China is experiencing a shortage of AI workers, as competition heats up

Here’s the irony; AI, in most cases eliminates the need for manpower. Yet, in order to have AI, we need manpower. By that, we mean people to help develop the AI. Well, China is experiencing a shortage of AI workers, as Chinese competition is heating up in the country, according to a new report.

AI is the new big deal across the tech industry, and major companies are all trying to be at the top of the AI game. Amazon is working on a new AI model named Olympus. It’s set to have more parameters than GPT-4. Over in China, the story is much the same. A ton of giant companies including the former contender for “biggest smartphone company” Huawei.

There is a shortage of AI workers in China

It’s true that there are a lot of people in China, but a niche field is a niche field. With the revolution of generative AI many of China’s biggest tech firms are investing in building up their AI technology, and this investment involves swooping up talent to develop AI technology.

The biggest companies investing in AI tech are ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company), Meituan (food delivery service), Xiaohongshu (social media site), Alibaba, and Huawei. These were the top five tech firms to hire en masse for jobs between January and August this year. It’s in order from most to least. The sixth and seventh places belong to Baidu and Tencent, respectively.

The two positions that people are hiring for the most are algorithm development (46% of hires) and natural language processing (11% of hires).

With the increase in demand comes an increase in pay. The average salary for an AI worker rose about 6% to reach about 46,518 Yuan (about $6,688).

Companies aren’t only looking for people to develop AI, but they also want folks to study AI. There’s a high demand for people who are able to study chatbots like chatGPT. The demand is high and so is the pay. Researchers average about 66,000 yuan per month (about $9,065.44).

Where is all of the hiring happening?

At the top of the pack, we have Beijing which accounted for about 36% of the hiring. The rest of the cities are Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, and Guangzhou. These cities make up about 80% of the hiring.

As the AI race heats up, we expect to see the demand rise while the available workers will fall.