Aria Li, Senior AI Engineer at Sony and Founder of Silicon Valley Youth Professionals, predicts a future where anyone can become an AI engineer. Speaking at TEDxCSTU, Li presented a compelling case for democratizing AI engineering, driven by advancements that make the technology accessible to all.

“AI has been everywhere in our lives,” Li stated, pointing out how AI-driven systems shape everyday experiences, from booking hotels to ordering food. However, she believes the real power of AI lies in its potential to solve complex business problems. “If I have to use a sentence to summarize what’s the daily life of an AI engineer, I would say it starts from understanding the business problem and ends at solving this problem using AI systems.”

Li shared examples of how AI can transform small businesses, such as a pizza shop struggling to manage inventory and pricing.

“It’s very expensive to hire an AI engineer, but everyone can be an AI engineer,” she said, introducing the idea of using open-source platforms that eliminate the need for deep technical knowledge. These platforms allow business owners to input their data and let the system predict outcomes, such as how many pizzas to make each day.

In her vision, the future of AI engineering is not limited to those with coding expertise.

“You don’t need to understand deep learning or machine learning,” Li assured while stressing that the key is to “understand your business problems, collect relevant data and let the open-source platforms do the rest.”

Li’s conclusion was this: “In the future, I believe everyone can be an AI engineer. Let’s build a smarter world together.” This suggests that as AI technology becomes more accessible, the barriers to entry will fall, enabling a broader range of individuals to harness its power.