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AI Engineers Hold the Best Jobs; Stanford's Benevolent Machine Push; MIT to Teach Responsible AI
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Attendees worked in a coding lab during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, Calif., in 2017. PHOTO: MICHAEL SHORT/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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AI engineer jobs ranked among the best in the U.S. Engineers for artificial intelligence systems are among the fastest-growing and best-paid job titles of 2019, reports WSJ Pro’s Sara Castellanos.
Those findings come from Indeed Inc., which considered job-posting growth between 2015 and 2018 as well as pay in coming up with its best jobs of 2019.
In-demand skills. Machine learning engineers top the Indeed list. These AI specialists had the highest rate of growth in the number of job postings—344%—between 2015 and 2018, according to Indeed. The average base salary for the role was $146,085 in 2018, up from $136,241 in 2017.
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“Whether it’s driverless cars, [Apple Inc.’s] Siri or [Amazon.com Inc.’s] Alexa, AI is becoming part of our culture and it’s certainly more common,” said Paul Wolfe, senior vice president of human resources for Indeed.
The job specs. Machine learning is the science of getting computers to act intelligently without being explicitly programmed. The field’s engineers are responsible for designing and developing machine learning systems, running tests and implementing machine learning algorithms. Growth in the number of job postings for the role was 166% between 2014 and 2017, when there were 123 postings per 1 million total jobs in 2017.
“There’s greater demand [now] and less supply. But the nice thing about it, for some of these AI jobs, is that they don’t require a four-year-degree,” Mr. Wolfe said. Some job descriptions for the role only require boot-camp training or certifications, he said.
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$1 Billion
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The amount SAS Institute Inc. plans to invest in developing its analytics platform, educate data scientists and target specific use cases, according to ZDNet.
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Fei-Fei Li is the co-director of the new Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. PHOTO: DREW KELLY/STANFORD HAI
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Stanford looks to build benevolent machines. Stanford University launched the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, an interdisciplinary hub featuring experts from a wide array of fields. Led by Stanford University computer science professor Fei-Fei Li, the pioneering AI researcher, HAI is bringing together economists, philosophers, ethicists, legal scholars and historians, reports the WSJ’s Francesco Marconi.
“Studies have shown that when diverse groups of people work on any problem, the solution is much more innovative,” says Ms. Li, who is co-director of HAI along with John Etchemendy, professor of philosophy and former Stanford University provost. Ms. Li previously served as director of Stanford’s AI Lab, vice president at Alphabet Inc.’s Google and chief scientist of AI and machine learning at Google Cloud.
The human factor. HAI is dedicated to evaluating the impact of intelligent machines on human lives, including issues such as job insecurity driven by automation, inequality fueled by gender and ethnic biases in algorithms, and AI within the health care, education and justice systems.
The goal, says Ms. Li, is to make intelligent machines “more human-centered and benevolent. And helping us, humans, solve some of the greatest problems.”
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“It’s a critical time for more social scientists and humanists to get involved in AI.”
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— Fei-Fei Li, co-director of Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
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Students show a robot during presentations at the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. PHOTO: BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS
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MIT aims to educate students on using AI responsibly. MIT President Rafael Reif a few months ago announced the Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. The college is envisioned as an interdisciplinary hub across all five of MIT’s existing schools: Engineering; Science; Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences; Architecture and Planning; and the Sloan School of Management, writes CIO Journal columnist Irving Wladawsky-Berger.
The course of education. AI is a powerful general-purpose technology capable of supporting a variety of applications in just about every discipline, profession and industry. But, attaining AI’s broad potential will require not only a continuing slew of technological innovations, but an equally important complement of application, business, economic, societal and public policy innovations. That is the important challenge being addressed by the new MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.
‘Bilingual’ graduates. Mr. Reif said in an interview that the Schwarzman College of Computing was the biggest change to the MIT structure since the 1950s. The world is now demanding a different kind of “bilingual” graduates, that is, ones who study whatever it is they want to major in—engineering, science, business, economics—but who will also learn how to use advanced computing and AI tools in the practice of their profession. The new college is intended to provide such an education by integrating computing and AI tools into all of MIT’s disciplines.
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AI will give doctors ‘superpowers.’ Clinicians shouldn’t worry that new technologies will put them out of a job, said the chief design officer for Philips, which markets AI-driven health-care tools, reports Fortune.
Philips’ Sean Carney, speaking at last week’s Fortune Brainstorm Design conference, said new technologies are being designed to give physicians “superpowers” that will allow them to provide better patient care.
Medical case. Mr. Carney said in the Chinese health system, doctors have just seconds to assess an individual’s screen results for cancer. “Really what they were doing was just random selection,” he said. “Now, imagine you’re that person with a suspect lump in your breast or your prostate—it’s pretty much Russian roulette. So what we’re able to do by introducing AI in that context is do pretty much 100% screening.”
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A worker uses a computer to control robots at Amazon's fulfillment center in Staten Island, N.Y. PHOTO: JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
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At Amazon, robots and humans get down to work. Amazon.com Inc.’s $100 million, 855,000-square-foot JFK8 fulfillment center opened last fall on New York’s Staten Island and offers an interesting peek into the factories of the future, where humans and robots work together, reports TechCrunch.
The robots include ship sorters and giant palletizer robotic arms. Robots are walled in by fences that look like indoor batting cases. Around the fence edges, Amazon employees work at pick-and-stow stations, interacting with the robots to figure out the best way to store inventory and ship items.
Worker safety is a concern. The fencing is designed specifically to keep associates safe. Employees are generally not allowed inside the enclosures, but sometimes need to attend to items that fall to the floor or robots that break down.
Employees wear what Amazon calls the Robotic Safety Vest, which includes a belt containing sensors detectable by the robot. When an employee opens the fence and walks in, they press a button on the vest that sends an alert. Robots near the worker stop what they’re doing while those at a distance slow down.
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No one wants to lose to a bot. Researchers at Cornell University found that people experienced disappointment and diminished confidence in their own abilities when beaten by robots at a monotonous and uninteresting task, reports the Cornell Daily Sun.
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New robots can pick up the pieces. Researcher at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed robots that can pick up objects of various shapes without being trained on how to handle an object they haven't seen before. After the robot maps out the shape of the object using 3D coordinates, the robot can figure out where to hang or place the object, according to an article in Endgadget.
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Nvidia Corp. has announced $99 AI computer for developers, makers and researchers. (The Verge)
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Police departments and courtrooms around the country are deploying AI to help them make criminal justices decisions, such as where police officers should patrol and whether defendants should be released on bail. (CNBC)
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