Workers are becoming wealthy as a result of the AI revolution, but others are losing their jobs

While governments and top tech executives debate whether artificial intelligence has the potential to spark a global conflict, the individuals developing the technology are engaged in a wage war.

According to job board Adzuna, the popularity of AI platforms like ChatGPT indicates that AI experts can ask for roughly double their income in 2023.

Even when well-known major companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon shed hundreds of thousands of positions due to declining demand and rising expenses, hiring for workers with machine learning and computer science degrees remains strong.

Companies of all sizes are fighting tooth and nail to keep top AI talent, sending salaries even higher as demand for qualified workers threatens to surpass supply.

Amazon’s London job posting offers up to $260,000 (£211,000) for a senior applied scientist with a focus on generative AI – the same technology that underpins ChatGPT.

Google is hiring a machine learning engineer in San Francisco, with a starting salary of up to $263,000 plus bonuses, equity (shares), and benefits.

If you have the perfect combination of talents and professional experience, you can walk into a high-paying US job and never have to worry about the cost of bread again.
According to Josh Brenner, CEO of job portal Hired, competition on both sides of the Atlantic is leading to “increased compensation for these professionals” as organizations compete for the finest and brightest personnel. “Despite the volatility in the tech industry,” he continues, “AI and machine learning engineers, including those specializing in natural language processing, are still in high demand and earn higher salaries on average than standard software engineers.”

Economic factors have played a significant role in the gold rush. Despite persistently high inflation, optimistic investors have increased the value of companies perceived to have a competitive advantage in AI and related fields.

The S& P 500 stock index gained nearly a full percentage point in one day this week due to a favourable update from Nvidia, which manufactures the computer circuitry that powers AI.

Following unexpectedly large sales of its AI-optimized A100 and V100 processors, the California-based company’s share price more than doubled to $380 this week. According to Bloomberg, the repercussions propelled the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index up 2.5 percent.

That, together with the chatbot’s remarkable powers, has elevated the platform’s creator OpenAI to the rank of a household name – and opened the minds of tech employees to the possibility of working on AI.

The effect on wages is obvious. According to Adzuna, an AI engineer in the UK could command an average pay of £48,159 in April last year; by April 2023, that average had nearly doubled to £82,860, while data scientists could command an average of roughly £70,000.

Meanwhile, Adzuna discovered that machine learning experts who were promised roughly £60,500 last July are now being enticed with wages of £93,750 in the first three months of 2023.

According to reports, the debut of ChatGPT generated a flood of job applications, putting more upward pressure on salaries as recruiters competed to bring on the finest individuals.

Brenner from Hired adds, “Machine learning engineers in the UK earn an average salary of £92,000, which is approximately 9 percent higher than the average salary of standard software engineers, which is £83,000.”

Workday’s UK and Ireland vice president, Daniel Pell, notes several expert projections predicting the UK’s AI sector will be valued at hundreds of billions of pounds by 2033.

That kind of success cannot be achieved unless the sector seizes the finest talent, according to Pell, but bringing in the most qualified people from outside is not always the best approach for companies to achieve this.

“Shifting towards a skills-based approach can help business leaders avoid the costly exercise of recruiting,” adds Pell.

Smaller businesses, on the other hand, are finding it difficult to compete with the big finances of Big Tech and other established industries.

According to Jan Wolter, managing director of Applause, a business that evaluates and trains AI algorithms, finding the appropriate people with the right combination of talents is difficult.

“This is still a nascent space,” Wolter continues, “and it’s difficult to determine whether a candidate has the necessary experience in AI and [machine learning] modelling.”

“Because someone with a background in data science is more likely than someone with a pure AI background, you should hire for skill sets rather than specific experience.” So, while recruitment is competitive, it is also highly selective.”

AI’s increased pressure may not continue forever. While coders and computer scientists may comfortably enter the top 1% of earners in the UK, those at the other end of the scale may find themselves out of job.

BT announced in mid-May that it was eliminating 10,000 jobs in order to replace them with AI, as part of a larger round of 55,000 layoffs. According to industry sources, whoever trains the AI software to replace unemployed humans may be designing their own professional demise.

According to Connor Axiotes of the Adam Smith Institute, the potential of advanced AI to make its own judgements may result in humans being replaced from the labour market entirely.

Such advancements, he claims, “have the potential to make this technology unusually likely to replace both cognitive and physical labour, as human labour’s comparative advantage in brain power becomes less apparent.”

As a result, if technological improvements continue at their current rate, humans will have little “comparative advantage” against AI “with which to earn a proper market wage,” according to Axiotes.

There are some indications that the AI gold rush is slowing. According to some unnamed recruitment industry insiders, typical AI salaries may be declining as chatbots like ChatGPT grow more widespread in everyday life.

For the time being, a doctorate in computer science or machine learning is undoubtedly the way to a high wage and a comfortable lifestyle, even if it comes at the expense of their colleagues’ roles.