In 2021, Silicon Valley saw a wave of resigning from Big Tech of leading figures to pursue blockchain and Web3 projects. In addition to the fear of missing out, tech elites also believed blockchain will re-imagine the journey of personal computers (PC) and Internet, which were once questioned before laying the foundation for the world’s richest billionaires today.
By this year, after a turmoil year of the Web3 field, many people, including the group in the technology layoffs and the group following the blockchain trend, decided to start their AI “journey”, according to the WSJ.
Though, the new AI trend has experts recommending that could be the next tech bubble. Those working in the field worry the term “artificial intelligence” risks becoming another meaningless tech buzzword.
“The people talking about generative AI right now were the people talking about Web3 and blockchain until recently—the Venn diagram is a circle. People have just rebranded themselves,” said Ben Waber, CEO of Humanyze, a company that uses AI to analyze behavior microwork, commented.
The wave of AI recruitment in startups
There are no specific metrics yet, but the trend of hiring AI employees continues to increase, despite the ongoing wave of layoffs in the technology field. According to Waber, many of those companies’ clients are hiring people with data science skills, which are considered key to collecting and preparing information for AI models.
AI companies also try to attract employees with high incomes. The startup Anthropic was recently established but has posted jobs with a starting salary of $250,000 per year.
Even so, Amit Taylor, founder of TrueUp, a website dedicated to tracking tech recruitment news, said that startups in this field are still small-scale, attracting only a small amount of laid-off tech workers.
Unsustainable foundation
According to AI experts, most startups in the field of AI are confident in their technology, especially in its impact on the real world. But the new wave may just be hype, fueled by the big firms themselves.
In fact, as AI becomes more and more accessible, it’s easy to label any startup an “artificial intelligence company”.
According to CB Insights, last year, investors poured $2.6 billion into 110 artificial intelligence-related startups in the US. Matt Moberg, vice president of Franklin Templeton Investments, said this year the numbers seem to be about the same. However, he worries that the wave will create a series of low-quality AI startups based on the foundations of other companies.
“Everyone has access to these tools, so who’s going to build the next big thing is a real question for a lot of people,” said Brianne Kimmel, founder of Worklife Ventures.
For the cautious investor, the AI movement is similar to the previous crypto bubble. However, others still carry the FOMO (fear of missing out) sentiment, thinking that products like ChatGPT can become the “next Google”.
(Reference: Wall Street Journal)