AI and machine learning engineers earn far less in UK than in US

US software developers specialising in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) engineering appear to be earning significantly more than their peers in other countries, the latest global survey from Stack Overflow has reported.

The survey of 49,000 responses from 177 countries found that in the US, the median salary for an AI and ML engineer is $189,500 per annum, over $50,000 more than the global median.

UK AI and ML developers who took part in the survey earn $149,756, almost $40,000 less than those who work in the US. In France, the salary gap is higher, with the median annual salary for French AI and ML engineers at $104,413. In India, AI and ML engineers can expect to earn just $17,434 a year.

While 47% of the developers who took part in the survey say they use AI tools daily, Stack Overflow reported that more developers actively distrust the accuracy of AI tools (46%) than trust them (33%).

The survey found that experienced developers are the most cautious, with the lowest “highly trust” rate (2.6%) and the highest “highly distrust” rate (20%), indicating a widespread need for human verification for those in roles with accountability.

The majority (54%) of the 11,202 developers who responded to questions about how they use AI in their workflow say the primary use is to search for answers. Just over a third (35%) use AI to generate content or synthetic data, while 33% use it to help them learn new concepts.

The other main use is around documentation, with 31% saying they use AI to document their code and a quarter using AI to create or maintain documentation. Around a fifth of the developers polled use AI for debugging and to learn about the codebase.

However, based on the responses of 31,476 developers, the biggest single frustration among the people polled (66%) is dealing with “AI solutions that are almost right, but not quite”, which often leads to the second-biggest frustration: “Debugging AI-generated code is more time-consuming,” at 45%.

In a future with advanced AI, three-quarters of the developers surveyed say the primary reason they would still ask a person for help is when they do not trust answers provided by an AI. According to Stack Overflow, this positions human developers as the ultimate arbiters of quality and correctness.

“The growing lack of trust in AI tools stood out to us as the key data point in this year’s survey, especially given the increased pace of growth and adoption of these AI tools,” said Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO of Stack Overflow. “AI is a powerful tool, but it has significant risks of misinformation, or can lack complexity or relevance.

“With the use of AI now ubiquitous and ‘AI slop’ rapidly replacing the content we see online, an approach that leans heavily on trustworthy, responsible use of data from curated knowledge bases is critical. By providing a trusted human intelligence layer in the age of AI, we believe the tech enthusiasts of today can play a larger role in adding value to build the AI technologies and products of tomorrow.”