As companies embrace AI, it's a job-seeker's market
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[October 15, 2018]
By Ann Saphir
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Dozens of
employers looking to hire the next generation of tech employees
descended on the University of California, Berkeley in September to meet
students at an electrical engineering and computer science career fair.
Boris Yue, 20, was one of thousands of student attendees, threading his
way among fellow job-seekers to meet recruiters.
But Yue wasn’t worried about so much potential competition. While the
job outlook for those with computer skills is generally good, Yue is in
an even more rarified category: he is studying artificial intelligence,
working on technology that teaches machines to learn and think in ways
that mimic human cognition.
His choice of specialty makes it unlikely he will have difficulty
finding work. "There is no shortage of machine learning opportunities,"
he said.
He's right.
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.

Andrew Shinn, a chip design manager at Marvell Technology Group who was
recruiting interns and new grads at UC Berkeley's career fair, said his
company has had trouble hiring for AI jobs.
"We have had difficulty filling jobs for a number of years," he said.
"It does slow things down."
“COMING OF AGE”
Many economists believe AI has the potential to change the economy’s
basic trajectory in the same way that, say, electricity or the steam
engine did.
"I do think artificial intelligence is … coming of age," said St. Louis
Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard in an interview. "This will
diffuse through the whole economy and will change all of our lives.”
But the speed of the transformation will depend in part on the
availability of technical talent.
A shortage of trained workers "will definitely slow the rate of
diffusion of the new technology and any productivity gains that
accompany it," said Chad Syverson, a professor at the University of
Chicago Booth School of Business.
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. (For a graphic, please see
https://tmsnrt.rs/2CEi4eG
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Universities are trying to keep up. Applicants to UC Berkeley's doctoral program
in electrical engineering and computer science numbered 300 a decade ago, but by
last year had surged to 2,700, with more than half of applicants interested in
AI, according to professor Pieter Abbeel. In response, the school tripled its
entering class to 30 in the fall of 2017.
At the University of Illinois, professor Mark Hasegawa-Johnson last year tripled
the enrollment cap on the school's intro AI course to 300. The extra 200 seats
were filled in 24 hours, he said.
Carnegie Mellon University this fall began offering the nation's first
undergraduate degree in artificial intelligence. "We feel strongly that the
demand is there," said Reid Simmons, who directs CMU's new program. "And we are
trying to supply the students to fill that demand."

Still, a fix for the supply-demand mismatch is probably five years out, says
Anthony Chamberlain, chief economist at Glassdoor. The company has algorithms
that trawl job postings on company websites, and their data show AI-related job
postings having doubled in the last 11 months. "The supply of people moving into
this field is way below demand," he said.
A JOB-SEEKER’S MARKET
The demand has driven up wages. Glassdoor estimates that average salaries for
AI-related jobs advertised on company career sites rose 11 percent between
October 2017 and September 2018 to $123,069 annually.
Michael Solomon, whose New York-based 10X Management rents out technologists to
companies for specific projects, says his top AI engineers now command as much
as $1000 an hour, more than triple the pay just five years ago, making them one
of the company's two highest paid categories, along with blockchain experts.
Liz Holm, a materials science and engineering professor at Carnegie Melon, saw
the increased demand first-hand in May, when one of her graduating PhD students,
who used machine learning methods for her research, was overwhelmed with job
offers, none of which were in materials science and all of them AI-related.
Eventually the student took a job with Proctor & Gamble, where she uses AI to
figure out where to put items on store shelves around the globe. "Companies are
really hungry for these folks right now," Holm said.
Mark Maybury, an artificial intelligence expert who was hired last year as
Stanley Black and Decker's first chief technology officer, agreed. The firm is
embedding AI into the design and production of tools, he said, though he said
details are not yet public.
"Have we been able to find the talent we need? Yes," he said. "Is it expensive?
Yes."
The crunch is great news for job-seeking students with AI skills. In addition to
bumping their pay and giving them more choice, they often get job offers well
before they graduate.
Derek Brown, who studied artificial intelligence and cognitive science as an
undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon, got a full-time post-graduation job offer from
Salesforce at the start of his senior year last fall. He turned it down in favor
of Facebook, where he started this past July.
(Additional reporting by Jane Lee; Editing by Greg Mitchell and Sue Horton)
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