2019 AI Index Report: R&D in AI Continues to Increase

AI continues to expand its presence in different domains of enterprise ranging from education to autonomous systems

The 2019 AI Index report offers a deep insight into the most significant trends shaping the AI industry, breakthrough research, and AI’s impact on society. The report which is created by institutions like Harvard, Stanford, and OpenAI tracks AI growth across a range of metrics, including papers published and patents granted.

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Highlights from the 2019 AI Index Report

• The US is a leader in investing capital into private AI with nearly US$12 billion. China, which came second with US$6.8 billion investment, also files more AI patents than any other country across the globe and three times more than Japan. The majority of AI patents filed between 2014-2018 were filed in the U.S. and Canada, and 94% of patents are filed in wealthy nations.
• Mergers and acquisitions worth $37 billion were spurred thanks to AI. At the same time, IPOs worth $34 billion were also associated with AI. Investment in AI startups recorded a rapid increase in the last ten years from a total of $1.3 billion raised in 2010 to over $40.4 billion. Autonomous vehicles led the worldwide investment in the past year ($7 billion), followed by drug and cancer, facial recognition, video content, fraud detection, and finance. Since 2012, at least 41 states and D.C. have considered legislation related to autonomous vehicles in the US.
• The global private AI investment was over $70 billion in 2019, while funding in AI startups recorded an increase with an average annual growth rate of more than 48%.
• There has been a 300% surge in the publication of peer-reviewed papers on AI from 1998-2018. Also, the total number of AI papers on arXiv increased 20 times. In terms of AI education, more than 21% of CS PhDs choose to specialize in AI. This is more than double as compared to security assurance which is the second-most popular discipline.
• In terms of AI jobs, Deep learning is the fastest growing domain with a 12 times growth rate from 2015- 2018. The US share of AI-related jobs stood at 1.32% in October 2019, up from 0.26% of total jobs posted in 2010.
• There has been a significant rise in the demand for AI talent in high-tech services and the manufacturing sector. Meanwhile, industries such as healthcare, arts, public administration witnessed a relatively lower demand for AI jobs.
• In 2019, nearly 60% of large companies reported AI adoption in at least one function or business unit, up from 47% in 2018. Only 19% of big companies said they are taking steps to mitigate risks associated with the explainability of their algorithms.
• Offering insights on AI adoption in different industries, the report revealed the tech, service sectors, and manufacturing saw the most significant rise in demand for AI skills. In the past five years, the fastest growth in AI hiring has taken place in India, Singapore, Brazil, Australia, and Canada.

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