The AI roles most in demand at Linkedin’s Top Companies, plus more AI and tech news this week

Welcome back to LinkedIn News Tech Stack, which brings you news, insights and trends involving the founders, investors and companies on the cutting edge of technology, by Tech Editor Tanya Dua. You can check out our previous editions here.

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When Christina Warwick graduated from college with a degree in Management Information Systems in December 2022, OpenAI had just unveiled ChatGPT about a month earlier.

She knew that her dual finance and technical background would come in handy as she joined 毕马威 ’s CIO Advisory division, but even she couldn’t have anticipated the oncoming artificial intelligence wave that would sweep the professional world.

Today, AI is a core part of her skillset, one that she’s been encouraged by her employer to use. One of her key projects involved helping an automobile client boost the productivity of its developers, which she was able to do by using AI to consolidate their CSS code into a data depository for easy use and access.

Rozsa can be counted among a coveted roster of professionals with experience in AI who are in hot demand as the technology seeps into industries across the board, and gets integrated into a range of internal and external enterprise functions, ranging from productivity tools and analytics to coding and product development.

This trend is also reflected in other companies among LinkedIn’s annual Top Companies U.S. list, which are increasingly prioritizing hiring for AI-related jobs over most others, in addition to investing in upskilling their existing employees to prepare them for the AI age.

Top companies are diving head-first into AI

From tech and finance to telecom and consulting, top companies from a cross-section of industries including 亚马逊 , 安永 , KPMG , 萬事達卡 and Verizon are deploying AI across a range of business functions.

Professional services firms like KPMG and EY are pouring billions into AI, betting that it will be their next big growth driver. EY’s efforts, for example, include a platform offering AI-powered versions of its consulting products to clients as well as its own internal large language model called EYQ for employees to use.

“It’s probably the quickest pivot that we've ever seen in terms of technology,” said Ginnie Carlier , vice chair of talent at EY Americas. “Until this point, technology was disrupting mostly routine, mechanical work. But generative AI is disrupting everyone’s work, from the interns all the way up to the C-suite.”

Verizon, on the other hand, is using AI in areas like developer productivity and customer service, where 1,000 agents who are part of a pilot program have been able to address customer concerns faster using generative AI, per Shankar Arumugavelu , the company’s global CIO.?

Meanwhile, some of Mastercard’s biggest AI efforts thus far have centered around fraud detection and prevention. The company, for example, recently updated its flagship fraud detection product called Decision Intelligence with a proprietary generative AI model to help banks in its network detect and remediate fraudulent transactions, said Rohit Chauhan , Mastercard’s EVP of AI.

Amazon, unsurprisingly, is stretching its AI tentacles to virtually every aspect of its business, from using AI to enable product recommendations on Amazon.com to using deep learning and generative AI models to forecast demand for millions of merchants in its network, according to Steven Armato , the company’s VP of transportation services and technology.

Top employers across industries are thirsty for AI talent

Given the various applications they’re already testing and employing, Amazon, Mastercard and KPMG explicitly listed AI as one of their top three hiring priorities in a survey for LinkedIn News. For others like Verizon, AI is more of an in-demand skill that’s additive to other roles across data and software development.

Specifically, KPMG is on the lookout for AI engineers, data engineers, data analysts and developers for its Innovation & Technology division, as well as AI specialists in its advisory practice. EY too has a growing need for AI roles across its business, including data scientists with AI and ML backgrounds at the manager and senior manager levels in its tax practice, and experienced candidates with generative AI skills for its assurance practice, said Carlier.

Mastercard is prioritizing hiring more AI engineers, who can not only build better fraud models but also monitor them. Additionally, cybersecurity skills in areas like penetration testing are a huge plus, considering that AI has only made the job of security professionals harder.

“Fraud, by definition, is an asymmetric game, which means that we are always playing defense,” said Chauhan. “If we have AI to protect ourselves, they also have AI to outmaneuver us. So it’s a complex game where we are always on our toes.”

Getting an AI model up and running is only the first step, agreed Verizon’s Arumugavelu. That’s why the company is focused on hiring not just data and ML engineers who can process and embed reams of data to build models and fine-tune them, but also MLOps professionals.

“Once you put a model in production, you have to make sure that there is no drift,” he said. “We have to be able to measure the model's efficacy on a regular basis, and do corrections if needed. Hiring talent in MLOps and LLMOps is table stakes to be able to do this at scale.”

For Amazon, the intersection of machine learning and robotics is an emerging focus. The company claims to have created 700 new categories of jobs, including flow control specialists and reliability maintenance engineers, since introducing robotics in its fulfillment network with Robin, a robotic arm that helps in picking and sorting items on its floors. But the company taps existing talent to work on AI projects gaining steam as much as hiring new workers.?

“As such, we have thousands of employees with deep expertise in AI,” said Armato. “With this deep bench of talent, it's been very powerful to be able to transition some of these folks to work specifically on advancing generative AI — this agility is one reason we've been able to move so quickly on new technology and applications for our customers.”

Risk and governance skills are also top-of-mind

As companies scale their AI initiatives, they also face an ever-evolving regulatory landscape and want to ensure that they are being shepherded by the right talent. As a result, a common denominator for top companies is their appetite for workers familiar with ethical and regulatory frameworks.?

In addition to technical skills, companies including EY and KPMG said that they are seeking candidates with experience in bias detection, data privacy and protection and regulatory frameworks.

“You can go fast in this space, but if you don't have the right guardrails, you're always a little bit in danger of tipping off,” said Stephen Chase , KPMG’s vice chair of AI and Digital Innovation. “If you can bring together the more traditional technical skills with experience in risk and regulation in one person, that’s all the better.”

Establishing the right guardrails is all the more important at large companies, where different teams are empowered to move fast and can often use a plethora of different tools and models at the same time.

“Rather than having it centralized, we are enabling everybody to leverage this technology, and so there’s a bunch of traffic of AI models getting built all across Mastercard,” said Chauhan. “As a result, we really need to beef up our AI governance function so that every model goes through some very serious rigor, to make sure that we do not sacrifice some of our core principles.”

See the full list of LinkedIn’s U.S. Top Companies in 2024 here.

Here’s where we bring you up to speed with the latest advancements from the world of AI.

• Adobe 's latest release is an AI assistant for Acrobat that can help users digest digital documents. For $4.99 a month and up, the assistant can answer questions about PDFs and other documents, helping users find specific information or create summaries. Adobe has lately come under fire for another AI product, its Firefly image-generating software, which Bloomberg reports was trained in part on images from competitors. Adobe had previously argued Firefly was commercially safer than other AI rivals, since they said it was trained mostly on images from Adobe Stock. Adobe may even partner with OpenAI and other AI startups to allow editors to use those companies' generative AI tools within Premiere Pro. Later this year, Adobe Premiere Pro users will be able to use Firefly to add and remove objects from video, or to "seamlessly" extend clips that are too short.

• Is Humane ’s Ai Pin a flop? Nearly a year after Humane CEO Imran Chaudhri “sparked fervor” with a viral talk previewing his company’s forthcoming Ai Pin, the gadget is being shipped out to customers. Many, however, appear mostly disappointed. Priced at $699, plus a monthly subscription of $24, the palm-sized, AI-powered wearable was pitched as a computer-and-voice-assistant hybrid that, when worn on the chest, might liberate us from the tyranny of screens. But users have a laundry list of complaints: It becomes uncomfortably hot, has a brief battery life and is too complicated to use for texting. "As a phone replacement or evolution of the computer, I don’t think the Ai Pin has a future," Bloomberg predicts, though it credits the gadget for "bringing something new to the table."
• LinkedIn parent company 微软 is investing $1.5 billion in UAE-based AI firm G42 . As part of the deal, G42 would use Microsoft cloud services to run its AI applications, while Microsoft would get a minority stake and board seat at the company. Under the agreement, G42, which has been under scrutiny by Washington for its ties to China, has also acceded to a security arrangement negotiated with the U.S. government. The accord places a series of protections on the AI products shared with G42 and includes an agreement to strip Chinese gear out of G42’s operations. The deal could become a model for how U.S. firms leverage their AI prowess to lure countries away from Chinese tech, 纽约时报 writes.

• 苹果 is doubling down on AI chips. Apple is nearing production of its first M4 chips for its entire Mac line with AI upgrades, Bloomberg reports, citing unnamed sources. The move comes at a critical time, after Mac sales dropped 27% last year. The tech giant is also trying to make its iPhone repairs easier and less costly — and touting the phones’ increasing life spans in the process. The long-awaited change, which starts this fall, will allow iPhone 15 owners to use second-hand Apple parts to fix their devices. Meanwhile, Apple has taken another hit in China, as homegrown competitor Huawei launched its new smartphones on Thursday to major fanfare and interest.
• Meta wants its VR tech in schools. The company wants teachers to trade their “dusty textbooks” for immersive experiences via its Quest virtual reality headsets, Nick Clegg , the company’s president of global affairs, tells Axios. To this end, Meta announced it will debut a suite of education apps for students 13 and older before the fall semester. The new and yet-unnamed education product was created in response to demand from educators, Clegg says, leading to features such as the ability for teachers to manage multiple devices at once. In 2021, researchers pored over 85 studies on VR’s effects on children and teens. “Findings remain contradictory, especially for the psychosocial domain,” they concluded, but added that results when adhering to time limits and other recommendations were “reassuring.” There are also concerns about the need to disinfect devices between students and the often challenging repair process when headsets are damaged.

Here’s a list of other notable AI developments from this week:

• 英特尔 announced Hala Point this week, its latest neuromorphic computer system. The system uses 1,152 Loihi 2 processors, and is designed to aid in researching future brain-inspired AI and developing more sustainable uses of today’s AI.
• Anthropic ’s entire family of Claude 3 models, including Opus, became generally available on Amazon’s AI development platform Bedrock this week. See Anthropic president Daniela Amodei ’s LinkedIn post for more.
• Tome , a top LinkedIn startup in 2023 backed by investors including Coatue and Greylock , has cut 20% of its staff. The company is shifting its focus toward paying enterprise customers versus free users, which it had prioritized thus far. See co-founder and CEO Keith Peiris ’s LinkedIn post for more.
• Embattled AI startup Stability AI has also made fresh layoffs, according to Sifted . The sweeping round of layoffs follows a period of turbulence at the company, which has seen a number of top executives depart in recent months. Just under a month ago, cofounder Emad Mostaque stepped down from his position as CEO and his position on the board of directors.
• Boston Dynamics ’ Atlas humanoid robot has gone electric. Check out this video for more.

Catch up on the tech headlines you may have missed this week and what our members are saying about them on LinkedIn.

• 谷歌 is restructuring its finance team in a move that involves layoffs and relocations, CNBC reports, citing an internal memo sent by CFO Ruth Porat. The undisclosed number of cuts will affect some employees in the U.S. and overseas. Google will also create “hubs” for more centralized operations in India, Mexico, Ireland, Atlanta and Chicago. This is the latest in a string of layoffs at Google amid a slowdown in advertising growth and a prioritization of investments in AI. A spokesperson for Google confirmed the layoffs but declined to share more details. Google is also temporarily removing links to California news websites from search results for some users in the state in response to a bill pending in the state legislature.

• Meanwhile, Tesla is cutting more than 10% of its global headcount, or as many as 14,000 employees. According to a staff memo published by CNBC, CEO Elon Musk writes that the duplication of roles and the need to cut costs are driving the layoffs. Musk has also apologized to some staffers that Tesla let go of, saying their severance packages were "incorrectly low." The automaker had nearly doubled its headcount over the past three years as it ramped up production at several plants, but last month posted its first quarterly decline in deliveries in four years. Tesla's shares have slumped 31% this year, putting it among the worst performers in the S&P 500. Overall electric-vehicle sales slowed in the first quarter, rising less than 3%, while hybrid sales rose 43%. Tesla's struggles contributed to the lukewarm EV sales in a big way, since the company's cars account for about half of the U.S. electric market, according to research firm Motor Intelligence. See how Tesla employees are reacting to the layoffs here.
• Speaking of EVs, 亚马逊 happens to be the biggest private EV charging operator in the U.S., having installed more than 17,000 delivery van chargers at 120 warehouses. The stations are powering 13,500 EV vans made by Rivian — with almost 80,000 more to come. While Amazon has scaled back a goal of making half of its deliveries carbon-neutral by 2030, its emissions have stopped growing. Its work with electric utilities on adding the power needed for mass charging stations could also provide a roadmap for other logistics companies.
• The U.S. House is set to vote as soon as this weekend on a measure that would give TikTok parent 字节跳动 up to a year to divest the app. Otherwise, it would be subject to a ban for national-security reasons. Legislation previously passed by the House gave the Chinese company a six-month divestiture deadline, part of the reason it stalled in the Senate. The new provision is packaged with foreign aid bills expected to come before the Senate soon; President Joe Biden has said he would sign the TikTok bill if it reaches his desk. With TikTok already facing Congressional action over privacy concerns, a Forbes investigation found that data from top U.S. advertisers was "mishandled."?
• Tech workers apparently want cash, not stock. Tech companies are scaling back on equity awards to employees. That’s because, in the face of inflation, volatile share prices and worry about the direction of markets and the economy, workers increasingly want cash. This week, 亚马逊 became the latest company to deemphasize equity compensation, following similar moves by Spotify and Tesla . Many employees of the e-commerce giant will now be able to convert a quarter of next year’s stock award to regular cash pay instead, The Information reports. Of course, some employees will gladly take more equity compensation. 英伟达 ’s stock is up 200% in the past 12 months, and many employees just received a 25% boost to their initial awards.

Here’s keeping tabs on key executives on the move and other big pivots in the tech industry. Please send me personnel moves within emerging tech.

• OpenAI has hired Amazon Web Services (AWS) ’ Tadao Nagasaki as president of its Japan office, the company’s first in the Asia and Pacific region, he shared in a LinkedIn post.
• IBM has promoted Armand Ruiz , its director of client engineering at Watson, to VP of product management of its AI platform, he shared in a LinkedIn post.
• The U.S. Department of Commerce ’s AI Safety Institute has hired Paul Christiano as head of AI safety and Mara Quintero Campbell as chief of staff and acting COO.
• Tesla is losing two veteran executives amid a mounting list of concerns at the company, including SVP Drew Baglino and Rohan Patel , its VP of public policy and business development.
• AI-powered customer-experience management firm VistaXM, Inc. has named Qualtrics ’ Erik Vogel as CEO, he shared in a LinkedIn post.
• New Enterprise Associates (NEA) has hired Costanoa Ventures ’ Madison Faulkner (Hawkinson) as a principal focusing on early-stage infrastructure, developer tools and AI, she shared in a LinkedIn post.
• Andreessen Horowitz has hired Meta 's Sydney Paul, a longtime Democratic Senate aide, as government affairs partner.

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