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As Companies Embrace AI, It's a Job-Seeker's Market (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Artificial intelligence is now being used in an ever-expanding array of products: cars that drive themselves; robots that identify and eradicate weeds; computers able to distinguish dangerous skin cancers from benign moles; and smart locks, thermostats, speakers and digital assistants that are bringing the technology into homes. At Georgia Tech, students interact with digital teaching assistants made possible by AI for an online course in machine learning.
The expanding applications for AI have also created a shortage of qualified workers in the field. Although schools across the country are adding classes, increasing enrollment and developing new programs to accommodate student demand, there are too few potential employees with training or experience in AI. That has big consequences. Too few AI-trained job-seekers has slowed hiring and impeded growth at some companies, recruiters and would-be employers told Reuters. It may also be delaying broader adoption of a technology that some economists say could spur U.S. economic growth by boosting productivity, currently growing at only about half its pre-crisis pace.
[...] U.S. government data does not track job openings or hires in artificial intelligence specifically, but online job postings tracked by jobsites including Indeed, Ziprecruiter and Glassdoor show job openings for AI-related positions are surging. AI job postings as a percentage of overall job postings at Indeed nearly doubled in the past two years, according to data provided by the company. Searches on Indeed for AI jobs, meanwhile increased just 15 percent.
The expanding applications for AI have also created a shortage of qualified workers in the field. Although schools across the country are adding classes, increasing enrollment and developing new programs to accommodate student demand, there are too few potential employees with training or experience in AI. That has big consequences. Too few AI-trained job-seekers has slowed hiring and impeded growth at some companies, recruiters and would-be employers told Reuters. It may also be delaying broader adoption of a technology that some economists say could spur U.S. economic growth by boosting productivity, currently growing at only about half its pre-crisis pace.
[...] U.S. government data does not track job openings or hires in artificial intelligence specifically, but online job postings tracked by jobsites including Indeed, Ziprecruiter and Glassdoor show job openings for AI-related positions are surging. AI job postings as a percentage of overall job postings at Indeed nearly doubled in the past two years, according to data provided by the company. Searches on Indeed for AI jobs, meanwhile increased just 15 percent.
No it doesn't require much. What they call "AI" isn't very complex at all - they are just applying well known techniques to data. Same crap that people were doing in the 1960s.
That's because nobody wants to fully explain the math or symbols being used. In most other areas of technology someone at some point gives a Rosetta stone tutorial which translates. Math is typically very simple, the more "advanced" the math, the more simple it usually is once you penetrate the code of the initiated it is hiding behind.
AI requires a lot of education and quite a background in technical expertise.
Actually ... it doesn't. Deep learning uses a lot of linear algebra, differential equations, and complicated algorithms to deal with regularization and efficiency. But all that is tucked away in libraries. For a real-world AI app, you just slap together a Tensorflow pipeline using Python, and fiddle with the parameters until you get good results. It is more art than science.
This is how it works.
My son is 15, and he went to an "AI bootcamp" this past summer. It was a two week course, and he built a pretty snazzy reinforcement learning application, using Python and some canned visualization tools. Later he made a generative NN to create animations. This is a kid that is just starting high school.
It's certainly out of reach for me at 41 years old.
Probably, but because of your attitude, not your age.
I really hate the whole concept of AI because it is putting people out of work
There is zero evidence that AI is "putting people out of work". How many people do you know that have lost their jobs to deep learning?
What this sounds like is Late Stage Capitalism.
You should spend more time on professional development, and less time reading The Communist Manifesto.
Automation creates more jobs than it displaces in the long run. Jobs change, and you have to be prepared to adapt, learn new things, and possibly train for a new career, otherwise, you're just trying to perpetuate a conservative system.
He's 41. Let's say it takes 5 years for these :new careers" to open up, then another 5 years for him to train up. He's now 51, with no experience in that new career, but all the attendant demands/requirements that tend to come with 51 year olds-kids in or about to enter college, desire for work/life balance, reasonable pay and benefits especially healthcare. Who is a company more likely to hire? Him, who will also probably like to retire in 10-15 years, or a 20-something fresh out of college with the exact same amount of experience in that career field who is cheaper both in absolute terms (lower salary) and more intangible terms (less likely to need/use healthcare, fewer sick days, fewer to none family obligations, etc).
Will a lucky few get hired for a reasonable wage? Sure. Will a few more be willing to take much lower wages and find a company willing to hire them? Probably. Will a lot more get kicked to the curb and told "tough luck, try applying at Walmart, Home Depot, or an Amazon warehouse"? Most definitely.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
You are somewhat correct, if esoteric research in the 1960's is what you are referring to as 'known techniques'. Modern AI techniques weren't truly implemented until the mid 70's, with broader acceptance and applications demonstrated in the mid 80's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If you are referring to the 1960's symbolic (lisp) techniques espoused by the disgraced Marvin Minsky, nearly fired from MIT for borderline fraud, a case that saw MIT forced to repay DARPA millions in wasted research money, then you are a bit behind the times. Modern AI techniques are now quite far from Minsky's self-aggrandized approach. Modern techniques were pioneered more by Minksy's high-school rival and a victim of Minky's petulant personal and private bullying, the truly brilliant Frank Rosenblatt. Frank was so close. Had he lived just a few more years and kept his confidence, he would have seen his dream realized.
Why it took the span of a human lifetime for people to see through Marvin is baffling: https://www.reddit.com/r/Machi...
Anyway, modern AI takes a bit of calculus to truly understand, and some statistics. An undergraduate with a solid math foundation should be able to derive the backprop algorithm and explain it. Then there's catastrophic forgetfulness, SLAM techniques with grid and place cells... probably things beyond a typical undergraduate curriculum, but possible.
Any technician can be trained to push buttons. It might take a bit more fundamental understanding of what is going on under the covers to catch training pitfalls and prevent inefficiencies. Maybe this is what companies hiring for AI work are after.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
If I'm reading the XKCD correctly, there will be a lot of "AI" jobs for those of us that actually know the underlying math, even if it means we're closer to 41 than 15.
Indeed. Like any other field, AI will bifurcate into "tool builders" and "tool users", with the former being much better paid, and the latter being far more numerous.
To code an AI engine you may need to know how to transpose a Jacobian matrix. To use it, you just import a library.
Disclaimer: I am a lot older than 41.
I will just wait for the 1 week bootcamp AI certification class...