Citing “nine people who work for major tech companies or have entertained job offers from them,” The New York Times is reporting that developers with artificial intelligence (AI) skills are typically making between $300,000 and $500,000 per year. It says those figures also apply to recently graduated PhDs and people with relatively little experience.
Salary data from Google supports this claim. Court filings show that it paid Anthony Levandowski, who worked in the company’s self-driving car unit, $120 million in incentives over many years. And last year’s staff costs at Google’s DeepMind division totaled $138 million for 400 employees. If you do the math, that’s an average of $345,000 per person.
Smaller companies say it is hard to compete when larger companies can offer such enormous salaries. And many universities say their AI professors are leaving for jobs that pay much better than teaching.
