Companies are increasingly asking their potential technology hires: Do you know how to work with AI? Nearly 1 in 4 U.S. tech jobs posted so far this year are seeking employees with artificial-intelligence skills, job-listings data show, as firms in nearly every corner of the economy adjust their recruiting pipelines to embrace the technology. In the information sector, which includes many of the tech giants investing heavily in AI development and deployment, a leading 36% of IT jobs posted in January were AI-related. Companies in finance and professional-services industries, such as banks and consulting firms, also are looking for technology staff who know how to use or build AI algorithms and models. It isn’t just high-tech firms that are making AI a priority. The debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 was a turning point for the AI job market, said Anil K. Gupta, a professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and co-lead of its artificial-intelligence job tracker. AI-related jobs existed before then, he said, but the chatbot opened eyes about the power of integrating AI into products and workflows, leading to a “diffusion” across sectors even as many companies were pulling back from a pandemic-era hiring binge. The university’s data show that a large retail company, for example, posted for a data science director who could use predictive algorithms to improve store layouts; a utilities provider looked for an analyst to assess wildfire risk with machine-learning methods; and a drugmaker sought out a programmer for its computational chemistry group.

Full in-depth : In industries from finance to retail, companies are seeking artificial-intelligence skills when looking for technology staff.