On September 12th, at the AISummit 2024 conference, Ivan Tyukin, Professor at the Skoltech Applied AI Center, spoke at the "Education and Workforce" session, where he discussed the future demand for specialists in artificial intelligence (AI). Ivan highlighted that the rapid development of AI systems—from facial recognition to large language models—creates new challenges and increases the demand for specialists who can not only develop but also adapt AI models to specific tasks. 

He emphasized that training large models from scratch requires substantial financial investment, as in the case of GPT-4, which cost $100 million to train. Therefore, key skills will include fine-tuning existing models, optimizing their performance, and ensuring their security. The Skoltech professor also identified AI cybersecurity as a critical challenge. He cited a recent incident in the UNIX community involving the "zx" utility, which contained a "backdoor" enabled by open-source code. “What happens if backdoors appear in AI, particularly in commercial AI?” Ivan Tyukin posed. “How can they be detected, and how can the creation of malicious backdoors be prevented or made more difficult? This creates a vital need for relevant competencies.” 

At Skoltech, these trends are well understood, and efforts are already underway to adapt educational programs to prepare students for new challenges and equip them with the necessary skills to thrive in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.