For those looking to break into AI, it’s pretty simple: Go to the coasts, young men and women.
The Atlantic seaboard – specifically, Virginia and Maryland – offer the most AI-related jobs in the U.S., according to a new study. Rugged PC maker Getac scraped LinkedIn and Glassdoor for listings by state population, and then calculated the number of searches per 100,000 people.
Based on that formula, Virginia (at 46) and Maryland (24.7) ranked at the top, followed by Washington, Massachusetts and California. [California had the most listings, at 6,702, followed by Virginia, 4,007.]
Job listings run the gamut from “Artificial Intelligence (AI) Pilots Project Manager” (in Virginia) and “Artificial Intelligence Integration Systems Engineer” (Maryland) to “Senior Generative AI Data Scientist, Amazon SageMaker” (Washington) and “Senior Director, Analytics & AI” (Massachusetts).
Getac analyzed 68 companies from scraped data and found Microsoft Corp. (1,335) with the most vacancies, followed by Meta Platforms Inc. (1,232) and Deloitte (461).
The AI job market is beginning to percolate as more chief executives push for adoption of the technology within their companies and companies like Apple Inc., Dell Inc., Samsung Electronics and Lenovo Group plunge into the market with hardware devices, and government agencies embrace GenAI.
But the rush also coincides with potentially serious repercussions, such as security issues, making GenAI fit into already-existing operations, a gap in the upskilling and reskilling of jobs impacted by AI, and general unease among workers who feel threatened by chatbots. Of particular concern, is AI’s interconnection to key infrastructure like power and water, and the possibility of some sort of disruption, as well as a recent spike in ransomware and political disinformation tied to AI.
With national AI legislation a pipe dream at this point, California has stepped in with several efforts to get ahead of the AI revolution. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is considering signing a safety bill into law; he has also struck up a partnership with NVIDIA Corp. to help train state workers, teachers and students with AI skills.
