So, here you are: using one or several programming languages and being able to work with various frameworks, having little or no industry experience, or having built multiple solutions for reputable corporations. Maybe you even know nine different ways to write a script that calculates the Fibonacci number. Yet, there is one more thing that you need to know about IT. Artificial Intelligence is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, and you can make a living with it.
Create an AI start-up
Find what you love, and you won’t work a day in your life, they said. Let me rephrase it: find what bothers you, and you’ll never run out of project ideas. Be it global warming, homelessness, or way too slow pizza delivery services in your city: there’s always something to improve around us. Once a guy could not afford the hotel while traveling to a conference in another town and had to rent out his air mattress. It took him nine years to make Airbnb profitable. So, get a team, define the target audience, come up with a solution, pitch your project to sponsors. Now, you are ready to found a start-up and get some profit by making this world a better place.Â
Implement ML in eCommerce
What can be more pleasant than shopping without the necessity to go outside? Only shopping without the necessity to go outside but with enhanced algorithms. Machine learning is useful for eCommerce. It helps to build a recommendation engine, personalize the service, adjust the price dynamically, predict the supply and demand, build in the visual search, and protect the service from fraud. Machine learning in eCommerce is dedicated to making the customer journey easier. You may use them to create conversational interfaces and automate customer support processes.Â
Chat-bots as virtual assistants
Since AI emulates the way the human brain works, why not teach it how to talk. Natural language processing is being predicted to boost within the engineering world. Developing a chat-bot would need two key technologies: speech recognition and semantic analysis. It will enable speech to text conversion, entity recognition, and database search. You might also use some ready platforms, such as Microsoft Bot Framework, Botkit, or Dialogflow. This type of digital assistant is helpful for both mobile apps and web interfaces in any business.
Increase your business revenue
Do you already have a business? Make sure that it is as efficient as possible. You can use your clients’ data to affect their news feed in social media (but please stick to the GDPR!) or build an internal system for better communication within your company. Also, there is always room to make your app more inclusive. For instance, integrate a speech synthesis to your app and become more friendly to people suffering from poor eyesight or who can’t see at all. Every business has growth potential. You only need to analyze it properly.
Share your knowledge
Everyone has a unique experience, and you are not an exception. If you lean to education and tutoring more than creating products, think about starting a blog on the engineering topic. Try identifying what specific issues you are good at. Is it NLP-algorithms, communication with a project manager, or nine different ways to write a script that calculates the Fibonacci number? You should not limit your audience to StackOverflow users. Go for it, start writing, making vlogs or podcasts and earn money by using ads, paid membership, or YouTube channel. Another chance to get a platform and profit is offering your texts to online media. You can also create and sell an online course as many people don’t know much about machine learning. Feeling confident about your knowledge and skills? You can structurize them by writing a book. But beware, there’s a possibility that you will become a star.Â
Develop an app
Build a simple free app with a premium subscription. It can do anything you like. Connect travelers with locals, track habits, look for discounts for a particular category of goods in your city, teach children to ride a bike, or help people find a date with the same political or religious ideas in their neighborhood. Premium subscription is supposed to provide users with extra features that they need to pay for. Such a system is estimated to make 1.5 times more money than other types of in-app purchases. Another way to monetize your app is by selling ads in it or offering users a limited amount of free requests/usage time, after which they would need to pay.
Take part in online ML competitions
If you are not a business person but more into the competitive spirit, consider taking part in machine learning contests. Usually, they both allow programmers to practice and earn money and collect essential insights for the science and engineering industry. The most popular ML challenge platform is Kaggle, which offers a big money prize to winners. Another big tournament is Numerai, where data science specialists compete in predicting asset prices. Here is a list of other AI, ML and NLP contest sites where you have a chance to win some cash: Driven Data, CrowdANALYTIX, Innocentive.Â
Conclusion
As an AI engineer, you don’t need to contribute to others’ ideas all the time. You can not only stay afloat but thrive by developing your ideas. As a flexible and multi-instrumental technology, AI offers plenty of possibilities. You can become a start-up founder, earn by introducing machine learning to eCommerce, automate processes using chat-bots, share your knowledge via online-course, blog or book, bring more revenue to an existing business, develop an app or take part in ML contests. Everyone can monetize their skills, regardless if they want to start a business, make a fortune, improve the world, or all of the above.
Anzhela Sychyk is a Market Researcher and Technical Writer at TheAppSolutions. She likes to learn new things about modern technologies and share knowledge through value-added content, helping entrepreneurs build businesses in a more effective way.
