The rise of AI sparks new professions, reshapes the employment landscape

Completing the AI ​​jigsaw requires a helping hand from humans, which is creating innovative professions and reshaping the employment landscape in the digital age.

As China’s AI industry continues its meteoric rise, it’s not just the technology that’s evolving — new job opportunities are flourishing along with it.

Last year, the industry’s market size reached nearly 509.7 billion yuan ($70 billion), according to iResearch. The growing demand for jobs such as data annotators, virtual face designers and virtual architects highlights a crucial intersection where human skills meet machine skills.

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security received over 430 proposals last year for new occupations, more than double the number in 2021. About a quarter of them were closely related to the digital economy, smart manufacturing, information technology and modern services. The new recognized professions will be announced by the ministry in June.

“In the future, society will become increasingly virtual and digital,” said Wang Youwei, a professor of information management and business intelligence at Fudan University in Shanghai. “The industrial revolution freed people from repetitive physical work, and generative AI is expected to solve repetitive mental work. This will inevitably create new job opportunities.”

Wang elaborated on an example. “In jobs related to content production, such as writing documents and customer services that involve questions and answers, large models can eliminate some repetitive mental work. However, since these models can provide results of inaccurate or illogical, jobs that involve judging and monitoring generated content will become more important.”

Digital ‘gig’ workers

This “data annotation” was originally handled by software engineers and programmers. However, as demands for data cleaning grew, they became overwhelmed, creating “digital gig workers” in the AI ​​field.

Annotators identify specific words in text or speech, outline items in images or videos, and tag them. For example, in synonym training, markers determine whether two text segments are semantically identical and mark “yes” or “no”. These tasks do not require high academic or professional qualifications, but require understanding, discernment and precision.

Sun Danfeng, a stay-at-home mother from Zhoukou, Henan province, works as a data annotator. Despite only having a high school education and no knowledge of AI, she has become an AI trainer.

“There are four to five hundred data entry projects on the platform I signed up for. Some are simple, like choosing a different image from three photos, and others are more difficult,” she said, adding that work is flexible as annotators can choose it. they do and when and where they work, as long as the task is completed on time.

“It is very difficult for a housewife who does not have a good education experience to get a part-time job in a city like Zhoukou, or any non-mega city,” she said.

“However, for stay-at-home mums, having nothing to do after the kids go to school is really boring and asking their husband for money is uncomfortable.”

Sun learned about data logging from her college student brother when she talked to him about feeling disconnected from society after becoming a full-time homemaker. She lacked financial independence and struggled to find a job due to her limited education and tight job market in the county.

“This data entry job is perfect for me,” she said.

“Now, I can earn some pocket money in my spare time. I earn 1,000 to 2,000 yuan a month and I am quite satisfied. My husband works in another city and we have debts, so to earn some extra money for the kids are fine,” she added.

In 2020, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security included data entries in the national occupational classification list, giving the job official recognition.

In recent years, the size of the data recorder market has grown significantly and is estimated to reach 20.43 billion yuan by 2029, up from 4.33 billion yuan in 2021, according to the Huaon Industrial Research Institute. This rapid growth has fueled ever greater demand for data annotators.

However, Sun Ping, an associate researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, expressed concern about the rapidly expanding market.

“Data annotation companies, primarily outsourcing tasks and operating in a labor-intensive manner with low barriers to entry, pose a risk of easy replacement for their workers, earning them the name ‘Foxconn of the Internet.'” Annotators are also AI trainers and ‘job scavengers.’ When the final algorithms are developed, such work may no longer be needed, leaving these workers unemployed once again,” she said.

Cooperative employment

Ye Cong, head of NetEase YooNexus Platform, has a more positive view of AI job creation.

“The digitization of various industries will create continuous demand to train artificial intelligence in various scenarios, providing more employment opportunities for human-AI collaboration. The future relationship between humans and AI is one of collaboration, not substitution. , Ye said.

NetEase’s new platform takes data tasks from businesses and breaks them down into multiple small projects. Users can earn points by completing projects, which can be exchanged for wages.

In less than three years since its establishment, the platform has gathered over 1 million registered users, mostly from the western and northeastern regions of China, with an even gender split, mostly aged 25 to 35. Monthly active users exceeded 15,000.

The platform has extended data annotation from traditional scenarios such as AI customer service, chatbots and image generators to physical projects in the engineering machinery industry, helping robots model tasks and providing more training scenarios and data for machine intelligence.

“We focus on excavators and loaders, helping them achieve precise, intelligent operations in mines and ports,” said Ye.

“We are now promoting collaboration with major engine manufacturers. The ‘AI-ization’ of physical industries ensures 24-hour excavator operation, significantly improving efficiency and addressing safety challenges in scenarios such as underground mining,” he said.

In these projects, manual “annotation-based” instructions for machine learning tasks place greater demands on data annotators. “Most of them must have experience in the industry and many are certified excavator operators,” Ye said.

Beyond data loggers, new digital professions such as face designers, motion capture artists and virtual architects are also emerging. Instead of working for a company or platform, a growing number of people are choosing to be self-employed.

College student Zhou Run is embarking on such a journey. He accepts orders on lifestyle platform Xiaohongshu to create virtual avatars that closely resemble real-life images.

For a fee of 50 yuan, customers can commission his work. However, to buy the rights to their avatar or get the numerical data of their avatar’s features, they need to pay about 600 yuan.

“Today more players prefer the ability to freely change their appearance and customize their characters to achieve a more realistic experience in the virtual world. Pre-designed faces in games no longer meet players’ needs for customization, leading to the appearance of “The Profession of Face Sculptor, Which Is What I’m Doing”.

Zhou has been in business for just under six months and has already amassed several hundred followers on his Xiaohongshu account. During peak periods, he can earn 4,000 to 5,000 yuan a month.

As his order volume grows, he has moved from traditional modeling tools and face sculpting software to AI tools that allow for mass production.

Animation with sound

VoiceAnimator is an AI-driven facial animation tool from NetEase Games AI Lab. This tool is capable of generating facial animations for virtual characters directly from audio or input text and audio files, which is suitable for hyper-realistic and anime-style virtual characters.

Such facial animations, which originally took 10 to 14 days to produce, can now be generated by AI in just two minutes. Based on the created animations, artists can make further improvements.

“Creating lifelike facial animations is indeed a complex, time-consuming and expensive endeavor. It requires understanding the subtle movements and variations of facial muscles, as well as smooth lip-syncing with speech. With the increasing prevalence of virtual characters, there is a growing demand for efficient content production. We aim to facilitate this process,” said Yin Xu, VoiceAnimator’s technical manager.

“As the AI ​​industry flourishes, continuous learning is essential for those within the industry. Professional artists are also embracing AI knowledge. VoiceAnimator users not only need professional artistic skills, but also need to learn AI-related tools to reduce repetitive tasks and unleash their creativity,” added Yin.

In the roughly four years since its development, this tool has been continuously optimized for various usage scenarios, from in-game character animations to educational virtual language tutors and AI-driven newscasting.

At home in the metaverse

According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the number of AI companies in China has exceeded 4,500. It has created new industries and business models, creating countless employment opportunities, including new roles for those in traditional sectors. Professionals who can skillfully combine AI technology with traditional industry knowledge are becoming highly sought after in the market.

Bella Zheng, a former landscape designer, is transitioning to become a “city architect” in the metaverse and immersing herself in learning to code.

“I want to create cities in the virtual world,” Zheng said. “Those who can do urban planning often can’t do metaverse, and vice versa. The new profession of metaverse city architect combines both skill sets.”

Many architects and space designers are joining the construction of the metaverse, breaking free from traditional constraints to creatively express unique works, according to Zheng. Popular projects in the metaverse like “Liberland” by Zaha Hadid Architects are ushering in this new architectural horizon.

This profession matches the childhood dream of Zheng, who is currently based in Los Angeles, California, to travel the world. “I would do part-time projects, visiting different cities for inspiration, including local and international cities, understanding their iconic features and feeling the atmosphere, and we would integrate that into our projects.”

What attracts him most to this job is the endless creative space. “In the metaverse, rules or constraints such as gravity, structural stability, climate or physical laws do not apply. Architects can freely overcome existing conditions to create unique environments and true works of art,” she said.

“Years ago, my parents might not have understood my profession and would have preferred that I become an urban designer, as most of my classmates did. But now their mindset has changed. This is a career in development, which more and more people consider promising, she said, adding that there is a growing recognition and acceptance, even among the elderly.