The $335k engineering job where you don't write any code
AI generation, wherever its used, seems to lower the barriers to entry to any profession. Artists and copywriters are most obviously at risk, but software development may be the next big field to have AI take over.
AI research company Anthropic recently put out a job listing for a 'prompt-engineer' and prompt librarian. The base salary? An impressive $250k-$335k.
The job description states that the role entails figuring out "the best methods of prompting our AI to complete a wide range of tasks," and documenting the process.
While there is no confirmation that coding will be a part of the job, the position demands rudimentary coding skills. "At least basic programming and QA skills" and the ability to be "comfortable writing small python programs," are specified as requirements.
Beyond Anthropic, the biggest name in machine learning right now, OpenAI, is hiring around 1,000 engineers to make writing code via their platform ChatGPT more reliable and effective. They're willing to compensate their staff even more to do so; both research and engineering roles in applied AI at the firm can earn a salary of $370k.
That doesn't mean the days of coding have already been and gone. It will be a while until we see AI code generation widely adopted at Amazon, where the company is reportedly begging employees not to use ChatGPT after discovering proprietary code inputted into the generator had been used to train the algorithm and was appearing in responses generated for other users.
Rather than supplanting coders entirely, AI might supplant them partially. The Financial Times reports that CoPilot, an AI assistant, is in effect for Microsoft's Github division and works by suggesting lines of code when developers give it an initial prompt.
Where could we see it first in the finance space? Perhaps JPMorgan. The bank is, according to Bloomberg, far ahead of competitors when it comes to hiring "people with skills needed for AI," filing patents and deploying it into their work.
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