The artificial intelligence boom in Silicon Valley is driving up the demand for professional talents, resulting in a surge in salaries and highlighting the problem of talent shortage.

The competition among technology companies is fierce: With the increasing popularity of generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT robots, technology companies are competing to attract talents with such expertise and experience. They offer an annual salary plan of millions of dollars, stock equity plans, and even offer conditions to poach the entire engineering team.

Talent shortage and salary surge: Compared to the high salary Fengfu standard in the industry in the past, the current shortage of AI talents is particularly prominent. This shortage occurs as layoffs continue in other technology fields, and companies are reallocating resources to invest more funds in developing AI technology.

Scarcity of professional talent: Naveen Rao, the head of generative AI at Databricks, pointed out that only a few hundred qualified individuals can train large language models (LLMs) from scratch or solve difficult problems in AI, such as hallucinations. These rare top talents often earn an annual salary of over $1 million.

Salary survey: According to WTW's survey of over 1500 employers, the basic salary increase for management roles in the AI and machine learning fields ranges from 5% to 11%, while non management roles range from 13% to 19%. Zuhayer Musa, co-founder of Levels.fyi, revealed that the median salary of the six candidates who received job invitations from OpenAI was $925000, including bonuses and equity.

Market softening signs: Scott Chetham, CEO of Faro Health, stated that due to extremely high salary outliers, it has become difficult to maintain the company's top 25% salary in the industry, but he is now seeing signs of softening this year.

Entrepreneurial opportunities: Entrepreneurial employees believe that by starting their own businesses, they have the opportunity to become famous figures in the field of AI. After leaving Google, Arthur Mensch founded Mistral AI, which was valued at over $2 billion in less than a year.

Talent mobility: Technicians without AI experience are actively increasing their knowledge to enrich their resumes. The four-day executive education course "Generative AI and Business Transformation" held by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in San Francisco has quickly become full, demonstrating the high demand for AI knowledge in the industry.