While artificial intelligence (AI) is a relatively new field for career seekers, it has given rise to several new jobs that may not have existed just a few years ago. These are not only economically lucrative, but also very future-focused jobs.
India currently has around 500,000 AI professionals and there is a demand for over 600,000 jobs in the market today, which is estimated to have the potential to skyrocket to 1 million jobs in the next 2-3 years. Here is a brief look at the various job roles in the AI era.
Prompt Engineer
Prompt engineers are experts in creating text-based prompts and cues that are presented to generative AI tools and large-scale language models. These engineers are the middlemen who create the right types of inputs to train machine learning models to provide optimal answers to questions posed by end users of these models.
level: 1 to 3 years
Average annual salary: ₹900,000-1.1 million per annum (LPA)
AI Product Manager
This role is the culmination of a series of new jobs that AI has spawned, starting with data scientists. With growing interest in creating AI-based products, AI product managers lead teams with other AI-based roles, including data engineers, data analysts, and machine learning (ML) engineers. It's a senior-level position, and the cohort is growing rapidly.
level: 2 to 5 years
Average annual salary: ₹18-20 LPA
AI Ethicist
An AI ethicist is someone who considers the ethical aspects of AI development and implementation. AI has opened up a world of new opportunities and solutions for all of humanity, but like any cutting-edge technology, it also comes with undesirable aspects. AI ethicists look for deep-rooted biases that create harm in nature or foster social discord. Typically, such a role is part of an AI team, but may also be integrated into a CSR team.
level: 2 to 5 years
Average annual salary: ₹18-20 LPA
LLM Specialist
Large-scale language modeling (LLM) experts build advanced AI models that can process and generate text that closely resembles human language in terms of grammar, meaning, and context. These models also recognize patterns and correlations within large text data sets and use them to generate content that resembles human-written content.
level: 1 to 7 years
Average annual salary: ₹30 LPA
Generation AI Engineer
A Generative AI Engineer specializes in the design, development, and maintenance of generative AI models, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT. Models built in this way can generate a wide range of human-like content, including text, images, and audio. This is also a multidisciplinary role that encompasses AI, data science, and software coding.
level: 5 to 7 years
Average annual salary: ₹18-20 LPA
Data Scientist
It is one of the most sought-after jobs in the digital era. A data scientist is someone who can look into huge amounts of data to find insights and solutions, or understand challenges at a very basic level. Data scientists create their own tools to gain solutions and insights to address specific questions or tasks. For example, data scientists can better predict future trends based on huge amounts of historical data. Most of the time, such insights remain hidden and require experts to unearth them.
level: 3 to 6 years
Average annual salary: ₹22-24 LPA
ML Engineer
This role is part of a data science team, and an ML engineer is essentially a programmer who writes software that can automate AI/ML models. ML engineers use large amounts of data to train algorithms and build large-scale systems that perform cognitive tasks and generate useful insights.
level: 2 to 5 years
Average annual salary: ₹15-18 LPA
Over the past five years, the demand for AI-related jobs in India has increased multifold, making it one of the most in-demand jobs. Several online technical education platforms are helping young working professionals upskill to capitalize on the surge in demand for tech professionals specializing in data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
While there is a common concern that AI will replace humans in many traditional roles, there is also an emerging consensus that AI will create more jobs than it will destroy. Recent World Economic Forum data suggests that number could be as high as 12 million (more than the jobs lost).
(The writer is SVP and Provost of Scaler School of Technology.)
This is the last free article.
