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The year 2023 has been a blast with the continuous release of AI applications. We’ve had ChatGPT, Google Bard, Baby AGI, and more. A lot of us are eager to know what the future holds and the potential trends. 

What is the AI Index?

The AI Index is an independent report by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), consisting of experts from different academics and a range of industries. The purpose of the annual report is to track, collate, and visualize data that is related to artificial intelligence. It is used to steer companies and decision-makers in a better direction to advance AI responsibly and ethically. 

To get a good understanding of the advancements of AI, the HAI committee includes members from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University, LinkedIn, McKinsey, and more. 

Stanford University releases an AI index report every year, however, the 2023 report consists of more self-collected data and original analysis than ever before. In particular, the report dives deeper into foundation models and speaks on their different aspects and impacts. We have seen the use of foundation models in Visual ChatGPT. 

This year, the AI index has also increased its tracking of global AI legislation going from 25 countries in 2022 to 127 in 2023.

AI Index Report 2023

The 2023 AI Index Report consist of 8 chapters:

1. Research and Development

Research and development is the pinnacle of AI as it has helped with its continuous growth over the decades. This chapter goes through a variety of resources such as AI publications, journal articles, repositories, and more to further delve into the specific trends in AI. 

It also explores machine learning systems such as large language models by looking into data. Large language models are very popular as we have seen with ChatGPT. 

Currently, the United States and China dominate the research and development of AI, however, it is becoming increasingly geographically adopted by more and more countries.

2. Technical Performance

The technical performance covers how well AI is being adopted and used as well as its effectiveness from the year 2022. It goes further into the advancements of AI applications such as computer vision, language, speech, reinforcement learning, and hardware. 

This chapter also provides an analysis of the environmental impact that AI has, for example how it has helped specific sectors grow at a faster rate with a timeline-style overview of the most significant recent AI developments.

3. Technical AI Ethics

Ethics is a big concern around AI applications, with governments coming together to create legislations, frameworks and standards. As it is such a major topic of interest surrounding AI, it acts as a technical barrier to the creation and implementation of generative AI systems, such as OpenAI Dall-E.

Generative AI systems are very popular, and this has caused more and more companies to join the race to deploy and release generative AI models more than ever. However, the ethical issues surrounding the AI system are becoming more apparent to the general public. 

4. The Economy

We are seeing more companies, governments and organizations implement AI applications than ever. Although some are adopting AI applications to increase productivity, some are seeing the adoption of AI replacing workers. This chapter goes through the effects of AI applications on the economy, good and bad using data from LinkedIn, Deloitte and more. 

5. Education

As AI continues to grow, there is a huge demand for tech professionals. Naturally, based on supply and demand we are seeing more and more people trying to get their foot into the tech world. More people are going back to university to study Computer Science, get PhDs and the vast amount of online courses and training available.

6. Policy and Governance

Some may say that the growth of AI has been due to the fact that it's been an open playground. However, due to the constant growth in AI, governments and organizations have been prompted to strategize AI governance. In order to implement AI applications into everyday lives, these organizations have been directed to look into the societal and ethical concerns surrounding AI. 

7. Diversity

Although AI systems are being created and deployed, this chapter looks into who is actually using AI. This chapter explains that North American AI researchers and practitioners found predominantly white and male people were using AI. This can lead to existing societal inequalities and bias.

8. Public Opinion

It wouldn’t be an accurate report if you didn’t hear from the public. This chapter examines the public opinion surrounding AI on a global, demographic and ethical aspect. AI is at a point where it's embedded into our everyday lives and monitoring the public attitudes toward AI is important in identifying ethical concerns, trends, and overall societal impacts. 

AI Index Report Key Takeaways 

These are the key takeaways from the 2023 AI Index Report:

• The tech industry is winning the race against academia regarding producing machine learning models.
• AI is helping the environment, however, it is also having serious environmental impacts.
• The benchmarks improvements of AI continue to be marginal.
• Some AI applications have such high performance and ability in the science sector, that they are being deemed as the ‘Best New Scientists’
• The misuse of AI has increased 26x since 2012, and the number of incidents continues to rise. 
• The demand for AI professionals and skills has increased in every sector of the United States
• Private investment into AI has shown a 26.7% decrease since 2021.
• AI legislations, regulations, frameworks, and standards are on the rise to meet the supply of AI applications.
• Chinese citizens have the most positive attitude toward AI products. 

Wrapping it up

We’ve had to take in a lot of news in the past 2 months with the release of different AI applications. We expect to see more large language models, multimodal models, and autonomous AI applications. It will be interesting to see the 2024 report. What do you think will be in next year's report? Let us know in the comments.
 
 
Nisha Arya is a Data Scientist, Freelance Technical Writer and Community Manager at KDnuggets. She is particularly interested in providing Data Science career advice or tutorials and theory based knowledge around Data Science. She also wishes to explore the different ways Artificial Intelligence is/can benefit the longevity of human life. A keen learner, seeking to broaden her tech knowledge and writing skills, whilst helping guide others.