Logical people who can think in a logical way, who like to learn new things, and who like to operate computers.

The term AI stands for the English term "Artificial Intelligence," which means "artificial intelligence" that artificially reproduces human perception and intelligence. A typical computer faithfully executes "programs," which are human commands. However, computers with improved performance can now execute programs that can "learn" as humans learn. This learning is called "machine learning." A machine-learning program can make decisions, predictions, and suggestions according to answers and laws derived from the computer's own thinking about various input information. That is the central technology of AI today.
Familiar AI includes "voice recognition AI," which is used in the "voice input function" of smartphones and PCs to operate them with spoken words and input text. Another typical example of AI is the "search engine system" used in "online search" on the Internet. Recently, "Generative AI," in which AI generates text, images, music, etc. in response to human requests, is being used in various fields. The engineers who develop such AI are AI engineers.
The work of an AI engineer can be broadly divided into three stages: development, learning, and testing. The first stage, "development," involves thinking about the tasks and roles you want AI to perform, and creating a basic system to accomplish them. Learning" refers to "machine learning" to make AI learn. The last stage, "testing," is to test the AI's performance after it has finished learning, which can be a very rewarding job because AI engineers have the chance to develop AI that has never existed before.
On the other hand, as the use of AI expands, there is a risk that it will cause problems that deviate from human ethics. Problems such as using works that require the author's permission without permission or spreading incorrect or biased information have actually occurred, and efforts are needed to provide a mechanism at the AI development stage to prevent AI from judging and accepting ethically problematic commands.

There are no specific qualifications or educational background required to become an AI engineer. However, programming knowledge and skills are necessary for AI development. Although it is possible to learn these skills on one's own, the content is quite difficult. Many students study AI-related specialized knowledge, including programming, at information engineering or information science universities or vocational schools, and then join an AI development company.
Incidentally, "logical thinking," in which one thinks in a logical manner, is important in programming. In junior high and high school, students learn "mathematics," which is a development of the arithmetic learned in elementary school. If you want to become an AI engineer, you should learn logical thinking through mathematics in junior high school and high school.

The term "AI engineer" is used not only to refer to AI engineers who handle the entire artificial intelligence technology, but also to all engineers involved in AI, including "machine learning engineers" and "data scientists. Machine learning engineers specialize in machine learning. They collect information necessary for deep learning (i.e., AI itself discovers and learns features from a large amount of data) and incorporate procedures and calculation methods (algorithms) into AI to solve problems. Data scientists, on the other hand, are experts in analyzing (subdividing and finding new information) a wide variety of information (big data). Data scientists with advanced skills in data analysis are indispensable in preparing large amounts of information into a form that can be used for machine learning.

The Japanese government has proposed "Society 5.0," a new society to follow the current "Society 4.0" information society, as a vision of the future society to be aimed for. The new society is one in which "everything and everyone will be connected via the Internet, and a variety of knowledge and information will be shared to solve problems and difficulties. One of the technologies indispensable for the realization of such a society is AI, and AI engineers involved in the development of AI are needed to create the society of the future. Policies to strengthen domestic AI development, such as the introduction of supercomputers necessary for development and support for subsidies, are also in progress. AI will be used and developed in a variety of fields in the future, and the field in which AI engineers will work will continue to expand.

The average annual salary is approximately 4.53-5.71 million yen. Larger companies with more employees are slightly higher.

A company or university laboratory. The office of the company to which you belong. Or the office of a client company. Some people work from home (remote work).

It's a chart that shows at a glance the main routes to getting a job as an AI engineer!