If your AI work happens in a browser tab, you’re not an engineer.
What actually separates AI engineers from AI users
The Delusion Epidemic
I see it everywhere on LinkedIn:
“Proud AI Engineer | Building the Future with AI”
I check their profile. Their “AI engineering” consists of:
- Writing prompts in ChatGPT
- Using Midjourney for images
- Running code through GitHub Copilot
- Maybe fine-tuned a Hugging Face model once
That’s not AI engineering. That’s AI consumption.
And the gap between the two is so vast, most people don’t even realize they’re on the wrong side of it.
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What Real AI Engineers Actually Do
Let me show you what happens behind the AI tools you’re using.
Table of Contents:
👉 The Real Job: End-to-End AI Systems
👉 The Technical Reality Check
👉 The Skills Gap Nobody Talks About
👉 Scenario: Build a Custom Chatbot for Medical Diagnosis
👉 The Path Forward (If You Actually Want to Engineer)
👉 Why This Matters
👉 The Uncomfortable Truth