Resources for the Field of Artificial Intelligence

Get an overview of the current career opportunities in AI and how the field is expanding to new industry sectors.

The Evolution of AI

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Originally coined in the 1950s, artificial intelligence is a term used for a machine that can simulate human intelligence. Simply, AI gives computer systems the power to solve complex problems and perform tasks that are normally associated with human beings. Intersecting the components of perception, representation, recognition, reasoning, planning, learning, and optimization, AI has changed the way we live our lives and function as a society. It is said that AI will transcend from being experimental and soon become essential.

Over the past 70 years, AI has undergone several transformations and is considered a “universal field” intertwined with the era of big data and major milestones in deep learning. Where is the industry headed next? According to Longbing Cao, EIC of IEEE Intelligent Systems “AI’s fundamental and ultimate ambition remains solid and open, i.e., developing machine intelligence (MI) with intelligent machines to perceive, reason, learn, discover, optimize, act, communicate, and reflect humanly, rationally, and ethically.”

Of course, it’s no surprise that AI is developing continuously, becoming further embedded into the fabric of our lives. The applications of this technology vary and new research is discovered every day.

Where is AI Headed?

Not only is AI personal, as we utilize its powers through our daily devices and more, the technology elevates several major areas of computing. This includes areas such as healthcare, transportation systems, the energy sector, and security. 

 

Healthcare/Life Sciences

 

Transportation /Aerospace

Energy

AI in Privacy and Security

  • According to Security Magazine, there’s a crisis within cybersecurity. With cyber attacks occurring so often, they’ve become a challenge for the average human to detect and manage. Additionally, there’s a shortage of those who have the skills to do so. To combat this issue, AI is utilized to save costs while completing routine tasks, detecting threats, and quickly responding to them. Specifically, AI has had a major impact within the industrial scene now that machines are hyper-connected to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). These machines constantly generate a wealth of diverse data that require heavy analysis. This, in turn, requires advanced Cybersecurity, to help protect these systems from being breached and attacked. To ensure that these systems run smoothly, positions for security engineers, information security analysts, and AI security/perception leads are of high importance to this domain.

Ethics in AI

While AI impacts the domains mentioned above, it’s important to ensure the usage of ethics. As noted by The National AI Initiative, “To be trustworthy, AI technologies must appropriately reflect characteristics such as accuracy, explainability and interpretability, privacy, reliability, robustness, safety, and security or resilience to attacks – and ensure that bias is mitigated.”

These key characteristics ensure human dignity when organizations and businesses implement AI initiatives. According to Accenture’s 2022 Tech Vision, only 35% of global consumers trust AI and 77% think organizations must be held accountable when misusing the technology. Additionally, AI for the social good within cities is of high importance.

IEEE’s AI-Driven Innovation for Cities and People was created in effort to support responsible AI. This includes building standards for technical needs, developing a governance mechanism that scales AI systems, and distinguishing the tools needed for these actions. These efforts push the technology’s forecast towards a bright future.

AI Industry & Careers Forecast

The landscape of AI will continue to grow and develop for years to come. What does that mean exactly? According to Cao, “[We] should envisage where the gaps are in managing real world, evolving realities and their visible/invisible, occurring/nonoccurring, local/global, objective/subjective, static/dynamic, and known/unknown complexities, challenges and requirements…” Cao from “A New Age of AI: Features and Futures

The fundamental question is: how can we improve AI? Though AI has made various advances within the last 7 decades, the vision for the technology still remains open. 

According to Grand View Research, it is estimated that the global market of AI will increase in value by 38.1% within the next decade.  Various tech giants such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple Inc., and Facebook have utilized AI technology to improve their customer’s user experience. Additionally, since such companies have invested largely into the research of the technology, the market for careers within this field are expected to expand. 

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics has forecasted that jobs within the field of computer and information science are expected to increase 21% by 2031 in the United States alone. This statistic includes AI specialists, which will make up a part of the 3,300 positions that are projected to open each year. This is due to companies utilizing AI tools to better cater to their customer’s needs. There may be misconceptions of how the technology is impacting businesses, however, specialists who can create algorithms or interpret the large sets of data that make AI possible will be of high demand and are as followed.

Data Scientists

The field of data science intertwines domain expertise, programming, and statistics to develop insights from data. The work of a data scientist includes handling and processing this data in addition to translating the information reviewed and extracting meaningful insights.

Machine Learning Engineer

Design and produce AI systems that automate predictive models. Engineers within this field develop the algorithms that learn and create predictions. Though almost similar to data scientists, since they too handle large sets of data, machine learning engineers focus on creating predictive models while the data scientists interpret the data.

AI & Machine Learning (ML) Architect

In this position, engineers use research to create machine learning models in order to develop solutions for clients. They create end to end machine learning and AI pipelines, building full scale architecture. .

Business Intelligence Developer

Recognize different trends by analyzing data sets and sharing the information with decision makers of a given company. Professionals within this field organize data points and serve as a liaison between upper management and IT departments. While working between both teams, the BI Developer can determine what a corporation’s needs are.

Expert Highlights

Longbing Cao, EIC, IEEE Intelligent Systems

  • Professor Cao has been a research-only professor working on the discovery research sponsored by Australian Research Council Future Fellowship. As the founding Director of the university’s research institute Advanced Analytics Institute (now Data Science Institute), the first data science initiative in Australia, Professor Cao has been promoting data science and analytics research, education, and development for decades in both academia and industry. His primary role is to develop original, significant, and actionable AI and data science theories, algorithms, tools and applications, inspired by significant real-life challenges and gaps in the body of knowledge.

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