Never, as in this period of uncertainty, has confusion about (and within) the world of work reigned so supreme: the impact of Artificial Intelligence has been the sword of Damocles hanging over our heads for months now. Almost every sector has been affected—courted, disrupted, even brutalized—by workflows in which AI quietly weaves its way in.

If you don’t start from processes, AI remains just a personal-use tool with little real impact on work; in fact, it often deceives its users with the illusion of saving time: endless prompt loops, exhausting fact-checking, constant revisions to reshape the text, and the paralysis of abundance. These are the traps for content creators. Many compare these issues to the law of diminishing returns: beyond a certain point, each additional effort yields progressively smaller benefits.

The most in-demand profiles.
‍We are flooded with statistics and rankings and, as we know, none of them is gospel—but each source, in its own way, tells the story of a revolution underway, one that is worth examining with a critical mindset.

In the Italian market, the most in-demand roles (2025–2026 period) are:

- Machine Learning Engineer: There are many variations of this role, but essentially it manages the automation of AI pipelines and data, automating everything that can be automated.
- AI Prompt Engineer: It interacts with large language models. It is a role focused on the correctness of AI-generated output, minimizing the biases produced by algorithms.
- Data Engineer: It builds the infrastructure that transforms raw data into usable formats. It is close to that of a Machine Learning Engineer, but less in-depth.
- AI Ethic Officer: A growing issue for companies is compliance with the EU AI Act (transparency, privacy, and algorithmic fairness).
- Cybersecurity Specialist: AI has increased cyberattacks in all directions by automating attack cycles. This will be a key role in medium and large companies.

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What is disappearing?

Junior roles. Training remains the major hurdle to rely on. Despite the paradoxes and exceptions, specialised training remains a decisive factor in a job market undergoing a brutal revolution that is still evolving and shows no signs of stopping—despite key issues such as energy consumption, wage compression, mass layoffs, and investors demanding returns driven by hype, distributions, and early adopter optimism.

Sources worth reading.

• Machine Learning Engineer Salaries by Country
• MLOPS Salary
• Le figure professionali nell’AI e le competenze nel 2025
• Intelligenza artificiale e sovranità digitale

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