Global fintech and funding innovation ecosystem
March 7, 2021   FinTech and Alternative Finance, Fintech International, Innovation and Resources, Research, Stories   No comments

Latest Trends in 2021 AI Index: Major Growth Despite the Pandemic, Low Diversity, Synthetic Media and Ethical Challenges

HAI - Stanford University | Jack Clark and Daniel Zhang | March 3, 2021

AI Index report 2021 1 - Latest Trends in 2021 AI Index: Major Growth Despite the Pandemic, Low Diversity, Synthetic Media and Ethical Challenges

This year’s report shows a maturing industry, significant private investment, and rising competition between China and the U.S.

The last decade was a pivotal one for the AI industry, and 2020 saw AI substantially increase its impact on the world despite the chaos brought about by the COVID pandemic: Technologists made significant strides in massive language and generative models; the United States witnessed its first drop in AI hiring ever – pointing to a maturation of the industry – while hiring around the world increased; more dollars flowed to government use of AI than ever before, while colleges and universities offered students double the AI courses from a few years ago.

These are just some of the findings from the 2021 AI Index, an annual study of AI impact and progress developed by an interdisciplinary team at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) in partnership with organizations from industry, academia, and government.

“The impact of AI this past year was both societal and economic, driven by the increasingly rapid progress of the technology itself,” said AI Index co-chair Jack Clark. “With the AI Index, we can actually measure and evaluate the changes, enabling leaders and decision makers to take meaningful action to advance AI responsibly and ethically with humans in mind.”

The 2021 AI Index is one of the most comprehensive reports about AI to date, analyzing and distilling patterns about AI’s impact on everything from national economies to job growth to the analysis of technical progress within AI research itself, and analysis of the diversity (or lack of) among the people who create AI systems.

See: 

The new index shows that, in 2020:

  • Private investment in AI substantially increased – despite the COVID crisis negatively impacting the economy in other ways.
  • China surpassed the U.S. in significant scholarly work. Chinese-affiliated scholars were cited in more peer-reviewed journals than any other country’s scholars, indicating China’s AI research has increased in quality and quantity. However, the United States has consistently (and significantly) more cited AI conference papers than China over the last decade.
  • Synthetic media, colloquially known as deepfakes, are on the rise, with breakthroughs in the generation of synthetic text, imagery, and video demonstrating the progress of AI but also highlighting the potential for unethical or dangerous use.
  • Ethical challenges of AI applications have become a bigger focus for the AI community, with a significant increase in papers mentioning ethics and related keywords between 2015 and 2020.
  • Diversity in AI is low – in 2019, 45% of new AI PhD graduates who stayed in the United States were white, while 2.5% were African American and 3.2% were Hispanic. AI researchers are forming more affinity groups to try to improve diversity in the field, and these groups are seeing significant growth in their membership and impact: Black in AI members had twice the number of papers accepted at NeurIPS in 2019 compared to 2017, and participation at workshops held by the Women in Machine Learning Group has grown from under 200 participants in 2014 to more than 900 in 2020.
  • Since Canada published a national AI strategy in 2017, other nations have followed, with more than 30 countries committing to national AI strategies by 2020.
  • More AI PhDs took jobs in private industry rather than academia, and professors continued to leave higher education for roles in corporations.

Continue to download the 222 page PDF report --> here

 

NCFA Jan 2018 resize - Latest Trends in 2021 AI Index: Major Growth Despite the Pandemic, Low Diversity, Synthetic Media and Ethical Challenges The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org

Latest news - Latest Trends in 2021 AI Index: Major Growth Despite the Pandemic, Low Diversity, Synthetic Media and Ethical ChallengesFF Logo 400 v3 - Latest Trends in 2021 AI Index: Major Growth Despite the Pandemic, Low Diversity, Synthetic Media and Ethical Challengescommunity social impact - Latest Trends in 2021 AI Index: Major Growth Despite the Pandemic, Low Diversity, Synthetic Media and Ethical Challenges

Support NCFA by Following us on Twitter!







NCFA Sign up for our newsletter - Latest Trends in 2021 AI Index: Major Growth Despite the Pandemic, Low Diversity, Synthetic Media and Ethical Challenges




 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

5 × 2 =