With a monthly salary of 60,000, which AI positions are robbing people?

Question

Source: "Deep Burning" (ID: shenancaijing), author: Jin Yufan

Image credit: Generated by Unbounded AI tools

What is the hottest topic in 2023? What is the most discussed topic among professionals during this time?

There is no doubt that it is the emergence of ChatGPT and the technological progress of AI. Of course, the words that have the most impact on people in the workplace are, "AI replaces humans", "1 billion workers are revolutionized"...

ChatGPT has brought us into the era of AI 2.0. AI is indeed affecting many industries in a way beyond our expectations. The two major topics derived from this are, who can get on this AI express train? Whose jobs will be "killed" by AI?

Recently, Shenran Live Studio invited Bao Aile, co-founder and CMO of Lagou Recruitment, and Liang Gongjun, founder of Haina AI and former Microsoft technical consultant, to talk about "AI competition, who is the most sought-after?" A topic launched an in-depth dialogue.

Lagou Recruitment, where Bao Aile works, recently released the "2023 First Quarter AIGC Talent Supply and Demand Report", which intuitively reflects the most sought-after positions and salary increases in this round of AI competition from the data level. Specifically, the demand for AIGC talent positions increased by 42% month-on-month in March this year, of which 25% of AIGC algorithm engineer positions have a monthly salary of more than 68K.

Liang Gongjun used to be a Microsoft technical consultant and invested in many AI+ companies. At present, Haina AI, which he leads, has provided AI interview services for more than 5,000 large and medium-sized enterprises.

The two guests provided some directional suggestions from the two perspectives of talent market and technology development.

Quick Facts:

The city with the largest demand for AI-related occupations is Beijing, and the most sought-after occupations are algorithm engineers and AI product managers.
Within half a year to a year after a company announces to develop a general-purpose large-scale model, the demand for employment may surge; companies engaged in application development in vertical fields already have a large demand for employment.
In general large-scale model companies, interdisciplinary talents who combine academic research and engineering delivery are the most scarce.
The so-called 35-year-old crisis in the Internet industry will be self-defeating in the AI 2.0 industry, especially in the To B field.
In the next five to ten years, AI 2.0 will "support" tens of millions of people like the mobile Internet in the past ten years.
Now is the AI technology dividend period. If you want to get on the car, the next six months to one year is the window period.
The trend of "replacing people with AI" is penetrating from head companies to waist and tail companies at a faster speed.

The following is the live recording, edited by Shenran:

01 AI competition: starting from Beijing, starting from the "big factory"

**Shen Ran: Does the AI Robbery War really exist? To what extent does the general trend of AI affect the employment market? **

Bao Aile: Judging from the recruitment statistics of Lagou, the AI competition is more focused on the recruitment of technical talents, such as CV algorithm engineers, recommendation algorithm engineers, and NLP algorithm engineers.

Let's look at industry needs first. Among the five industries with the largest demand for AIGC jobs, the first is "artificial intelligence", followed by the field of content and short videos, and the rest are financial industry, enterprise services and data services, and intelligent manufacturing. **

Look at the city again. **The city with the greatest demand for AIGC positions is Beijing, followed by Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. **

There are indeed many high-paying positions in the AIGC field. For example, the monthly salary of CV algorithm engineer, recommendation algorithm engineer, and NLP algorithm engineer positions is close to 60k for 75%; 25% of AIGC algorithm engineer positions have a monthly salary exceeding 68K; AIGC vertical products The monthly salary of the manager, the 75th percentile reaches 59k, which is much higher than the salary level of other product manager positions.

Of course, the recruitment demand for these technical talents is not a short-term surge, but a long-term stable existence, and the requirements for senior talents and the salary level provided are very high. It can be said that it is the work of a small number of people. .

What we have observed at the front line of the industry is that some projects that investors are optimistic about, and companies that train Chinese local large-scale models, are indeed very popular. **They feel like the mobile Internet in 2012, using a week as a year. On the whole, the companies currently recruiting AI-related talents are still dominated by core manufacturers, and there are also sporadic top companies.

**Shen Ran: Has the company that makes large models started to snatch people? What is the difference in the talents that companies of different magnitudes grab? **

**Liang Gongjun:**There are currently about 30 domestic companies that make general-purpose large models. **The first 10 or 50 people in these companies' teams may choose old colleagues or internal recommendations. After 50 people, they may recruit product managers and application layer engineers from outside. **

Under the current market environment, these companies have obtained the most precious funds, ranging from tens of millions of RMB to hundreds of millions of dollars. So you can pay attention to these companies. They may have a large number of employment needs within six months to one year after they announce the general-purpose large-scale model. However, it is more an opportunity for scientists and top engineering experts to make low-level large-scale models.

**Companies that do vertical field application development now have a large number of employment needs. **Because these companies were all established in the past three to five years, they have gone through the process from 0 to 1, but they have also encountered some difficulties. Now in the 2.0 era, they will usher in explosive development. I believe that China will be able to "support" 10 million or 20 million people in the next five or ten years, just like the mobile Internet in the past ten years. **

**Shen Ran: In this battle for talent, will more technical talents go to big factories? Will it be bad for startups? **

**Liang Gongjun: **First of all, the environment in recent years has made many people feel that "big factories may not be stable, and small factories may not be unstable", and many people do not have such a strong motivation to take risks. In addition, the current situation of AI is still unclear. These two factors have not yet caused a large-scale flow of talents to large factories.

But after half a year or a year, when the situation becomes clearer, I believe that more and more top talents will flock to representative companies of AI 2.0.

A major variable behind this is whether ** China's own large model can catch up with GPT-3.5, even if it catches up to 80% of the progress, it can also promote large-scale commercial applications in many scenarios. **

02 People who understand both technology and applications are the most sought-after

**Shenran: In terms of employment, what kind of AI talents do domestic companies mainly lack? **

**Liang Gongjun: **Looking at the resumes of the first 100 members of the OpenAI team, we will find that the people who **really played a huge role are all compound experts. They have a common characteristic: they can both do research and output Paper (thesis), and can be delivered to the project. **

Popular translation means that it can not only understand the principles of technology, but also consider various application scenarios and solve engineering problems. This kind of talent is the rarest and most expensive in the general model company.

**Shenran: In the new wave of AI, are there any new jobs created? **

**Bao Aile: **Many companies in China are doing pre-training large models. I believe there are some basic positions that still require people to participate, such as data cleaning and data labeling related to the AI industry. But it's definitely not mainstream.

**The more mainstream and competitive positions are algorithm engineers, AIGC product managers, AI product managers, etc. ** For example, the product manager among them must choose a subdivision field and have a deep understanding of the industry's usage scenarios.

**Shen Ran: In the era of AI 2.0, will people with deeper qualifications become more and more sought-after? Does the so-called 35-year-old crisis no longer exist? **

Bao Aile: This is indeed a new change in the AIGC field and past technical positions. In the past, we often said that there is a threshold of 35 years old for technical posts, but judging from the age distribution of AIGC technical talents, talents over 30 or even 40 years old account for a large proportion. I believe that there are now a large number of experienced practitioners who are leading the current technological change.

Liang Gongjun: It depends on the B-side and C-side. My judgment is that, compared with the past 20 years, the AI 2.0 era has a very big difference. Before **, the To C field was developed first, and then penetrated into the To B field. Today, the To C and To B fields are developing simultaneously. **

In the field of To C, it is still the wave of people who are most sensitive to consumer perception.

Great changes will take place in the To B field. In my opinion, To B field will have better cash flow. Because in the context of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, larger companies are more willing to spend money on AI. To get B-end customers to pay the bill, AI talents need to have a good understanding of the AI base and have rich industry experience.

One of the changes brought about by this is that in the past, there was a 35-year-old phenomenon in the To C field, and after 35 years old, it was not popular, but in the To B field, mature practitioners over 35 years old are more needed. Have a deeper understanding, have a deeper understanding of the industry, and be more patient with customers. So 35 years old+ can also find their "second spring".

03 Technical talents, do you want to "get in the car" now?

**Shenran: From the perspective of the bottom layer of technology, what is the difference between this round of AI wave and the past? **

**Liang Gongjun: **Technology that can really have a major impact on human society has a very long maturity cycle, often 30 or even 40 or 50 years. AI is one such technology.

Microsoft has been conducting AI research since the early 1990s, and it has been 30 years since then. In the past few decades, we can call it the 1.0 era of AI.

On November 30, 2022, OpenAI trained the GPT-3.5 large model, and released ChatGPT for the first time, which means that AI has entered the 2.0 era, and a single-point application that benefits the public ushered in a real blooming. **

Although AI was also developing in the past, it has not ushered in a real explosion. For example, In the past, many customers purchased AI products out of a "sense of technology" gimmick, and it took three to five months to find out that they still needed to hire special people to "serve" AI. Because of poor reliability and validity and ineffective effects, customers are unwilling to renew for a long time.

With the open source of many new underlying bases in foreign countries and China, various C-end and B-end application scenarios have emerged on a large scale. In the past six months, new applications have been launched almost every day, and AI has finally become a technology available to everyone. .

Those of us who really do technology are still very excited, because this may be a major opportunity that is rare in a lifetime. Like myself, since the release of ChatGPT, for two or three months, I watched various new technologies and developments every night, and I was so excited that I couldn't sleep.

**Shenran: Will the trend of To B companies grabbing AI talents become more obvious? **

**Liang Gongjun:In the current environment, the larger the company, the more stable it is. Of course, enterprises are also worried about missing out on the big trend of AI, so they are also making some arrangements, for example, adding more people with AI background to the IT department; increasing the budget for purchasing AI systems internally.

**Shenran: In this round of AI trend, which type of company are you more optimistic about? **

**Liang Gongjun:**Whether it is a general-purpose large-scale model at the bottom layer or a large-scale vertical model, the competition is nothing more than the key elements of computing power, algorithms, data, and cloud infrastructure. One of the biggest barriers to entry is data. Whoever has high-quality industry data can gain greater advantages. The advantage of Chinese companies is that in such a unified market as China, there is a huge advantage in the amount of data.

In terms of the underlying large model, there is still a huge gap between us and OpenAI in the United States and its competing companies, but whether it is Tencent, Ali, Baidu, or Huawei, they are all striving to catch up, and they need more encouragement and applause.

As for the industry model of vertical scenarios, the industry should have more confidence. We believe that it is very likely to repeat the development of the mobile Internet in the past ten years, that is, in the next three to five years, it will rank in the top ten or top twenty. Many AI 2.0 vertical scene companies will come from China. **

**Shenran: For those who have a certain technical background and want to take the AI 2.0 train, do you suggest joining now or waiting? **

**Liang Gongjun: Looking at it from the perspective of a bystander, if you have a firm judgment, you or your family have a relatively strong ability to resist risks, you might as well make up your mind to "get in the car" when most people wait and see. **Of course, for the vast majority of people, the best choice is to first ensure that their position is stable.

**Bao Aile: **I think for students who are concerned about AI opportunities, the cruel point is that **if you have the opportunity to participate, you may already be in it. These people are technical talents in the industry ; If you don't have the opportunity to participate, then you may have to wait a little longer to develop to the application level to see if there are any employment needs related to your past work experience.

04 "Replace people with AI", some bosses have already started

**Shen Ran: Let’s talk about the boss and the company in detail. Under the general trend of AI, has the boss’s employment strategy adjusted? **

**Bao Aile:**The recruiter can be summarized into three states.

The first type of boss, ** is also the first wave of people who eat crabs. They have already started to cut unnecessary people and quickly apply AI **. For example, some game companies have laid off the artist team and turned to AI tools to create value for the company.

The second type of bosses are willing to embrace new changes, but instead of laying off employees first, they adjust the organizational structure, hoping to lead the team to accelerate learning how to apply AI. As I know, there is a company that has formed an AI brain team. The point of view of this type of boss is that the future team will be like AI, like jellyfish, first need a brain, and then stretch out countless tentacles. Tentacles are not really important, but the brain needs to be smart enough. **

The third category is the majority at the bottom of the remaining pyramid, which has not changed at all. Because the concept of AIGC is relatively hot in the new technology and Internet circles, but it has not penetrated into a wide range of traditional industries, and it is too early to talk about the application of AI.

**Shenran: Is there a trend for companies to replace humans with AI? **

**Liang Gongjun: **The idea of replacing people with AI has been discussed for many years. This trend is indeed accelerating now, and it is penetrating from head companies to waist companies and tail companies.

The fastest responders are more leading companies, such as Wal-Mart and SF Express among the world's top 500 companies. The emergence of ChatGPT is equivalent to a market education for these leading companies, allowing them to consider using AI to improve efficiency faster. The cycle of converting customers like us has been greatly shortened. However, most waist companies are not very urgent about AI cognition and actions.

**Shenran: Which industries are already replacing humans with AI or machines? **

**Liang Gongjun: **As mentioned in the "14th Five-Year Plan" employment promotion plan, the more "simple and repetitive work links and dangerous, heavy and dirty jobs", the easier it is to be replaced by AI or greatly improved by AI.

The operational data of Haina AI also reflects this trend of talent migration.

First of all, compared with the same period last year, the amount of labor employed in the manufacturing industry has indeed dropped significantly. Second, after the epidemic, the mid-to-high-end service industry is recovering rapidly. For example, the recruitment volume of Wal-Mart and SF Express has increased significantly compared to the same period last year. That is to say, the demand for basic blue-collar workers like assembly line workers will decrease in the future, and the trend of replacing people with machines is accelerating, and the released labor force will quickly migrate to the mid-to-high-end service industry. **

05 How can non-technical talents reduce AI anxiety?

**Shenran: So far, is the demand for AI-related positions soaring, is it still continuing or is it stabilizing? **

Bao Aile: The salaries of these positions did not rise overnight, but because the topic of AI has attracted a lot of attention, more people have noticed, "So they make so much money."

However, technical talents are also stratified. Some are leading the trend, and some are moving bricks at the bottom. The high-end AI research and development talents have always been the best group of technical talents in the industry.

I just saw a netizen say in the comment area, "It turns out that the income gap between everyone starts when the arts and sciences are divided into classes." I think this is the case. When we look at the overall salary of the Internet industry, technical talents have always been higher than other positions.

**Shen Ran: Do Internet people still have a chance to "get in the car"? **

**Liang Gongjun:**I think that for people who used to work on the Internet and mobile Internet, and fresh graduates who want to use AI, AI 2.0 is a major opportunity that comes once in a few decades. I suggest that we can openly pay attention to AI 2.0, especially the opportunities of vertical scenarios.

**If you want to "get in the car", take advantage of the current technology bonus period. Because the industry will use the new AI 2.0 technology to redo almost every life scene and industry scene. **

**Shen Ran: As a liberal arts student with no technical background, I am anxious about AI trends. What advice do you have? **

Bao Aile: This kind of anxiety may not be caused by AI, but more from too many external changes, and your predictability of your career future will be reduced.

The only way to relieve anxiety is to make yourself a relatively top talent no matter what industry and position you are in. If you can be in the top 10% or top 15% compared with your peers and peers, then you don’t have to worry, because no matter how the industry changes, even if AI completely “kills” the entire career, then you As a leader, you must be the first to be noticed when you go to change lines. **

Liang Gongjun: Just like the emergence of electricity, it is bound to make human beings migrate from basic jobs to higher-end jobs. With the advent of AI, many people will think "what do people do?" In fact, there are still many jobs that are warm, emotional, and require creativity, such as tutors in the high-end service industry, elderly care industry, and so on.

For example, I have been using ChatGPT for about half a year. I ask it some questions, and it can help me write a "draft", but I still need to reorganize it. It can't deliver a really high-quality article.

**Shen Ran: Finally, I ended today’s live broadcast with a question from the audience. What type of talent is the most sought-after now? How do non-technical people become such people? **

**Liang Gongjun: **Don’t be blown in different directions by different winds, be sure to mark the "coordinates" of your life, choose a field, and accumulate in a ten-year cycle, I believe that if you If you can become an expert in your own field, big or small, then all new technologies are just your tools. At the same time, keep an open mind, embrace new tools, new technologies, and use them more in your work.

Bao Aile: First, no matter what industry you are in, you must be keen on learning new technologies, have some basic understanding of human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence, and be able to learn quickly. Second, your experience with your industry is invaluable. No matter how smart AI is, it must be applied to the real world in the end. It needs to serve customers and create value, rather than creating a new world from scratch.

There is no need to panic or worry, the final long-term winner must have a relatively stable mentality. **The tide of AI is bound to come. When it comes to your industry, the test is whether you can become a person who can apply this tool faster and better. **

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