It's statistics in a funky new dress, and about as required for programmers in general as math-heavy type systems or in-depth concurrent programming.

But it's something in the webapp world that isn't just about massaging strings and reports or connecting libraries, so people flock to it both for resume-padding and much-needed variety.

No, it will be totally irrelevant in 5 years (as a career buzzword), to be replaced by the next fad -- like the 5+ fads that preceded it while I've been in IT (grid computing anyone? clusters? J2EE? How about ...transputers).

I studied this at university and have not yet had any use for it. I work with systems doing computer visualization but almost never write graphics code. Most programming is more about integrating specialized stuff made by experts in a field.

as usual, if you think it's fun/interesting and something you'd like to do more in the future - go for it, there's more resources now than ever.

if you couldn't care less and just want to be able to earn your bread - AI won't take your bread unless you're an uber driver or a customer support employee