Once hyped as a career paying $200K with no coding required, prompt engineering was supposed to be the next big thing. However, as technology has advanced faster than expected, being an “AI whisperer” has shifted from a unique job title to a skill needed by everyone to succeed.
The tech industry’s “hottest new job” has been extinguished almost as fast as it caught flame.
Back in 2023—when ChatGPT exploded onto the global radar—prompt engineering was promised as a new career path for those eager to become master “AI whisperers.” With the potential for a $200,000 salary and no coding required, it by all means sounded like a dream job focused on properly utilizing generative AI to solve business problems.
However, despite AI skills being more in demand than ever (and education institutions creating prompt engineering programs), prompt engineer as a job title did not really take off as some people hoped, according to Allison Shrivastava, an economist at Indeed.
“Prompt engineering as a skill is still definitely a good thing to have, but it’s not an entire title,” Shrivastava told Fortune.
On Indeed, searches for prompt engineering roles peaked in April 2023—and rapid advancements in AI technology are mostly to blame. Just a few years ago, generative AI was hallucination-filled and often struggled to understand user intent, but today, these tools are more human-like than ever and can even prompt questions back to the user if something needs clarification.
The whiplash in the skills and job market is just another gut punch to Gen Zers, who have struggled to get their careers off the ground. In today’s rapidly changing world, the skills that are in demand when someone enters college might be completely obsolete by the time they graduate.
Prompt engineering’s skill value
As employers increasingly demand workers increase their use of AI (and with it, their productivity), prompt engineering has shifted from something exclusive to the tech field to a skill that all workers need to master.
In fact, LinkedIn said AI literacy is the No. 1 fastest-growing skill in the U.S., and according to a survey, 99% of HR leaders report having been asked to add more AI skills to job requirements.
However, despite this purported demand, the share of job postings is still relatively small, Shrivastava said. Generative-AI terms only appear in three out of every 1,000 job postings on Indeed—though mentions grew 170% last year, according to an Indeed report.
To top that off, some two-thirds of jobs on Indeed demand skills that AI can already handle.
But despite the ups and downs of the job market, Shrivastava encourages those on the job hunt to be bullish when applying—even if you don’t check all the education or skill qualifications.
“Don’t be shied away from applying based on solid requirements,” she said. “You never know.”
The prompt-engineering party may have been over before it started
Those in the tech space are likely not too surprised by prompt engineering not coming to fruition. In fact, in 2022, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman predicted its demise.
“I don’t think we’ll be doing prompt engineering in five years,” Altman said in 2022. “This will be integrated everywhere; just with text, or voice, depending on the context, you will just interface in language and get the computer to do whatever you want it to do.”
However, last month Altman told entrepreneur and social media host Varun Mayya that prompt engineering was an example “near and dear to his heart” of an entirely new job that was hard to conceptualize existing decades ago. And while prompt engineer may not be on more people’s résumés moving forward as a job title, he hopes the mindset behind it remains a priority.
“I really encourage people to have their own conviction on what things are going to be like,” he said. “Just because something is not a historically valuable or high-status job, doesn’t mean it won’t be in the future.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
