Global business has woken up to the AI arms race, and they’re scrambling to get the expertise and talent necessary to keep up.
Every sector from manufacturing to real estate to entertainment are attempting to capture the massive potential productivity gains generative AI offers, and the bidding war has sent salaries sky-rocketing to mid-six and almost seven figures.
The Wall Street Journal reports online dating platform Hinge is seeking a vice president of artificial intelligence and offering a base salary of $332,000 to $398,000 a year.
A similar position at Upwork is being advertised with a $260,000 to $437,000 pay range, while Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is offering $340,300 a year.
“This is pure market economics,” said head of executive recruiting firm Leathwaite, Paul J. Groce, to the WSJ, “We do not magically have thousands of additional AI developers, product managers and everything else.”
Demand far outstrips talent pool
Job listings for AI-related skills have absolutely exploded. Weekly job postings for Generative AI jobs rocketed 450% from the year before according to work marketplace Upwork, and there are now 294 skills under the “AI Services” banner.
Upwork is noticing increasing demand for prompt engineers, AI content creators, machine learning and deep learning engineers, data scientists, AI chatbot developers, and professionals with model tuning and AI model integration expertise according to the company’s report.
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report predicts AI will generate 97 million new jobs, outstripping the 85 million its predicted to make obsolete.
At present, there simply aren’t enough skilled workers to meet corporate needs.
“Currently there is a widespread shortage of talent that possesses the knowledge and capabilities to properly build, fuel, and maintain these technologies within their organisations,” Bengaluru, India-based Infosys (NASDAQ:INFY) head of banking, financial services and insurance, healthcare and life sciences Mohit Josh said.
“The lack of well-trained professionals who can build and direct a company’s AI and digital transformation journeys noticeably hinders progress and continues to be a major hurdle for businesses.”
A digital skills survey by Salesforce backs that assertion up, with only 1 in 10 workers claiming to have AI skills.
It seems a global raft of upskilling will be necessary for workers to meet the demands of the new AI age.
Workers lead the upskill charge
California-based software company ServiceNow vice president of HR Service Delivery Gretchen Alarcon says the process must begin with a ground-up approach in an interview with the Society for Human Resource Management.
"We engage our employees to help design the AI-enhanced processes they will use every day, and this starts with listening and discovery to understand which existing processes need to be fixed," she said.
"After all, the people who stand to benefit the most from AI are also the ones who will know where AI is needed most."
Alarcon says this grassroots approach increases efficiency and, more importantly, "puts employees at the forefront of leading change, not being dragged along by it."