On March 3, the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) released its 2021 AI Index report. Each year, the report conducts a comprehensive study of the impact and progress of AI, analyzing and refining the patterns of AI's impact on the national economy, job growth, diversity, and research. There are 10 highlights from this year's report:
1. AI jobs: The six countries covered by BurningGlass data have seen a significant increase in demand for AI jobs over the past seven years. The U.S. was the only one of these six countries to see a decline in the number of AI jobs between 2019 and 2020. This could be due to the coronavirus pandemic or the maturing AI labor market.
2. Artificial intelligence investment: In 2020, the total global investment in artificial intelligence (including private equity investment, public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, and minority equity investment) increased by 40% to a total of US$67.9 billion. Among them, mergers and acquisitions account for the majority of total investment.
3. AI funding: Drugs, cancer, molecules, and drug discovery received the most funding, with more than $13.8 billion in private investment, 4.5 times more than in 2019.
4. AI ethics research: Since 2015, the number of papers submitted to AI conferences has included ethics-related keywords in their titles, but the average number is still low.
5. Corporate Concerns about AI Ethics: A McKinsey survey shows that despite growing calls for attention to ethical issues related to AI use, companies have limited attention to AI equality and fairness.
6. Increase in the proportion of AI PhDs: According to the CRA survey, in the past 10 years, the proportion of AI-related PhDs in the total number of CS (computer science) PhDs awarded in the United States has increased from 14.2% to about 23% in 2019. At the same time, other previously popular CS PhDs have declined in popularity, including networking, software engineering, and programming languages and compilers.
7. Where AI PhD graduates go: Over the past 10 years, the number of new AI PhDs in North America choosing to enter industry has continued to grow, with a 48% increase. In contrast, the percentage of newly graduated AI PhDs entering academia dropped by 44%.
8. Composition of Artificial Intelligence PhDs: In 2019, 45.6% of the new AI PhDs in the United States were white and 22.4% were Asian.
9. National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence: Since Canada released the world's first national AI strategy in 2017, as of December 2020, more than 30 other countries and territories have issued similar documents.
10. U.S. AI budget: U.S. federal agencies allocated $973.5 million for AI R&D in 2020 (excluding defense-related AI R&D spending by the Department of Defense and other defenses). In fiscal year 2021, the budget for this area will reach $1.5 billion, nearly 55% higher than in 2020. #人工智能#
