Research Tools: UMD-LinkUp Announce World’s First AI-Powered Job Mapping Tool to Track the Creation of AI Jobs

From the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland

UMD-LinkUp, a collaboration between the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, LinkUp Job Market Data, and Outrigger Group, introduced the world’s first tool for mapping the creation of jobs requiring artificial intelligence skills: UMD-LinkUp AI Maps.

AI Maps leverages LinkUp’s industry leading job data to visualize the spread of jobs requiring skills in AI across the country – by sector, state and more granular geographic levels. The resulting interactive map allows users to track the creation of U.S. based AI jobs each month; rank states by their share of those jobs; do a deeper dive across economic sectors, metropolitan areas, and counties; and determine a region’s AI Intensity: the ratio of its AI jobs to all other postings.

Redefining Accuracy

The handful of recent research papers on the subject have relied on keyword-based approaches to identify jobs requiring AI skills, resulting in up to 70% false positives. UMD-LinkUp AI Maps shifts the paradigm by utilizing a fine-tuned large language model (LLM) to enhance accuracy. This sophisticated approach filters AI jobs with an accuracy exceeding 90% when compared against manual checks by researchers.

“In short, we are using AI to track the dispersion of AI jobs,” says Anil K. Gupta, Michael Dingman Chair and professor of Strategy, Globalization and Entrepreneurship at the Robert H. Smith School of Business and co-lead of the project. “We are using highly specialized LLMs to assist with filtering AI jobs for an accurate and timely assessment of what constitutes an AI job.”

An analysis of initial findings is available in the From West to the Rest white paper, which shows AI jobs are on the upswing, despite a decline in IT jobs in general. The report pinpoints regions that have the highest share of AI jobs, including the Washington, D.C. region, thanks to the concentration of federal agencies and defense and aerospace contractors that have embraced the new technologies.

Learn More, Read the Complete Launch Announcement

Direct to MD-LinkUp AI Maps

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