of between $300,000 and $500,000 a year, says The New York Times, while the very best will collect millions. One independent AI lab told the publication that there were only 10,000 individuals worldwide with the right skills to spearhead serious new AI projects.
Tencent's new "2017 Global AI Talent White Paper" suggests the bottleneck here is education. It estimates that 200,000 of the 300,000 active researchers are already employed in various industries (not just tech), while the remaining 100,000 are still studying. Attendance in machine learning and AI courses has skyrocketed in recent years, as has enrollment in online courses, but there is obviously a lag as individuals complete their education.
Tencent's new "2017 Global AI Talent White Paper" suggests the bottleneck here is education. It estimates that 200,000 of the 300,000 active researchers are already employed in various industries (not just tech), while the remaining 100,000 are still studying. Attendance in machine learning and AI courses has skyrocketed in recent years, as has enrollment in online courses, but there is obviously a lag as individuals complete their education.
Glassdoor says:
How much does a Machine Learning Engineer make? The national average salary for a Machine Learning Engineer is $128,549 in United States.
Yikes so even though the opportunity for profit is limitless. The available workers are a fraction of the demand and this is a sufficiently difficult subject that nobody will obtain credentials without hard work.
It's still not as valuable as a Masters in English Literature from an Ivy, or even a law degree from a mediocre school. Playing with math that is currently almost magic and practicing a craft that approaches playing god. You're still not worth as much as even the most lowly of the elites you engineering scum and you can bet that we'll be shoving your wages way down as soon as someone shows us how to replace you with an H1B
Attendance in machine learning and AI courses has skyrocketed in recent years, as has enrollment in online courses, but there is obviously a lag as individuals complete their education.
No direct experience but an acquaintance of mine quit his job in ASIC layout to pursue a career in machine learning. He took a bunch of classes outside of a formal degree program and found that breaking in the field wasn't nearly as easy as he expected. I haven't talked to him in about six months but he was still looking the last I knew.
This might explain the "shortage". If most of the students are in bootstrap style programs but employers deem those programs unsuitable, it is going to be a while before the gap is closed.