Upwork, a website dedicated to connecting freelancers with projects, has just released their latest quarterly report of the fastest-growing skills seen on their site. Today’s release lists the top 20 fastest-growing skills from Q4 of 2016. Without much of a surprise, natural language processing is listed up at number one, with Apple’s Swift programming language coming in strong at number two.

Upwork states that their Skills Index “calculates year-over-year growth rates based on freelancer billings”. Today’s list compares freelancer billings from Q4 2016 versus Q4 2015. Natural language processing coming in at number one seems clear when the case for a better Siri and improved AI systems has been common theme over the past year.

Swift’s placement on today’s list bumps it up from 9th place in Q3 2016. The programming language from Apple has been slowly inching towards a more stable release with Swift 3.1, set for a Spring 2017 release. Although the widely recognized “founder” of the language has left Apple to join Tesla, he believes the language is still in great hands thanks to the team and community he left behind.

Upwork – Top 20 fastest-growing skills, Q4 2016:

Other notable mentions on today’s list includes machine learning, an area where Apple showed strong focus during the 2016 year. Between that and artificial intelligence research, Tim Cook’s Apple looks like it truly wants to improve AI across its product line.

In the past year, Apple has made purchases of companies like Tuplejump, Perceptio, VocalIQ, Mapsense, Emotient, Coherent Navigation and Semetric.

Image: Upwork

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