The title "AI engineer" can mean about five different things depending on who you ask. It's not an AI researcher training the next GPT-5 from scratch or building large language models yourself, that's machine learning, a completely different job.
The practical role, the one with thousands of open positions right now, means taking existing models like GPT, Claude, and open source models and building real software systems around them. You're implementing existing AI into products, wiring it into APIs, databases, and real applications, not training your own models from scratch.
That's why it matters: it's effectively software engineering with an AI layer on top. It's not a new career, it's what you already do, plus one more layer.
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