Typical A.I. specialists, including both Ph.D.s fresh out of school and people with less education and just a few years of experience, can be paid from $300,000 to $500,000 a year or more in salary and company stock, according to major tech company job offers.
Well-known names in the A.I. field have received compensation in salary and shares in a company’s stock that total single- or double-digit millions over a four- or five-year period. And at some point they renew or negotiate a new contract, much like a professional athlete.
At the top end are executives with experience managing A.I. projects. Google revealed that one of the leaders of its self-driving-car division, Anthony Levandowski, a longtime employee who started with Google in 2007, took home over $120 million in incentives before joining Uber last year through the acquisition of a start-up he had co-founded that drew the two companies into a court fight over intellectual property.
In the entire world, fewer than 10,000 people have the skills necessary to tackle serious artificial intelligence research.
According to a 2016 Markets and Markets Report, The artificial intelligence (AI) market is expected to be worth $16.06 Billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 62.9% from 2016 to 2022. Several U.S. companies have raised $1 billion dollars or more to fuel artificial intelligence (AI) development.