AI companies are struggling to hire ethics professionals despite the technology’s widespread deployment in sensitive areas like healthcare and criminal justice. The disconnect reveals how the industry’s rush to market has sidelined responsible development practices, even as concerns about AI’s potential harms continue to mount.
The big picture: The AI ethics profession, once heralded as essential by the World Economic Forum in 2021, has failed to materialize into substantial job opportunities despite AI’s explosive growth across industries.
What you should know: AI ethics officers are designed to guide development and ensure technology aligns with ethical principles and societal values, helping mitigate risks to organizations and consumers.
- Many professionals in the field report a dismal job market with few available positions.
- Companies racing to push out new AI products with minimal government oversight have relegated ethics to an afterthought.
- Researchers warn this approach could lead to major ramifications beyond already witnessed issues like “AI psychosis,” a condition where AI systems exhibit erratic or unpredictable behavior.
Other hyped AI jobs are also struggling: Prompt engineering, another profession that generated significant buzz, has already become nearly obsolete.
- North America’s prompt engineering market was valued at approximately $75 million with a 33% compound annual growth rate in 2023.
- Aline Lerner, CEO of a tech recruitment company, told Fast Company that online discussion around the role “has far outweighed the actual headcount.”
- The responsibilities have largely been absorbed into existing roles like machine learning engineering.
The broader job creation debate: Tech leaders like Jensen Huang, CEO of chip giant Nvidia, and Mark Cuban have promoted AI’s job creation potential, but early evidence suggests otherwise.
- Mo Gawdat, a Google executive, recently called the AI job creation narrative “100% crap.”
- While AI has reshaped how most people work, it hasn’t produced as many new roles as it has eliminated.
- The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Future of Jobs report estimates AI will displace 92 million jobs but create 170 million by 2030.
Why this matters: The lack of demand for AI ethics professionals highlights a fundamental tension between rapid technological advancement and responsible deployment, potentially leaving society vulnerable to unintended consequences as AI becomes more pervasive in critical decision-making systems.
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