AI Professionals Have More Career Optimism, Job Choices

A growing number of tech and HR professionals with AI skills say they are in demand, sparking optimism in their career choices, a more positive sense of their own work-life balance, and more flexibility when it comes to seeking new roles, according to a new study from Dice.

Building off their AI skills, a majority of tech professionals (58%) are more confident in their ability to find a better job this year, compared with 36% of other tech professionals. Indeed, nearly three of four tech professionals (73%) expect to change employers in the next year, vs. 65% of general tech professionals. Driving home the point, 82% of human resource professionals anticipate demand for AI professionals to increase in the next six months.

AI professionals are also more likely to be interested in working in Big Tech. A significantly larger slice of AI professionals (29%) voiced such a desire, compared with 18% of broader tech professionals. This was largely spurred by interest in being part of a higher-budget, higher profile AI project, as well as more confidence in their attractiveness as a potential hire.

Still, there is a bit of skepticism among AI pros. More than a third (36%) acknowledge AI-related projects at their company were undertaken primarily to show stakeholders the company is doing something with AI. More than half (51%) did believe their company’s AI strategy is valuable.

Nonetheless, old habits are hard to break.

Tech professionals cling to a hesitancy to adopt AI tools in their workflow. Just over a third of them say that they never use GenAI tools, compared with the 30% who use it at least once a week. AI avoidance appears to be mostly voluntary since only 8% of tech professionals don’t use GenAI tools because their company has restrictions on using generative AI for work-related tasks. [In its AI sentiment survey, ReTool found 51% of tech professionals consider AI to be overrated.]

And, yes, GenAI adoption is generational. While younger tech professionals are more likely to adopt AI into their workflow — the age group most likely to use GenAI at least once a week is 18-34 group, at 38% — half of those 55 years and older admit to never using GenAI.

Separate research from Jabra also found that 74% of employees have yet to adopt AI.

And yet, AI is inevitable across the corporate landscape in the U.S. 

“Every person will have a personal AI assistant,” Ajay Patel, general manager of Apptio/IBM Automation, said in an interview. “AI will be so ubiquitous, it will be like learning the cell phone or using Siri. We’ve been doing it for so long.”