Not every AI-flavored job is an AI job. Sometimes the word is core to the work. Sometimes it is just sprinkled on top.
AI has become the parmesan cheese of job descriptions.
It gets sprinkled on everything.
Engineering roles, obviously.
Product roles, sure.
Marketing roles, sales roles, customer success roles, operations roles, finance roles, HR roles, legal roles, healthcare roles. Somewhere in the posting, the word shows up. AI. LLM. Automation. Copilot. Agentic. Machine learning. Generative AI.
Some of those jobs really are AI jobs.
Some of them use AI.
Some of them sell AI.
Some of them support customers who use AI.
Some of them mention AI because the company strategy deck mentions AI.
And some of them just want the word nearby.
Arthur C. Clarke wrote:
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”clarke
That line still works. But job postings have created a smaller, more annoying problem.
Any sufficiently fashionable technology is indistinguishable from seasoning.
The word is not the work
The question is no longer whether a job mentions AI.
The question is what the posting means by it.
A job can mention AI because you will build models.
Or because you will use AI tools.
Or because you will sell an AI product.
Or because you will support AI customers.