This AI Job Can Get You A 6-Figure Salary & It Doesn't Need Any Computer Engineering Background

Image credit : Investing News Network There is a brand-new category of AI employment that pays six-figure wages and doesn't require extensive coding abilities or even a degree in computer engineering. Numerous businesses are already hiring "prompt engineers" to train the next generation of AI tools to provide more accurate and pertinent answers to the inquiries that actual people are likely to ask as generative artificial intelligence (GI) is on the increase. Even up to $335,000 a year can be earned in some of these positions.

What role does a prompt engineer play?

One of the few people already employed in this new area is Anna Bernstein, a 29-year-old prompt engineer with the generative AI company Copy.ai in New York. Her job entails creating text-based cues that AI technologies can use to generate things like blog posts or sales emails with the appropriate tenor and factual facts. She can do this without writing any technical code; instead, she types directives to the AI model to assist in enhancing responses. “There aren’t many of us prompt engineers, and for a long time it really felt like it was just me,” Bernstein says. She joined Copy.ai in September 2021, about a year before OpenAI’s ChatGPT went viral for its uncanny ability to generate elegant writing and answer almost any question. “At the time, the term ‘prompt engineer’ didn’t exist, and they were unsure whether it was even a role that could exist.” Prior to working as a prompt engineer, Bernstein, an English major in college, worked as a copywriter and a historical research assistant. “I had no tech background whatsoever,” she says. “But to have a humanities background in this field seems to me like a triumph, especially since part of the point of developing AI is to imitate human thought.” [caption id="attachment_152220" align="aligncenter" width="775"] Image credit : New Jersey Business Magazine[/caption] As businesses hunt for ways to train and modify AI systems to get the most out of new massive language models, which can produce results that are not necessarily accurate or suitable, prompt engineering is now one of the hottest tech careers. It's a component of the sharp rise in demand for professionals who are familiar with and skilled in using AI tools. The number of posts mentioning "generative AI" has surged 36-fold since last year, and the number of job ads featuring "GPT" climbed by 51% between 2021 and 2022, according to LinkedIn data provided to TIME.

How to become a prompt engineer

Rob Lennon, a specialist in rapid engineering, started offering for-pay online courses through Kajabi in December with the goal of assisting the typical person in developing the skills required for a position in the industry. His two courses, which have now been taken by almost 2,000 students, show how to arrange and organize suggestions for various activities and topics. "People are clamoring for this knowledge," Lennon claims. It's comparable to the first mover's advantage. The price of the courses ranges from $150 to $3,970 for customized instruction and course certification. On the other hand, some industry insiders think that the excitement around prompt engineering may fizzle out once AI becomes more potent and capable of coming up with its own prompts. Ethan Mollick, an associate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, advises prospective prompt engineers to keep in mind that there is a lot that is uncertain about the industry's future. [caption id="attachment_152221" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Image credit : Skillroads[/caption] And the hefty salaries currently being proposed may not last. “These are jobs that probably only 500 people could do right now, so there are these insane salaries,” Lennon says. “But in six months, 50,000 people will be able to do that job. The value of this knowledge is greater today than it will be tomorrow.” Also read : YouTube has launched a new program that lets students get college credit Instead of enrolling in an online course, Mollick advises anyone interested in this area to experiment with powerful language models like GPT+ and Bard to discover their own method for creating prompts. Because AI systems are evolving so quickly, prompts that are effective now could not be effective tomorrow. People believing that prompting has a hidden, miraculous formula is what worries me, he says.