Despite widespread fear that human jobs are doomed thanks to artificial intelligence, in reality the new technology is also creating some extremely well-paid gigs. As companies scramble to adopt AI, they’re realizing that they need someone to lead their entirely new operations. Enter the chief artificial intelligence officer.
The CAIO role is fast becoming a new fixture in the C-suite—and compensation packages average well above $1 million.
What’s more, the role isn’t limited to the tech world: AI executives are being hired across the board from consultancies to hospitals, with Accenture, EY, and GE HealthCare making recent hires.
In December, the New York Times appointed an editorial director for AI initiatives. Meanwhile, Equifax, Ashley Furniture, and legal firms like Eversheds Sutherland have all welcomed AI executives to their ranks in the last year.
Even President Biden has gotten in on the action and issued an AI executive order toward the end of last year, meaning that over 400 new chief AI officers will be hired across the U.S. government in the coming months.
In total, 122 people with the title of chief or vice president of AI joined a forum last year on Glassdoor, the company reviews site, up from 19 in 2022, according to the New York Times. Meanwhile, on LinkedIn, Head of AI roles have tripled over the past five years, and the frantic buzz is not showing any signs of slowing down in 2024.
AI roles are up across the board
It’s not just in the C-suite where businesses are expanding their AI hires.
As well as promoting Lan Guan to chief AI officer last year, Accenture announced a $3 billion AI investment with aims to double its AI talent to 80,000 people and offer AI training to 250,000 workers.
On LinkedIn alone, there’s been a 70% uptick in users writing about AI globally this year; meanwhile, job posts mentioning artificial intelligence have more than doubled in the last two.
For example, prompt engineers—those who write questions for AI chatbots to test and improve their answers—are being hired in droves. What’s more, such roles can pay up to $375,000 and don’t always require tech degrees.
It’s precisely why Reddit’s former chief Yishan Wong advised workers concerned about being replaced by AI to future-proof their roles by sidestepping into the industry—because it doesn’t require “an enormous amount of technical skill.”
“Nontechnical people can build pretty valuable and novel applications in AI,” he told Fortune. “There’s this enormous amount of leverage that an individual can have.”
And workers have clearly already got the memo: LinkedIn’s research shows that job posts on the networking platform between 2022 and 2023 that mentioned AI or generative AI received 17% higher application growth than job posts that did not mention AI.
Worried about the future of their career, employees are specifically applying for jobs with AI mentioned in their listings—because if you can’t beat AI, you might as well join it.
“Candidates are savvy,” said Erin Scruggs, vice president of global talent acquisition at LinkedIn. “They’re showing they want to go where opportunities are.”