Demand for AI "Surging"

[dx4100]

As a maths bod, I can reasonably confidently say that they're looking for people with advanced skills, people that have much more than an understanding of the fundamentals (e.g., linear algebra) and have experience of applying AI in the real world. I think the "unicorns" that you're referring to are sought in all disciplines, not just AI. But, yes, universities are an obvious place to recruit (the staff, that is).

Yeah that course started going beyond linear algebra and it was as that point I realised this was never going to be me.

[willendure]

If you want to do AI, learn Python and go do a mathematics degree :P

I have a Masters degree in AI!

[willendure]

I have a Masters degree in AI!

To give some more context... I studied Computer Science at Cambridge University graduating in 1997, then did the Masters in AI at Edinburgh University finishing in 1998. There was virtually no opportunity, in this country at least, to walk into an AI job at that time. The only real AI employer in the UK back then was probably IBM (Watson) at their research centre, although I am sure there were other things too, probably with a military focus.

Spent 15 years doing Java, mostly enterprise application nonsense, but occasionally I got to do some fun stuff too - like ultra low latency financial trading and so on. Spent about 5 years being a solutions architect, but Covid really put a stop to that as no-one was investing in new projects for a while. Its coming back a bit now, but investment is still low in the UK.

Supposedly we are now reaching a stage where the fundamental research in AI, whilst obviously continuing and requiring the sort of mathematicians that have very large foreheads, is reaching fruition. That is, where ordinary mortals can begin to engage with it and build applications, although I would still say that this requires a lot of brains and hard work to figure out.

The sort of skills that are hard to come by and in demand. Hard to come by and in demand usually suggests that a company might have to reach out and find a suitable contractor to suppliment their in-house skill set. Except there does not seem to be any demand. Which makes me wonder...

Has the opportunity already been captured by silicon valley start ups? The tech industry has certainly become ever more centralised.

Is it more normal for companies to acquire the AI skill set they need as in-house permanent employees?

Is it just that the demand is still to come?

Or is there something fundamentally different about this tech cycle as compared to Java, the Cloud, DevOps etc, that means the demand will never materialise into high paying contract rates?

[dsc]

Damn I really need to put that "neural network to recognise 16-seg display characters" I coded up back at uni on my CV

In reality though I doubt you can do a course on it and walk into a highly paid job, just like a course isn't enough to walk into a highly paid devs job. Yeah you might be smart, but you need proper hands-on experience and in this case academic background as well I'd say. Besides you'd most likely lure that talent in on perm jobs as I'm sure there's such a race to get a break-through in pretty much anything AI, that the risk of having a temp bod doing it would be too high.

[willendure]

So, I am actually currently working in a contract outside ir-35 doing AI stuff with language models and python and lang-chain and so on. I started out doing some work for the same company as a UI developer. Then segwayed into taking on a new AI project for them. I was the obvious person to pick that up due to my background in AI all the way back in 1998, I was able to pick up how these things work quite quickly after doing a bit of research and reading. I am currently building an AI, but not starting from machine learning point, using LLMs as foundational models and consuming the tool sets that are available in Python land to work with them. I should also get the opportunity to iterate on this work, as its going to take a lot to refine it to the point of being good enough to show to the end client. Its interesting, it is also difficult.

So I am expecting to get some valuable learning and hands on experience in the generative-AI era. I keep an eye on the job market though, because its always good to think about what skills are in demand when picking a direction to go in.

For example, I see quite a few well paying DevOps jobs, it particularly seems to pay quite well. I recently went for an architect role doing a cloud re-platforming since I have the AWS solutions architect certification.

AI is definitely interesting, but I have reached a stage in life where well paying but not particularly mind-bending roles in infrastructure have their appeal too. I know its not sexy, but I do still find the sheer grandady-of-the-cloud scale of AWS an inspiring thing. I even like putting money into my pension these days...

So really, this is me wondering what skill sets to focus on from an outside ir-35 contractors perspective with an eye on the money, or trying to divine where the demand is shifting to.

[willendure]

Damn I really need to put that "neural network to recognise 16-seg display characters" I coded up back at uni on my CV

I did one in uni days of making a simulation with creatures in it that had to learn how to survive by finding food and water and avoiding predators. Used genetic programming to evolve nueral nets that controlled them. This was all run on an Intel 486 DX box with 1Meg of RAM. There were graphics, but you could also pause the graphics to save on CPU and let it complete the neural net number crunching a bit faster.

[Fraidycat]

Neural nets don't require much in the way of coding. Telsa replaced 300,000+ lines of custom C++ for self driving with a neural net a tiny fraction of that size in terms of code size. The logic/intelligence is really now in the neural net weightings and are probably much larger than the C++ code base was, but those weightings are just data files, not code.

[hairymouse]

I have a Masters degree in AI!

Except there does not seem to be any demand. Which makes me wonder...

Every company I've worked at recently has been spewing BS about using AI, sometimes even falsely claiming that their products use AI somehow. At the same time, I've see an entire Data Science team laid off with immediate effect. Nobody wants to spend any money on this when they can just talk about with all the latest buzzwords for free.

[Fraidycat]

There does seem to be a high hurdle to pay for the hardware.

AI startup companies in silicon valley are raising $100million+. But a good chunk of that goes to Nvidia for GPUs.

Companies in the UK dont want to spend that kind of money. And we don't have $Trillion dollar Big tech companies here in the UK nor the big VC firms with that kind of cash to splurge on high risk startups.

[willendure]

Every company I've worked at recently has been spewing BS about using AI, sometimes even falsely claiming that their products use AI somehow. At the same time, I've see an entire Data Science team laid off with immediate effect. Nobody wants to spend any money on this when they can just talk about with all the latest buzzwords for free.

Ha, yeah, thats funny. I totally agree. In a way thats how I ended up taking on this current AI project, because every time AI came up people were spouting all kinds of tulipe about it. So I thought to myself, I'd better get involved because this lot really have no clue. Even now, the product owner, development manager, etc. still talking about it like they are the man, and me trying to get on with it and sometimes worrying about the really difficult problems we are going to have to solve (that no-one is talking about).

I think its true the lack of demand right now is that businesses still have a long way to go to even understand what AI is and what it might be able to do for them, particularly how it might help them make money.