China’s AI talent pool limited amid surging job demand triggered by ChatGPT race, report finds

A recent report has highlighted a significant talent shortage in China's artificial intelligence (AI) sector. For every five new AI job opportunities, there are only two qualified individuals available in the labour market. This surge in demand is primarily driven by the escalating competition among China's Big Tech firms, including ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, e-commerce giant Alibaba, video gaming behemoth Tencent, and telecommunications equipment manufacturer Huawei. These companies are vying to launch their large language models (LLMs) and AI applications.

ByteDance has demonstrated the highest demand among its competitors, with the most AI job openings over the past three years. From January through August, the top five Chinese tech firms with the most AI jobs were ByteDance, food delivery titan Meituan, lifestyle social media platform Xiaohongshu, Alibaba, and Huawei. Baidu and Tencent, both of which have heavily invested in their generative AI services, ranked sixth and seventh, respectively.

A series of AI chatbots developed by these tech giants have received government approval for public roll-out. These companies are now in a race to incorporate AI into their products and the business operations of potential customers to boost productivity. The demand has also driven up the average monthly salaries for AI professionals to 46,518 yuan (US$6,388), a more than 6 per cent increase from last year. This figure significantly surpasses the average monthly salary of 18,976 yuan for white-collar workers in Beijing. The most sought-after talent in the AI sector are algorithm and natural language processing engineers, accounting for 46 per cent and 11 per cent of AI job demand, respectively.