The world cannot have enough of India’s AI talent pool. Global tech companies, especially those dabbling with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, are looking for Indian AI Talent and are ready to pay top dollar.
India already had a massive pool of people talented in AI and ML, even before generative AI, such as ChatGPT, became popular.
However, since OpenAI practically put the term “AI” on everyone’s tongue, people, particularly software engineers, have been brushing up their skill sets and tweaking their resumes to get hired by either AI studios or by companies who are trying to figure out how to integrate AI into their workflows.
India has a massive pool of engineers, but what about AI Engineers?
According to a recent report by Nasscom-Zinnov, the current tech workforce in India stands at 47 lakh employees. However, this number is set to go down drastically for several reasons. The Nasscom report also states that India employs over 4.16 lakh people in AI and will need about 2.13 lakh more in a few years.
The current situation is such that the world looks at a worrying talent crunch regarding AI. That is why companies are willing to pay an obscene amount for anyone who can work with AI, whether they have a degree in the field or not.
Top dollar for AI talent
A case in point would be Netflix. The streaming giant recently put up a notice of hiring an AI expert who would help them monetize AI. For that position, Netflix was willing to pay the potential candidate over $900,000, plus benefits.
And it’s not just Netflix offering these ludicrous packages — Amazon, Google, and many financial investment firms on Wall Street are willing to pay up.
Consider this: Insider reports that between July 2022 and July 2023, the number of job listings for GenAI positions experienced a significant increase of 50 percent, as reported by Insider, a job search platform.
Everyone wants to get on the AI bandwagon.
Along with this increase, there has also been an increase in searches for these roles by about 12,300 percent during the same timeframe, underscoring the escalating curiosity around these opportunities.
Analytics India Magazine also found that since the introduction of ChatGPT, there has been a 21-fold increase in the number of job listings on LinkedIn that mention GPT or ChatGPT. Furthermore, this surge in job postings is not the only noticeable trend; globally, LinkedIn users are more inclined than ever to incorporate AI skills into their profiles.
The LinkedIn study that Analytics India Magazine quotes involved 25 countries and meticulously tracked 121 AI skills, revealing some significant trends.
In 2022, among the rapidly growing AI-related skills added to user profiles, the top five skills indicated the rise of generative AI.
These skills involved abilities such as question-answering, which experienced a remarkable surge of 332 percent, alongside classification and recommender systems. These trends collectively highlight the increasing prominence of generative AI in the professional landscape.
