Career options and necessary technical skills in AI

This chapter presents issues related to the labour market in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, career opportunities in the industry, as well as AI technical skills. It is a fact that AI applications are growing globally, however the utilization of such technological competences require high specialization. The demand for skilled staff is usually covered by the global market because at national level this is not always possible, while at the same time jobs in AI technologies are estimated to skyrocket over the next decades. Today, at global level, demand is much higher than job offer, which appears to get worse in the coming years. Companies, such as Google, Amazon, Baidu, Microsoft etc. are investing billions in AI, and the AI-related job market is growing extremely rapidly. Moreover, a large number of ready AI tools, mainly in the Machine Learning (ML) field that has dominated the last decades of 21st century, offer opportunities to businesses and organizations to get involved and built machine learning solutions for their needs and customers. All of these job opportunities require specific knowledge and expertise or in other words specific technical skills, as they are referred to in this document.