The 2019 AI Index Tracks the Industry's Worldwide Growth

Which countries are ahead in AI? Many, in one way or another, and not always the ones you might expect.

What’s new: The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence published its 2019 Artificial Intelligence Index, detailing when, where, and how AI is on the rise. The authors also launched a Global AI Vibrancy Tool, making it easy to compare countries on a number of metrics.

What it says: The report, guided by professor and entrepreneur Yoav Shoham, compiled data from all along the AI pipeline: college enrollment, journal citations, patent filings, conference attendance, job listings, and more. Some highlights:

AI hiring is growing fastest in Australia, Brazil, Canada, and Singapore. The percentage of the U.S. workforce performing some sort of AI-related task grew from 0.26 percent to 1.32 percent.
Argentina, Canada, Iran, and several European countries have relatively high proportions of women in the field.
Total private investment in AI approached $40 billion in the U.S. last year, well ahead of runner-up China. Global private investment topped $70 billion, with startups contributing around half of that.
Since 1998, the number of peer-reviewed AI research papers has more than quadrupled, and now accounts for 9 percent of published conference papers. Chinese authors published most of them. Nonetheless, U.S. papers are cited 40 percent more often than the global average.

Behind the news: The AI Index is a product of the 100 Year Study on AI. Founded in 2014, the project tracks AI’s impact on jobs, education, national security, human psychology, ethics, law, privacy, and democracy.

We’re thinking: William Gibson said it best: “The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed.”