[Nvn]

As mentioned in the article, AI is the broader field that encompasses Machine Learning, and to a large extent also Data science (and Computer vision, NLP, Pattern recognition, etc.). And while data science might utilize a lot of statistical techniques, it is a huge stretch to consider the whole AI field to be 'statistics'.

In general, AI borrows many more techniques from mathematics than it does from statistics. However, the field of AI has been quite established since the 1960's, and many techniques have been developed within that field as AI techniques, it's more about being accurate than about being fashionable as AI simply isn't 'just' statistics.

[jkbyc]

I believe the OP's point is that the demand is for applied statisticians and not for AI experts (in the sense exactly as defined by you).

[Nvn]

The article is about tech firms and universities stocking up on research centers of AI experts, with the claim in its title that there is a high demand for those AI experts.

There might also be a demand for applied statisticians, but that doesn't make AI experts statisticians. I understand the confusion, as the term AI is often misused, but when you see the names mentioned in the article it's clear they're talking about actual AI researchers.

[sjg007]

I think there are two levels. On the one hand, many firms need big data experts who can reason statistically and apply machine learning techniques to their domain. This started out 15 years ago as predicting shopping cart basket items etc..

On the other side the big tech companies are investing heavily in Deep Learning for things like NLP, Speech, Vision, Siri, and wherever else these neural net approaches may work etc...