The UK’s artificial intelligence sector is growing faster than rivals in America, Canada and Australia, paving the way for Britain to be the ‘global leader’ in AI technology.
That is the finding of new data released by job site Indeed.
AI technologies require highly skilled workers who can develop and maintain complex systems and applications. According to Indeed, demand from UK employers for these types of workers has almost tripled in the last three years.
Roles typically include data scientists and machine learning engineers, specialists who play a crucial part in teaching machines how to use and interpret data.
AI jobs also pay well above the UK average salary, with data scientists typically taking home £56,385 a year and machine learning engineers earning an average of £54,617 a year.
But despite the financial rewards on offer, finding the talent is still a challenge according to Indeed researchers, who found that the share of available AI jobs in Britain outstripped the share of interested candidates by six times.
The number of jobseekers looking for AI roles has doubled since 2015, but the UK is still struggling to keep up with demand from employers.
Thanks to its booming tech sector, the UK has a higher concentration of available AI jobs than the United States, Canada and Australia.
At the start of 2018, 1,300 out of every million UK jobs advertised on Indeed were in AI, nearly double the level in Canada and over 20 per cent more than the level in the US.
“From both a jobs and a society perspective, AI is a technology that has the potential to be truly transformative,” said Tara Sinclair, economist and senior fellow at Indeed.
“While the jury is still out on how many existing roles could be made redundant as AI becomes more widespread, or whether its potential for job creation outweighs any losses, in the short-term AI is providing a shot in the arm to Britain’s jobs market.”
She added: “AI jobs are not for everyone, as they require highly specialised skills. So it’s essential that post-Brexit Britain retains the ability to attract the global talent it needs to keep its AI sector in pole position.”