What careers are available in Artificial Intelligence?

doublehelix

doublehelix

doublehelix

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13 May 2007
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12
Hay

I'm doing a computing degree, and the artificial intelligence part of the course that is coming up sounds good. I haven't read a whole load about it, but the concept interests me. What sort of careers could you have to do with artificial intelligence? Would it be mostly research work? What sort of places would hire you? Is there anyone here who works in this area, or knows someone who does? I would be very interested to hear from anyone who knows about this field and can tell me a bit more about working in it. ;)
 
I did a bit of AI at uni as part of my degree and applied for a job in the industry as an electronic engineer but the company I applied to wasn't looking for graduates.

Axeon

They're a company that developed artificial neural nets on silicon for a wide range of applications, so there might be a bit of info there.

Jokester
 
Generally speaking you can be a professor teaching AI at a university... OR you can be a professor teaching AI at another university....

No quack...
 
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Unfortunately there is no "AI developing" companies, AI fields are either in academia or small specific projects within alternate fields, so it is hard to get a job in the AI field.

I'm studying comp sci and cybernetics purely because it goes more indepth about AI methods and evolutionary techniques which I'm interested in.

Though I am feeling abit resentful towards the subject as I have my advanced neural nets exam on friday and revision isn't exactly going well lol.
 
Hades said:
Bit of a guess here. But maybe a company developing military weapons?
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Well even if there are they would probably only employ the very best in the field, which I'm sure a graduate wouldn't be. As said it's mainly just academic fields that focus on it. Shame really cos I too enjoy the subject.
 
Thinking about it, have you considered the gaming industry? I know little about it other than it's a hard field to work in (long days with lots of unpaid overtime), but you'll likely be able to put AI into use.
 
doublehelix said:
Hay

I'm doing a computing degree, and the artificial intelligence part of the course that is coming up sounds good. I haven't read a whole load about it, but the concept interests me. What sort of careers could you have to do with artificial intelligence? Would it be mostly research work? What sort of places would hire you? Is there anyone here who works in this area, or knows someone who does? I would be very interested to hear from anyone who knows about this field and can tell me a bit more about working in it. ;)
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well, to do AI as a career you will need to do a lot more training. A PhD is a minimum requirement really. Most AI work is research based, if it isn't then most likely you are just doing computer science etc.

The big companies like IBM and Microsoft hire people for AI research, you will definitely need a PhD for this. Some start up companies, mostly based in the US are also strongly AI focused and you may get by with a good Masters degree.


I am doing a PhD in AI, evolving neural networks to control a swarm of flying robots that cooperate within a self-organising hardware-heterogeneous swarm for search, exploration, and object collection and assembly.

This uses awide variety of different techniques and skills

In general to do AI you need to have solid Mathematical skills, most stuff boils down to maths. You also need to be a good thinker, someone who can can think outside the box, but in a logical and analytical manner. You need a wide variety of knowledge. Don't be surprised to be reading neurophysiology textbooks, or social-biology papers, psycho-linguistic research, genetic engineering, etc.
I have recently been reading papers on the evolution of communication signals in social animals for example. Before that I was deeply researching social insects like ants and their search strategies . Before that was flock movement in birds and shoals of fish. Soon I will be looking more closely at the evolution of cooperation and division of labour.

AI is much more of a real science than the average computer science courses. You mostly work on the forefront of science and human understanding, which makes it fascinating but challenging. So you should also be good at analyzing and writing scientific papers for Journals.
 
The Pat said:
Well even if there are they would probably only employ the very best in the field, which I'm sure a graduate wouldn't be. As said it's mainly just academic fields that focus on it. Shame really cos I too enjoy the subject.
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Indeed, a PhD is a basic starting point.
But hey, if you are actually interested in AI then there are loads of cool PhDs around and if you are the kind of guy that wants to do AI then you will be wanting to do a PhD anyway.

Thats probably a good test: do you want to do a PhD? Do you want to have a career in AI? The answers should be the same.
 
Abyss said:
Thinking about it, have you considered the gaming industry? I know little about it other than it's a hard field to work in (long days with lots of unpaid overtime), but you'll likely be able to put AI into use.
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no, you don't use AI in games. You use computer science techniques and call it AI.
 
Space robotics is a fairly major field. (Actually got an exam on it today as a third year module).

Although its entitled robotics and this doesn't fundamentally mean AI there are design issues which must be addressed such as what level of autonomy do you dare to incorporate within any robotic systems or sub systems. There are some good programming jobs accross Europe in this field. You'll need to do well though.

Off the top of my head other than that its just Research grants.
 
D.P. said:
no, you don't use AI in games. You use computer science techniques and call it AI.
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Well how else are you going to emulate Intelligence in a system? Although it may not be AI in a purist form; using computers to emulate autonomous decision making is the only method we have available currently.
 
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Hugogo said:
Well how else are you going to emulate Intelligence in a system? Although it may not be AI in a purist form; using computers to emulate autonomous decision making is the only method we have available currently.
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I think what he means is that game AI however complex, as I understand it is far removed from the mind boggling therory stuff like neural networks. According to the course I did on it, it is used a lot in industry but as previously said a lot of the work is in adademia.
 
D.P. said:
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Sounds interesting, I was tempted to go Phd but atm I think I want to go out earn some money and travel, may come back to do a Phd when I'm older and wiser and maybe my maths might be improved as it is deffinetely not upto scratch for a Phd in AI atm.

What AI neural net techniques are you using for your project? Do you know much about support vector machines, independant component analysis or adaboost? (what im revising atm ;p)

You also highlighted a good point in that cybernetics is greatly influenced by nature and biology, one of my compulsary modules last year was neuroscience ;/
 
D.P. said:
well, to do AI as a career you will need to do a lot more training. A PhD is a minimum requirement really. Most AI work is research based, if it isn't then most likely you are just doing computer science etc.

The big companies like IBM and Microsoft hire people for AI research, you will definitely need a PhD for this. Some start up companies, mostly based in the US are also strongly AI focused and you may get by with a good Masters degree.


I am doing a PhD in AI, evolving neural networks to control a swarm of flying robots that cooperate within a self-organising hardware-heterogeneous swarm for search, exploration, and object collection and assembly.

This uses awide variety of different techniques and skills

In general to do AI you need to have solid Mathematical skills, most stuff boils down to maths. You also need to be a good thinker, someone who can can think outside the box, but in a logical and analytical manner. You need a wide variety of knowledge. Don't be surprised to be reading neurophysiology textbooks, or social-biology papers, psycho-linguistic research, genetic engineering, etc.
I have recently been reading papers on the evolution of communication signals in social animals for example. Before that I was deeply researching social insects like ants and their search strategies . Before that was flock movement in birds and shoals of fish. Soon I will be looking more closely at the evolution of cooperation and division of labour.

AI is much more of a real science than the average computer science courses. You mostly work on the forefront of science and human understanding, which makes it fascinating but challenging. So you should also be good at analyzing and writing scientific papers for Journals.
Click to expand...


I did think that further study would be needed, but I'm not against the idea, in fact I think I would really like to do that.

When doing a phd do you get paid? Do you have to teach?

When you have finished your phd what would prospects be like for jobs? I can't imagine there would be lots of jobs, but I don't know anything about the field, so you would be able to comment on this much better than I can.
 
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