According to the latest global research from Stack Overflow, US software developers specializing in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) engineering seem to have gained significantly more than their colleagues in other countries.
A survey of 49,000 responses from 177 countries found that in the US, the median salary for AI and ML engineers is $189,500 per year, more than $50,000 above the global median.
The UK AI and ML developers who participated in the survey earned $149,756, almost $40,000 less than those working in the US. In France, there is a high salary gap, with the median annual salary for French AI and ML engineers at $104,413. In India, AI and ML engineers can expect to earn just $17,434 a year.
47% of developers in the survey said they use AI tools every day, but Stack Overflow reported positively distrust (33%) of the accuracy of AI tools (46%) than more developers trust.
The survey found that experienced developers were the most cautious, with the lowest “strong confidence” rate (2.6%) and the highest “very distrust” rate (20%).
A majority (54%) of 11,202 developers who answered questions about how to use AI in their workflows say their primary use is to search for answers. Use only a third (35%) to generate content or synthetic data using AI, while 33% use it to learn new concepts.
Another main use is about documentation, with 31% saying they use AI to document their code, and a quarter using AI to create or maintain documents. About a fifth of developers voted using AI to learn about debugging and codebase.
However, based on the responses of 31,476 developers, the biggest complaint (66%) among those who voted is dealing with “almost correct but not perfect AI solutions.”
In the future, three-quarters of developers surveyed will say that the main reason they still seek help is when they don't trust the answers provided by the AI. According to Stack Overflow, this positions human developers as the ultimate arbitrator of quality and accuracy.
“We're looking forward to seeing you in the future,” said Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO of Stack Overflow. “AI is a powerful tool, but it can be a serious risk of misinformation or lack complexity or relevance.
“Today, an approach that is leaning heavily towards using reliable and responsible data from a curated knowledge base by using AI that expeditiously exchange content that can be viewed online is important.
