India Among The Top Five Countries With Fastest Growing AI Talent: LinkedIn

At a time when artificial intelligence (AI) has taken the world by storm, India is witnessing rapid growth in the talent pool for the technology. The country is now among the top five fastest-growing AI talent hubs in the world, according to a report by professional social network LinkedIn.

“Singapore, Finland, Ireland, India, and Canada are experiencing the fastest rate of AI skills diffusion,” said LinkedIn’s ‘Future of Work Report – AI at Work’, adding that the number of  AI-skilled members was 9X higher globally in June 2023 compared to January 2016.

Compared to January 2016, India had 14 times more people who added AI skills to their profiles, enough for the country to secure a fourth spot on the list of fastest-growing talent hubs.

The rate of AI skills diffusion was the fastest in Singapore, which saw a 20X increase between January 2016 and June 2023. Other countries ahead of India were Finland (16X) and Ireland (15X). Canada (13X) was in the fifth position on the list.

The fastest-growing AI skills included Question Answering, Classification, Recommender Systems, Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing (NLP). According to LinkedIn, the AI skills were adopted across segments such as technology, retail, education and financial services.

The analysis of 25 countries by the LinkedIn report also showed that the number of LinkedIn members who added AI skills to their profiles nearly doubled after the launch of ChatGPT last year. The figure rose to 13% in November 2022-June 2023 from 7.7% in May-November 2022. For context, ChatGPT was launched in November 2022.

“To realise the full promise of AI productivity gains depends on the diffusion of skills across geographies, industries, and talent. AI adoption and optimisation of its use will of course take time, but at this early stage, it appears that the pace of diffusion is getting underway. The brightest global economic outcome is one where innovation can scale borders and boost productivity growth for all,” said Karin Kimbrough, chief economist at LinkedIn.

India has seen a rapid rise in AI adoption since the launch of ChatGPT. Indian companies and startups have jumped on the AI bandwagon, building products on top of OpenAI’s APIs and also building new algorithms for use cases across edtech, fintech, SaaS and others. The latest funding activity in the segment includes Kombai’s $4.5 Mn round, along with ZuAI and SocialBoat securing early stage funding.