2023 AI Industry Panoramic Survey: Amazon Launches 'AI Ready' Program to Provide Free AI Training for 2 Million People
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Amazon Launches 'AI Ready' Program to Provide Free AI Skills Training for 2 Million People
With recent research revealing a high demand for AI talent and employees with AI skills potentially earning up to 47% higher salaries, Amazon has introduced the AI Ready program.
On November 20, Amazon announced the launch of a new initiative to train millions of workers. The program, named 'AI Ready,' aims to provide free AI training—ranging from basic to advanced skills, including generative AI—to 2 million people by 2025. The company seeks to gain an edge in the fierce competition for talent against rivals like Microsoft and others.
Swami Sivasubramanian, Amazon's Vice President of Databases, Analytics, and Machine Learning, stated, 'AI is the most transformative technology of our generation. To fully unlock its potential, we need to make AI education accessible to anyone with the desire to learn.'
The training focuses on eight online courses centered on generative AI, targeting individuals in technical or tech-related roles. These courses cater to both beginners and experienced professionals, providing a foundation for current industry demands. The courses are available for free on Amazon's learning platform and are accessible to non-Amazon employees as well.
Amazon's latest initiative reflects the growing corporate awareness that AI could transform how countless jobs are performed. Industries from real estate to retail are experimenting with generative AI for tasks like creating marketing materials, writing software code, and answering HR questions.
A recent report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) offered an optimistic view of AI's impact on the job market, suggesting that generative AI is more likely to create jobs than disrupt employment.
The report indicates that most jobs and industries are only partially automated. Thus, the primary impact of generative AI on employment will be automating certain tasks, freeing up time for other responsibilities. Rather than replacing entire professions, AI is expected to complement jobs, altering work quality—particularly in terms of intensity and autonomy.
AI Industry Panoramic Survey
ChatGPT has ignited the global development of large models. By combining big data, massive computing power, and advanced algorithms, large models achieve a profound understanding of the world. Big data provides rich knowledge, massive computing power enables models to learn this knowledge quickly and efficiently, and advanced algorithms help optimize parameters and extract useful information. The synergy of these three dimensions grants large models powerful comprehension, enabling them to better understand and generate human language and tackle complex tasks like text understanding and image recognition, significantly enhancing AI capabilities.
The 2023 Pan-AI Talent Insights report released by Maimai High-Tech Talent Think Tank reveals that from January to August 2023, the average monthly salary for new AI positions exceeded 46,000 yuan, with a talent supply-demand ratio of just 0.39—meaning five job openings compete for two candidates.
In 2023, ChatGPT's popularity triggered an AI entrepreneurship boom. Starting in March, the number of new AIGC job postings surged dramatically, especially driven by the large-model startup wave. Major tech firms and unicorn companies entered the fray, competing fiercely for talent, causing AIGC job postings in April to nearly triple. By the second half of the year, new AIGC job postings stabilized.
From January to August 2023, the average salary for new AIGC positions showed an upward trend. By March 2023, the average monthly salary for new AIGC roles exceeded 50,000 yuan, reaching 52,472 yuan—an 11.6% increase from January's 47,015 yuan. Starting in June, the average monthly salary stabilized around 60,000 yuan.
Due to the severe shortage of AI talent, competition intensified. The Insights data shows that in 2022, the AI talent supply-demand ratio was 0.63. From January to August 2023, it dropped to 0.39, equivalent to five job openings competing for two candidates. Among the top 10 most in-demand roles, intelligent driving system engineers ranked first with a supply-demand ratio of 0.38. The popularity of large models in 2023 also drove a surge in demand for ChatGPT researchers, landing this role in the top 10 most competitive positions.
From January to August 2023, the number of new AI job postings matched the total for all of 2022.
Influenced by supply and demand, the average salary for new AI positions has risen significantly over the past two years. In 2022, the average salary for new AI roles was 43,817 yuan. In the first eight months of 2023, this figure increased to 46,518 yuan, a 6.16% rise.
Since its inception, AI has seen continuous advancements in theory and technology, with expanding applications. It is foreseeable that future AI-driven technological products will serve as 'containers' of human intelligence.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a new technological science that studies and develops theories, methods, technologies, and application systems to simulate, extend, and expand human intelligence. As a branch of computer science, AI aims to understand the essence of intelligence and create intelligent machines capable of responding in ways similar to human intelligence. Research in this field includes robotics, speech recognition, image recognition, natural language processing, and expert systems.
The global distribution of AI enterprises is highly uneven, primarily concentrated in a few countries and regions such as the United States, Europe, and China. The top three regions—San Francisco/Bay Area in the U.S., New York, and Beijing, China—account for 16.9%, 4.8%, and 4.0% of global enterprises, respectively. In terms of growth, the sector has generally maintained an upward trend, with a slight decline in 2015. In Europe, AI enterprises are mostly concentrated in national capitals. Among European cities, London has the highest number of enterprises, 3.1 times that of Paris (second place), accounting for 3.69% of the global total. Japan and South Korea lag significantly behind China, with Tokyo comparable to Hangzhou and Seoul comparable to Chengdu. The top three cities in East Asia—Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen—account for 7.4% of the global total. Although still far behind the U.S., their global significance is becoming increasingly evident.
As the core driving force of a new round of industrial transformation, AI has become a new focus of international competition and a new engine for economic development. Currently, AI is accelerating its deep integration with the real economy, facilitating industrial transformation and upgrading. After years of continuous accumulation, China has made significant progress in the field of AI, with theories and technologies becoming increasingly mature, applications expanding, and corresponding business models evolving. AI is now rapidly integrating with various industries in the real economy, driving industrial transformation, upgrading, and efficiency improvements.