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China lures AI talent with hefty salary premium as demand far exceeds supply, report finds
- Computer vision engineers with GenAI skills can command salaries that are two-thirds higher than their peers without such knowledge, Liepin finds
- Jobseekers taking on less technical roles – such as account sales or graphics and visual design – are also better paid if they have GenAI skills
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Ben Jiangin Beijing
Employers in China are scrambling for talent with skills in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), the technology underpinning a new generation of highly intelligent chatbots led by Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
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Computer vision engineers with GenAI skills are being offered an average annual salary of more than 480,000 yuan (US$66,700), about two-thirds higher than the 290,000 yuan earned by their peers without such knowledge, according to a recent report published by Chinese recruitment agency Liepin.
Similar pay discrepancies exist in other tech roles, ranging from software architects to algorithm engineers and programmers.
Chinese companies are eagerly playing catch-up in GenAI after the public release of ChatGPT by San Francisco-based OpenAI in late 2022. Big Tech firms – including search engine Baidu and e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding – and smaller start-ups in China have launched more than 200 large language models.
Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
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