They’re some of the world’s most in-demand tech jobs — but what does a day in the life of an artificial intelligence engineer look like? CNBC got a first-hand look at how AI is transforming three very different industries.
“Artificial intelligence” and “job creation” aren’t typically two terms thrown together in the same sentence — and for good reason. One report from Goldman Sachs in 2023 estimated 300 million full-time jobs could be lost to automation.
And yet, that is only one side of the story. Tens of millions of jobs are also being created by AI, with jobs that require AI specialist skills growing at 3.5 times the pace of jobs overall.
PwC’s 2024 AI Jobs Barometer, which analyzed over half a billion job ads posted since 2016,1 also found that these jobs can carry a wage premium – 25% on average in the United States, 14% in the United Kingdom, 11% in Canada and 7% in Singapore.
CNBC met with three Singaporeans working with AI across multiple sectors, as they fought scams and fraud, developed large language models and designed chatbots.
- Rajat Maheshwari is the vice president of the Cyber & Intelligence Solutions team at Mastercard for Asia Pacific. In his role, his team develops tools to manage customer risk and prevent scams.
- Joel Garcia is the ASEAN head of technology at Amazon Web Services. He leads a team that develops AI solutions for businesses.
- Leong Weiqi speaks 14 languages fluently and is an AI engineer-and-linguist involved in developing the SEA-LION (South-east Asian Languages in One Network), a large language model that is catering to Southeast Asian languages.
Watch the video above to learn how engineers are leveraging AI in their jobs – and why it’s never too late for a career switch.