Today I took a groundbreaking decision:
I changed my Linkedin Bio.
From “AI/ML Engineer” to “Deep Learning Engineer”. On Linkedin, there is no one to actually control what we put on our “CV’s” (a.k.a our profiles), since we don’t need to show a contract, or even be a real profile.
This has many downsides. Since more or less 2022 we saw a “boom” with this new title. How is it possible that we suddenly started seeing so many people with the role “AI Engineer” (especially with 7+ years of experience apparently), in a role that started just in 2022?
Well, because “AI” is a very broad term. Anyone that has being doing linear regressions, fitting models, or even using a calculator from the 1980s, can technically speaking call themselves an AI Engineer. And hence, many people started calling themselves AI engineers, myself included.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m not say people shouldn’t do that. On the contrary, there are many people out there that have been using artificial neural networks to do research, or that have been using them at work before 2022, and they’ve rightfully earned the title of AI Engineer.
But also many people don’t. Some say they are “AI enthusiasts”, some just put it on Linkedin after training their first ANN’s, some after doing some API calls to OpenAI.
And I’m no one to say whether that’s right or wrong.
There is one thing I firmly believe though. If you don’t state precisely what you do, especially on Linkedin, two things will happen:
Recruiters won’t know what you actually can or can’t do
You probably won’t get the job that you’re looking for, because you don’t know what you’re looking for
And hence my personal issue with the term “AI”. I don’t know if I’m talking about the same thing when talking about “AI” with someone, and I’m not sure if I’m transmitting what I want to transmit.
Personally, I felt the “permission” to call myself a ML Engineer after officially getting that role at a company, and I could back it up with a real contract. I added the “AI” in front of “ML”, because I thought that would make clear to the world that I’m able to deliver systems with embedded Deep Learning models, which is -at least in my opinion- what people should refer to when saying “AI”.
But then I realized that I’m contributing to the same thing that actually bothers me:
the noise and misunderstanding around the term AI
How can I reach out to the clients that I’m interested in if I don’t say precisely what I do? How will they notice me? How will they know what Deep Learning can (and can’t) do?
So I decided to state more clearly what I do. I create Deep Learning Systems at Mirai Engineering to accelerate and optimize real world problems. From API calls to OpenAI, to fine-tuning and delivering local LLM’s, to creating deep & machine learning models tailored to specific industries.
And hence the change on my Linkedin bio.
And I suggest you do the same. Find out what you want to to do, and if it’s in the wide realm of AI, decide what will you specialize in. Do you want to be an AI generalist? A Computer Vision expert? A Natural Language Processing expert? Work with Causal AI?
Let me know what you think!
