Netflix is hiring for 'machine studying' AI job and paying $1.2 million in wage

News, , , , , , ,

No matter else it’s possible you’ll assume, the optics are unhealthy. Within the midst of a protracted strike by each writers and actors in Hollywood’s leisure trade over (amongst different issues), using synthetic intelligence within the creation and manufacturing of TV exhibits and films, streaming big Netflix has posted a job itemizing for a “Product Supervisor — Machine Studying Platform.”

The wage? As much as US$900,000, or $1.2 million Canadian.

What the job entails is one other query completely. Along with such buzzwords as “strategic imaginative and prescient,” “success metrics” and “statistical acumen,” the itemizing notes: “The Machine Studying Platform (MLP) … presents ML/AI practitioners throughout Netflix the means to attain the very best doable impression with their work by making it straightforward to develop, deploy and enhance their machine-learning fashions.”

The job is a brand new position inside the firm.

An article on the web information web site The Intercept wrote in regards to the pattern of AI-focused leisure jobs, together with an interview with actor Rob Delaney, whose credit embody an element in an episode of Black Mirror that pokes enjoyable on the energy and ubiquity of streaming companies.

“So $900k per 12 months per soldier of their godless AI military when that quantity of earnings might qualify 35 actors and their households for [actors’ union] medical insurance is simply ghoulish,” he mentioned. “Having been poor and wealthy on this enterprise, I can guarantee you there’s sufficient cash to go round; it’s nearly priorities.”

The article notes that Netflix isn’t the one leisure firm – or certainly the one trade – entering into AI recruitment. Disney CEO Bob Iger not too long ago mentioned on an earnings name that “we’re already beginning to use AI to create some efficiencies and in the end to raised serve customers.”

A latest job posting at Disney seeks a “Senior Machine Studying Engineer.” Duties embody: “Develop, debug and deploy new functions of machine studying” and “Collaborate with our companions throughout the Disney Studios, together with Marvel, Walt Disney Animation, Pixar and [Industrial Light and Magic] to handle their wants.”

In the meantime, corporations throughout a number of sectors are scrambling to rent “heads of AI,” no matter that will imply.

“That is the most important deal of the last decade, and it’s ridiculously overhyped,” Peter Krensky of consulting agency Gartner informed the web site Vox in a latest interview. “If I have been speaking to a CEO a 12 months in the past, and I used to be like, ‘You’d be a idiot to not have a head of AI,’ They’d be like, ‘Come on, give me a break.’ And now they’re like, I do know, that’s why I’ve one.”

Krensky estimates that a couple of quarter of Fortune 2000 corporations have devoted AI management on the VP stage or above, and he expects to develop to 80 per cent within the subsequent 12 months. Among the many new recruits, Pratik Thaker, Coca-Cola’s international head of generative AI, who helped lead the corporate’s foray into AI-generated promoting. The subject was an enormous speaking level on the Cannes Lions annual occasion in France this 12 months.

Thaker didn’t come from a technical background, however had beforehand been Coke’s head of worldwide artistic technique. Conor Grennan, a dean at NYU’s Stern enterprise college and its newly minted head of generative AI, says that’s most likely not a nasty thought, telling Vox the place is extra about realizing what AI can do than realizing exactly the way it works.

“You don’t have to know the software program working your iPhone, simply order an Uber,” he mentioned.