Skills with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and large language models are very much in demand across a variety of industries.
No, AI isn’t going to take your job. Not yet anyway. As I’ve written, the best uses of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) complement human creativity rather than supplant it. Ironically, the best large language models, or LLMs, are trained, perhaps not always legally, using the copyrighted products of human creativity. People and robots are going to peacefully coexist for the foreseeable future.
Even so, some industries are more aggressively embracing AI than others, as revealed in the newest 2022 AI Index Report from Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. During the past year, virtually every industry has increased its investments in AI-savvy people, with even higher AI-centric job postings from companies in the following industries: information (5.3%); professional, scientific, and technical services (4.1%); and finance and insurance (3.3%). If you’re worried about your job or simply want to capitalize on this trend, I have one word for you: Python.
Business leads the way
Until 2014, academia was the center of the ML universe. No more. Big business has led the AI/ML charge since 2014, and in 2022, businesses released 32 ML models while academia released just three. Academic institutions can’t keep pace with the data, CPU cycles, and money that industry brings.