The Bay Area: Crown Jewel of the Generative AI Job Market
San Francisco, the glistening metropolis that is as famous for its fog as for its cutting-edge technology, has clinched the title of AI employment central.
According to Brookings Institution, a bunch of brainy folks that could probably do a killer job at Trivial Pursuit, San Francisco and its suburban neighbor, San Jose, are leading the pack in generative AI job listings. We’re not talking a small lead either. Imagine Usain Bolt racing your grandma; that’s the kind of lead we’re talking about.
Generative AI activity, as per Brookings’ database, is like a party where only a handful of cities got the invite. San Francisco, San Jose, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and Seattle nabbed nearly half of the related job postings in the last year. Picture this: in May, almost 60% of the newly advertised generative AI jobs were in the Bay Area or one of the 13 other trendy metropolitan areas like Seattle.
AI in Hiring: Businesses Playing Self-regulation Game
Now, the experts at Brookings postulate that the increasing use of generative AI might expand the industry’s geographical presence. It could, on the other hand, just further entrench the reigning hubs, especially when we’re talking research and development gigs.
According to the report, if we want to spread the prosperity to more parts of the country and avoid an uneven AI landscape, we’ll need to pump some serious investment into fresh regions. However, it seems to suggest that the widespread adoption of generative AI applications will make sure at least a slice of the generative AI economy gets a taste of different locales.
Concentrated AI Power and the Risk of Desertification
Early signs, however, suggest that the heavy-duty core research-and-development roles will probably stay clustered in a few top-notch AI work centers. This level of concentration around the crème de la crème universities and corporations has implications for our nation’s well-being and wealth.
Such intense clustering and the simultaneous emergence of AI ‘deserts’ could put a chokehold on generative AI’s potential to improve life quality across a variety of communities. The digital economies’ ruthless ‘winner-takes-most’ dynamic could make this geographical divide a permanent fixture, even with the potential opportunities the generative AI gold rush offers to firms in new locations.
Brookings insists there’s logic in interventions to curb this excessive AI divergence. If we let AI concentrate even more, we might end up marginalizing the “rest” of the nation. According to the report, it’s high time for the U.S. to contemplate policy moves to expand the AI landscape as the field continues to grow in importance.
