Re:Ask HN: Is ML/AI a good long-term career path?
by kiterunner2346 on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:51PM
(#21132481)
No, b/c there is no "long-term" for ML/AI. Look at what brought the current ML explosion: Moore's law held just long enough to make ML work reasonably well w/in the human attention span. Nobody anticipated this. It overrode other interests and now dominates AI (for the moment).
The same thing could happen again and another technology could sweep ML/AI aside. ML/AI itself is not a predictable "career path" like chemical, electrical/petroleum, or mechanical engineering are. ML/AI is more like the Wild West: maybe you're a wildcatter who has a new idea, thinks he can find oil and strike it rich.
If you want a predictable career path that covers most of the same subject area then choose statistics, mathematics or data science.
The same thing could happen again and another technology could sweep ML/AI aside. ML/AI itself is not a predictable "career path" like chemical, electrical/petroleum, or mechanical engineering are. ML/AI is more like the Wild West: maybe you're a wildcatter who has a new idea, thinks he can find oil and strike it rich.
If you want a predictable career path that covers most of the same subject area then choose statistics, mathematics or data science.