This year, LinkedIn named data scientist specialists and artificial intelligence practitioners among the top jobs that enterprises sought to fill. The salary range for an artificial intelligence practitioner is $124,000 to $150,000. For a data scientist specialist, the salary range is $100,000 to $130,000. Compare this with the average U.S. salary for programmers, which is under $100,000. If you're working for a company, you want to make as much money as you can -- but you also want to enjoy what you're doing, and you want the self-confidence and assurance that you're providing value in your job and that you yourself are valued.

Over the past decade, people's interest in machine learning has not diminished. You will see machine learning in computer science programs, industry conferences, and the Wall Street Journal almost every day. For all the discussions about machine learning, many people confuse what machine learning can do with what it wants to do. Fundamentally, machine learning is the use of algorithms to extract information from raw data and implement it through models. We use this model to infer other data that we have not yet modeled.

In the forward to Microsoft's recent book, The Future Computed, executives Brad Smith and Harry Shum proposed that Artificial Intelligence (AI) practitioners highlight their ethical commitments by taking an oath analogous to the Hippocratic Oath sworn by doctors for generations. In the past, much power and responsibility over life and death was concentrated in the hands of doctors. Now, this ethical burden is increasingly shared by the builders of AI software. Of course, AI is not the first technology to confer great responsibility on its designers, not by a long shot. Cloud computing, smartphones, social media platforms, and Internet of Things devices have already transformed how we communicate, work, shop, and socialize.