The profession of the future
Artificial Intelligence Brings New Professions and Evolves Existing Ones
The development of artificial intelligence (AI) not only advances existing professions but also creates new ones. One of the most unique professions currently is that of a prompt engineer – a specialist in designing prompts and interpreting responses for AI systems. To work in such a position, you need to know how to precisely frame a request to an AI model and understand how it generates appropriate responses. If this sounds at least somewhat interesting, you might like to hear that salaries in the USA range from $125,000 to $335,000. Read more about one of the professions of the future:
What Does a Prompt Engineer Do?
A prompt engineer is a role that develops and refines AI models to better respond to user requests. The work techniques resemble training models but are done by providing step-by-step instructions called “prompts.”
These professionals work with large AI language models like Chat GPT, which generate responses resembling human speech. Their work focuses on posing textual questions to the model and adjusting the responses. Here are some tasks a prompt engineer performs:
- Optimizing language models using techniques and tools;
- Writing texts to test the AI system for errors or hidden capabilities;
- Reviewing and analyzing databases to identify trends in expression and develop new types of questions;
- Maintaining documentation for the models;
- Training models on new types of data and monitoring performance to identify areas for improvement;
- Collaborating with data and software engineers to integrate systems into applications and systems.
Writing code is not 100% of the job, but knowledge of programming languages is necessary for managing databases, model development, and collaborating with other team roles.
How to Learn Prompt Engineering?
To start, deep programming knowledge is not required. By attending a short training course on the topic, you can begin performing various smaller tasks. Once you learn the basics, you’ll need to:
- Learn programming fundamentals for database management and understanding basic concepts. Python is a very useful language for this profession;
- Learn natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to implement model training and optimization;
- Practice developing questions and using techniques to adapt the model to respond to certain standards.
A Job Worth $335,000?
Anthropic is a company specializing in developing general AI systems and language models, with Google having invested nearly $400 million. They have open positions for prompt engineers offering up to $335,000 annually.
The requirements for this position include:
- Excellent communication skills, a desire to teach technical concepts, and the ability to create high-quality documentation;
- A high level of familiarity with the architecture and activities of large AI language models;
- Basic programming skills and the ability to write short programs in Python;
- Staying up to date with the latest research and trends in the industry.
Keep in mind that this profession is less than 3 years old, and the role may vary slightly from company to company! Therefore, it is logical that different firms may have different hiring requirements, which could include a combination of programming experience, knowledge of AI and NLP, a college education or academy attendance in the field, experience in a similar role, and others.
Each company, of course, retains the right to pay differently. For example, Equinor offers approximately $125,000 annually for the same-titled role.