The career choice of fresh graduates under the AI boom: hesitation, confusion and expectation

Author: Zhang Zitong Editor: Tao Li

Source: 21 Finance

Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI

The upsurge of the graduation season has just subsided, and the 2024 recruitment season has begun in full swing.

Recently, Meituan announced the launch of the 2024 campus recruitment, and it is expected to recruit 6,000 fresh graduates. Coincidentally, Internet companies such as Kuaishou and Xiaomi have also launched the 2024 autumn recruitment plan. The 21st Century Business Herald reporter found that the above-mentioned recruitment positions all include artificial intelligence related fields such as robot algorithms, acoustics, large models, and NLP.

While big factories open their arms to recruit talents, the job market is becoming more and more differentiated in terms of academic qualifications.

"I don't consider entering the AI industry for the time being. The graduate school and education limit my choice." A classmate from an ordinary college confessed his helplessness and unwillingness to the 21st Century Business Herald reporter. "I can only enter a small factory, but I can't imagine how long a company can survive by burning investors' money."

**Under the wave of new technologies, job seekers who are floating in the job market are also making various trade-offs in order to exchange for a relatively certain career future for themselves. **

Advance and retreat of fresh graduates

Gao Ge is a 2022 student in the financial technology direction of the School of Big Data, Fudan University. In the interdisciplinary field of artificial intelligence and finance, he is faced with the dilemma of moving towards innovation and returning to tradition. "Because I majored in finance, but now with the development of AI, the companies I will face in the future will be more or less related to AI."

In 2021, when the big model is not yet so hot, Gao Ge considered joining a professional artificial intelligence company, but they ** "the threshold requirements for technology are particularly high, generally require a doctorate degree, and also require you to have relatively strong mathematics Or a computer background"**, so after careful consideration, Gao Ge chose to join the traditional financial industry.

But the work he is doing during his internship is still strongly related to artificial intelligence. "My employment direction is still in securities companies, but my work will have a lot of things related to AI."

In contrast, the choice of Xiao Fang, a graduate student majoring in computer vision and artificial intelligence at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is more focused. He said that his future career planning must be closely related to artificial intelligence. Currently, the fields he wants to work in include 3D computer vision and multi-modal large models. "Under the current general environment, I think it is a good choice to find a leading company first and join a large team to improve your industry background."

When it comes to artificial intelligence start-ups, Xiao Fang said he is not optimistic. "Currently, to create multi-modal large models, first of all, huge computing resources are required, and the computing resources of start-up companies are generally not enough. Secondly, start-up companies need long-term capital investment, while current start-up companies generally can only It is very difficult to wait for the A round after raising the angel round, and 95% of the start-ups are like this.”

Therefore, a large factory with strong financial strength and determination to invest in R&D has become Xiao Fang's first choice.

A teacher responsible for recruiting students from the Big Data School of 985 universities in China told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that, specifically, the more popular jobs for artificial intelligence majors include: algorithm engineer, data processing engineer, machine learning engineer, natural language processing engineer wait.

Among them, ** algorithm engineer is one of the most core positions in the field of artificial intelligence. **They are responsible for developing and optimizing AI algorithm models, improving algorithm performance and solving practical problems. According to relevant statistics, algorithm engineers are one of the jobs with the highest employment ratio of artificial intelligence graduates, accounting for about 30% of jobs. Data processing engineers are professionals responsible for analyzing, mining and modeling massive amounts of data. They need to be proficient in data mining, machine learning and other technologies, be able to process and analyze massive amounts of data, and extract valuable information and patterns.

Machine learning engineers are mainly responsible for designing, developing and maintaining machine learning models and systems, and optimizing machine learning algorithms and applications. Natural language processing engineers are professionals who are responsible for processing and analyzing natural language texts. They can apply machine learning and deep learning algorithms for text analysis and semantic understanding, and apply these skills to natural language processing, speech recognition, intelligent question answering and other fields.

AI layout, colleges first

In fact, whenever a new wave of technology surges, colleges and universities always strive to be "the first to eat crabs."

In April this year, the Ministry of Education announced the results of the filing and approval of undergraduate majors in ordinary colleges and universities in 2022. A total of 1,641 new registered majors were added across the country. Among them, artificial intelligence majors have been added the most, with 35 in the first batch.

According to Gao Runsheng, deputy director of the Department of Science and Technology of the Ministry of Education, at present, 35 colleges and universities have newly established artificial intelligence majors, 101 colleges and universities have newly established robotics engineering majors, 96 colleges and universities have newly established intelligence science and technology majors, and 50 colleges and universities have newly established artificial intelligence majors. The cultivation of talents in the field of intelligence has been included in the "Double First-Class" training program. 31 colleges and universities have independently established artificial intelligence colleges, and 24 colleges and universities have established artificial intelligence research institutes.

**Behind the popularity of artificial intelligence majors, it reflects my country's huge demand for talents in the field of artificial intelligence. **However, after colleges and universities have opened up majors so intensively, the supply of AI talents in my country is still in short supply. According to a report, the talent gap in my country's artificial intelligence industry is as high as 5 million. Under the standard of highly interdisciplinary talents, this talent shortage will exist for a long time.

At the same time, the "Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Industry Talent Development White Paper" released by the World Artificial Intelligence Conference recently shows that the current scale of my country's artificial intelligence core industry exceeds 400 billion yuan, and talents are the key to artificial intelligence competition.

As of now, the number of talents in the field of artificial intelligence in Shanghai is 232,000, while the demand for talents in the artificial intelligence industry in Shanghai is about 343,000 to 414,000, which also means that the problem of talent imbalance is highlighted. In fact, Shanghai is just a microcosm of the talent shortage faced by the artificial intelligence industry. Under the standard of highly interdisciplinary talents, the talent shortage will exist for a long time.

However, according to China's higher education statistics in 2022, the employment rate of artificial intelligence graduates is over 95%. So, where did the talent go this time?

According to relevant statistics, the vast majority of talents still flow into the consumer Internet industry. Among them, 60% of the graduates have entered the Internet and e-commerce enterprises, including Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and other well-known enterprises; about 30% of the graduates have entered the high-tech enterprises, including Huawei, Ningde Times, etc.; a small number of graduates choose to continue Advanced studies or examinations for civil servants, etc.

In addition, the separation of industry, education and research still plagues every participant in the talent market.

Qi Yuan, dean of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Industry of Fudan University, said in an interview with a reporter from the 21st Century Business Herald that the actual combat ability of talents is an important link to bridge the gap between universities and enterprises, and this aspect is currently calling for hardware support . "In the context of the rapid development of science and technology, education is also facing a certain transformation. There are two problems in this. The first is how to deepen students' basic theories, and the second is how to make students more practical and analytical. , and combine it with the needs of the enterprise."

Therefore, like every new industry, the rapid development of the artificial intelligence industry still has its own problems. In addition to inherent data issues, privacy and security issues, etc., the shackles of talent issues still require the joint efforts of enterprises, markets, and universities.