AI Engineer

Working Schedule
 
Artificial Intelligence Specialists work full-time, usually indoors but some work involves outdoor activities. When a program or system malfunctions, the employer may contact workers for assistance to get things running correctly again. 

Typical Duties

• AI Specialists work in a broad field, so individual duties depend on the employer and the role the worker was hired for specifically
• Some specialists work on spam blockers and plagiarism checkers 
• Others might build language translation services such as Google Translate 
• Other role-dependent typical duties can include:
• Cognitive simulation modeling
• Create applied AI programs to identify and track persons based on recognition of facial features, voice, fingerprints, gait detection, heartbeat, and other factors
• Build programs to gather and interpret data and information, spot patterns, use results to determine solutions to problems and make decisions
• Work on software to help medical professionals diagnose patients
• Enhance advice-giving chatbots
• Advance technology for finding undiscovered natural resources 
• Write programs to control (auto-pilot) unmanned vehicles for numerous purposes

 
Additional Responsibilities

• Push the envelope on creating smarter AI systems that can reason and learn and even program themselves and other AI
• Improve programs that simulate human vocal patterns
• Work on AI to assist in legal and financial sectors
• Collaborate with external clients and stakeholders
• Keep up with developments; attend professional organization events and conferences

Soft Skills
 

• Attention to detail
• Collaboration 
• Creativity
• Patience
• Goal-focused
• Highly organized
• Investigative and inquisitive
• Problem-solving skills
• Process-oriented
• Strong communications skills
• Able to explain complex issues in simpler terms

Technical Skills

• Knowledge of many computer programming languages
• Systems analysis
• Natural Language Processing
• Neural networks
• Strong math skills, including calculus, linear algebra, and statistics
• Computer science background
• Strong familiarity with cognitive science
• Familiarity with anthropology, philosophy, and psychology

• Corporations/private-sector companies
• Governmental/Military agencies
• Healthcare industry
• Higher education institutions
• Research and development centers
• Scientific organizations
• Vehicle and transportation industry

Before humanity turns over the keys of society to AI, we should ensure it works the way we intend for it to work. Above, we mentioned a few concerns related to AI ethics. But there are many more expectations that AI Specialists are held liable to meet. They’re tasked with creating programs to think like humans, however the fact is that AI operates incalculably faster than us for many functions, and can be unpredictable at times. 
 
What happens when an AI makes a mistake (or what humans consider a mistake, but is logical to the AI?). That very problem was perhaps best portrayed in 2001: A Space Odyssey, when a space vessel’s onboard AI decided the only way it could complete its programmed mission was to terminate the humans trying to abort the mission. 
 
Luckily, Artificial Intelligence Specialists have figured that one out already. These scenarios may seem like science fiction but the hypothetical problems are taken very seriously. If evil AI does take over the Earth to destroy all humans, AI Specialists will get the blame (though not for long, obviously)! 

Seriously, some of the hottest current trends are AI ethical issues. The often-mentioned Singularity is a major challenge being studied by experts who want to ensure we approach such an event very cautiously. For those who haven’t heard of it, the Singularity is a hypothetical future event at which point AI becomes so advanced we can’t control it or predict what it’ll do next. In other words, The Terminator franchise covered this topic with the fictional rise of Skynet, a military defense AI system networked into our weapons systems. It’s “self-awareness” became a Singularity event as it took control of our nuclear missiles and other machines to become an unstoppable adversary. 
 
Aside from preventing a dystopian future, other AI industry trends include increasing cybersecurity so that humans cannot hack into AI systems, the advent of AI-enabled chips, growing the connections between AI and the Internet of Things, automated machine learning, and AI in the world of cloud computing.

This likely goes without saying, but AI Specialists were probably sci-fi fans as kids. Science fiction has exposed generations to the seemingly endless possibilities of what computer programs are capable of. Although most AI doesn’t operate within a robotic host (yet), it has reached the point that many writers predicted years ago (Eugene Goostman, an AI chatbot created by three programmers in Saint Petersburg, Russia in 2001 is widely regarded to have passed the fabled Turing Test, meaning the AI could fool humans communicating with it). 
 
But AI enthusiasts must also have outstanding hard technical skills to go along with those creative, dream-filled minds. Workers in this field probably studied hard in school, did their research, formatted their papers properly, and paid attention to details. They were likely very logical and objective, results-oriented, and independent. Indeed, like many IT professionals in their youths, AI Specialists are often quite content to work alone and indoors for long periods, focused on the tasks at hand or perhaps lost in a world of code.