10/16/2018 As companies embrace AI, it's a job-seeker's market

As companies embrace AI, it's a

job-seeker's market

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-
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10/16/2018 As companies embrace AI, it's a job-seeker's market

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.

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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

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10/16/2018 As companies embrace AI, it's a job-seeker's market

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

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10/16/2018 As companies embrace AI, it's a job-seeker's market

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

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10/16/2018 As companies embrace AI, it's a job-seeker's market

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.

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
Slideshow (2 Images)
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
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10/16/2018 As companies embrace AI, it's a job-seeker's market

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.
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10/16/2018 As companies embrace AI, it's a job-seeker's market

”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
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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