[ilaksh]

I don't see it quite like that. It may be true that many employers are looking for postgrads. I don't know. But since practically _every single company_ large or small wants to know how or if they can take advantage of AI right now, there are plenty of opportunities to go around for anyone who has any knowledge or skills in generative AI.

And by far the most deployed technologies, even for postdocs, are going to be basically off-the-shelf or somewhat fine-tuned existing models via API or tooling being used for text and/or image generation for specific applications. In other words, things that in no way require the degree. That isn't to say that having real machine learning specialists isn't desirable, but there is plenty of room for people who just know how to apply the tools rather than invent new ones.

Actually there are plenty of "academic" papers coming out from people with advanced degrees that are mainly just applying GPT-4 to write code in some DSL to solve some category of problem. That stuff doesn't even require basic understanding of neural network architectures.

The latest models are so powerful it seems to be having a democratizing effect rather than increasing the class divide. From my perspective.