Artificial Intelligence is quickly becoming the next big “industrial revolution”, both in this country and around the globe. If you are an AI developer, this could be a “gold rush” for some great job opportunities. Those who gain experience in Artificial Intelligence today will be the AI leaders of tomorrow. At Media Jobs we suggest that if you want to get in on the ground floor of the growing demand for jobs in artificial intelligence, now is the time. Many of the largest companies including Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple are quickly and steadily acquiring startups in the artificial intelligence space to get a head start towards incorporating AI into all their products.

(Article by Rachel Cardway)

From Games to Customer Service

You may have heard about the growing trend in chatbots, particularly with Facebook Messenger. Bots are being launched left and right on Messenger and other messaging platforms for a variety of reasons, from enabling consumers to order their fast food through messaging to eventually replacing most of the staff at customer service call centers. While some of these functions are simply query services that don’t require extra “thinking”, many companies and AI developers are betting big on the advances being made in AI to replace human interaction in a variety of fields.

It was all the way back in 1997 that IBM’s Deep Blue computer beat world champion Gary Kasparov in chess. Recently a program developed by a British AI company called DeepMind Technologies beat the world champion in a board game called “Go”. Google acquired DeepMind Technologies in 2014. The Big G also acquired DNNresearch in 2013, another deep learning and neural network startup whose technology reportedly gave Google’s image search feature a huge leap forward. Amazon, Yahoo, Apple, and Facebook are among the other tech giants that have been gobbling up AI software developers in rapid succession, with four major acquisitions in the first half of 2016 already.

An Artificial Mind for Every Purpose

Joining the ranks of the acquirers this year is Salesforce, which has made two of the four acquisitions to date in 2016. It’s not hard to see how AI is being brought in to almost any imaginable field, from CRM, to customer service, to online commerce, consumer tech, search, and much more. All of the past science fiction movies that depicted us interacting with software just as we would any human is quickly being born out in reality. Regardless of your stance on the merits or dangers of artificial intelligence, what is crystal clear is that for the job market it promises massive new opportunities, at least from the developer side of things.

CB Insights reported back in April that there have been 21 major acquisitions in artificial intelligence in the last 3 years, and chances are this space is just getting warmed up. Twitter just announced their own AI startup acquisition. If the pace continues we’ll probably start to see many universities expanding their offerings in this area as the next generation will likely grow up with AI as much a part of their lives as digital streaming has been for the current generation of kids. And those who choose now to pursue a career in artificial intelligence will be part of a huge wave of job opportunities that drive the future of technology and society itself.

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