Where are mining industry operations and technologies companies focusing their artificial intelligence hiring efforts?

Artificial intelligence is an area that has seen rapid growth across a variety of industries in recent years – not least among mining industry operations and technologies companies.

Figures show that the number of new artificial intelligence roles being advertised for these companies has increased in recent months – with firms across the industry looking to expand their capabilities.

The number of newly advertised roles stood at 487 in Q1 2021. That’s up from 393 in Q4 2020 but down from from 554 in Q3 2020.

The figures are compiled by GlobalData, which tracks the number of new job postings from key companies in various sectors over time. Using textual analysis, these job advertisements are then classified thematically.

GlobalData's thematic approach to sector activity seeks to group key company information by topic to see which companies are best placed to weather the disruptions coming to their industries.

These key themes, which include artificial intelligence, are chosen to cover "any issue that keeps a CEO awake at night".

By tracking them across job advertisements it allows us to see which companies are leading the way on specific issues and which are dragging their heels - and importantly where the market is expanding and contracting.

Looking across key mining industry operations and technologies companies tracked by GlobalData, the US is currently seeing the largest number of artificial intelligence job advertisements. Last quarter the country saw 147 advertisements - down from 168 in Q4 2020 and 337 in Q3 2020.

On a city level, Komatsu (Japan) had the most newly advertised artificial intelligence roles in Q1 2021 with 111, followed by Advance (US) with 19 and Peoria (US) with 18.

The biggest growth area has been in Japan - which saw zero job adverts for artificial intelligence in Q4 2020, increasing to 111 in Q1 2021.

In terms of cities, firms are increasing artificial intelligence hires in Pune - with nine roles in the latest quarter - up from zero in the previous one.