Since AlphaGo 4:1 defeated Li Sedol, the strongest chess player in mankind, people's anxiety has never stopped:
- Go players begin to question the meaning of decades of studying chess manuals
- Employees with a high proportion of repetitive tasks in their jobs are increasingly worried that they will soon be replaced by machines
- The discussion on Zhihu about what jobs will not be replaced by AI is heating up
- The general public is beginning to fear that robots will control humans in turn
As if to verify everyone's concerns and anxiety, unmanned vehicles, unmanned supermarkets, and drones have become a reality one by one. What is even more frightening is that everyone has always felt that creativity, aesthetics, and thinking will never be replaced. It has also been broken through: robot writing, robot painting, robot psychiatrist...
This anxiety quickly swept programmers like a tornado, and more and more programmers began to worry that they would be replaced by programming robots! Even myself, I used to worry: If robots can be programmed, what's the point of our existence?
Based on this anxiety, many programmers began to emerge in the field of artificial intelligence, hoping to dance with the trend of the times by mastering artificial intelligence-related algorithms and technologies. As a result, all kinds of sharing, online courses, books, and information are pouring in, programmers seem to be eliminated if they don’t talk about AI, and it seems that if they join the torrent of AI, they can avoid being eliminated…
Faced with the flood of AI, are you panicking? Have you figured out how to deal with it?
Let's talk about these topics today:
- Why Chase AI Development
- Four Categories of AI Developers
- Which posture is suitable for you to cut into artificial intelligence software development
Why Chase AI Development
In my previous article, " How to Make Choices Greater Than Efforts ," I discussed in detail the huge impact trends and choices can have on a person's career development. In fact, there are three elements to an individual's external success:
- trend
- station
- ability
Among these, trends magnify individual effort and potential. Even if you choose the right trend and stand in the right position, even if you just follow the trend and stay behind, you may soar into the sky. This is the so-called "standing on the tuyere, pigs can fly".
From this point of view, following the trend is very important. Over the past 20 years, we have experienced various major trends such as computers, PC Internet, and mobile Internet. Now, the future major trends are big data and artificial intelligence. If you can enter this trend, there is a high probability of obtaining new development and growth, and then, you may also enjoy the dividends brought by the trend and obtain higher income.
The current recruitment information can also reflect this trend:
Many developers are chasing AI, and from this point of view, for their own better future.
But in reality, trends don't belong to everyone. It tends to belong to those who have been preparing for this trend for many years. If you don’t believe me, take a look. Those experts, scientists, and companies that are now flourishing in the AI trend, which one has not done research in related fields for many years?
If you just see the trend and rush to it blindly, you will often become a follower, or even lose it, and follow and follow to find your own position.
So, if you decide to follow, learn how to follow. So, let’s start by looking at the four categories of AI developers.
Four categories of AI development
Developers engaged in artificial intelligence-related software can be divided into four categories:
- infrastructure support
- algorithm
- application framework
- Industry application
As shown below:
Let's introduce them one by one.
1) Infrastructure support
In 2016 and 2017, the stock of a company soared more than 6 times because of the artificial intelligence boom. That company is: Nvidia. They do GPUs, and their chips can support machine learning!
There are relatively few companies and people engaged in such infrastructure development, but they are essential.
2) Algorithm
Looking back at the recruitment information we posted earlier, all 5 positions require you to be familiar with AI-related algorithms.
Algorithm engineers, data and algorithm scientists are the kings of the AI era. Companies such as Baidu, Ali, Tencent, etc., senior algorithm engineers in this field can earn an annual salary of over one million without pressure.
However, such developers are very few, very few. Moreover, you are going to chase now, which is affected by two conditions:
- Others have taken the lead, occupying the head
- Your past math foundation may not be able to keep up, and the learning speed is not as fast as others
You can hardly catch up!
3) Application Framework
In recent years, frameworks such as TensorFlow and Caffe have become popular, and there are more and more similar frameworks. Many companies, organizations, and open source developers are doing this work.
These frameworks are the basis for a technology to be applied on a large scale. Because most developers don't understand the algorithm, they can only call the API. Therefore, in order to make production efficient, there must be various frameworks.
Therefore, the application framework developer, is another option for you. However, it also has high requirements on people. There are several points:
- Be able to understand the underlying algorithms, understand the effects of various algorithms and how to use them
- Imagination, architectural design ability and abstraction ability
- Can understand upper-level business problems and abstractly map them to the framework level
4) Industry application
A technology, in order to change people's work and life and improve the efficiency of social operation, must rely on the application of all walks of life! Further, ordinary users don't even care about what technology is used in an application. What they care about is whether the application can solve problems and bring convenience.
It is the mission of most companies to provide problem-solving application software to users in all walks of life. Engaged in industry application development, it is the destination of most developers!
To do well in AI-related application development, you need:
- Understand the background and application scenarios of AI algorithms
- Familiar with application framework
- Familiar with the business
- Ability to abstract, imagine and design architecture
The application of artificial intelligence in all walks of life will soon (2~3 years) blowout, which will require a large number of developers to intervene. To do this, you can start preparing!
Which posture is suitable for you to cut into artificial intelligence software development
After understanding the 4 categories of artificial intelligence software development, we can choose the posture to enter the field of artificial intelligence software development based on our own capabilities:
- Developers who are interested in hardware, software and hardware combination, operating system, etc. and have accumulated experience can enter the field of infrastructure for development
- Developers who are familiar with algorithms, or who are interested in establishing competitiveness in the field of algorithms, can look for opportunities in the direction of algorithms
- If you have application framework development experience, or are interested in framework design and development, you can join corresponding open source organizations or companies to provide support for other developers by developing application frameworks
- Developers who prefer to use software to solve specific business problems to help people improve their life and production efficiency, or developers who are not capable enough to do the other three types of software, can consider participating in the explosive trend of artificial intelligence in industry applications. when
For most developers, it may be more suitable to use the fourth method to cut into artificial intelligence software development. If you want to go this route, you can prepare now:
- Understand your field and business, and become a business expert (future software developers must be proficient in business, and may even be an expert who is familiar with business and can directly use a convenient development framework to make software by themselves)
- Understand artificial intelligence-related application frameworks and learn to use them
- Exercise your abstraction ability, imagination, design ability and questioning ability, they are the core ability of whether you can combine business and artificial intelligence to create software
Finally, a reminder that you don’t have to chase the wave of artificial intelligence software development. There are many directions for software development and many application scenarios, and you have a lot of choices – as long as you can become a part of the field you are in head, and you'll have a lot of opportunities. And if you don't have the thinking, ability and action to become the head, you will basically be stunned by any wave you go after.
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