If you want to command a multiyear, seven-figure salary, you used to have only four career options: chief executive officer, banker, celebrity entertainer, or pro athlete. Now there’s a fifth—artificial intelligence expert. One reason: No one can quite agree on how many there are.
Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon.com, Uber Technologies, and others dangle dazzling pay packages to lure top academics to work on teams developing facial recognition, digital assistants, and self-driving cars. Even newly minted Ph.D.s in machine learning and data science can make more than $300,000. Beyond the tech industry, among those betting on similar expertise tailored to their interests are banks, hedge funds, carmakers, and drug companies.
