Highlights of 2022 AI Index Report

The Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) has released the 2022 edition of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Index Report, providing an overview of the state of AI in several areas: research and development, technical performance, technical AI ethics, economic and education aspects, and AI policy and governance. The report shows that US-China cooperation on AI research remains at a high level, despite geopolitical tensions: the two actors had the highest number of cross-country collaborations on AI publications from 2010 to 2021. In 2021, China led in the number of AI journal, conference, and repository publications. Another finding is that AI becomes more affordable and higher performing: Since 2018, the cost to train an image classification system has decreased by 63.6%, while training times have improved by 94.4%. New Zealand, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Sweden are the countries or regions with the highest growth in AI hiring from 2016 to 2021. The total private investment in AI more than doubled compared to 2020, reaching around US$93.5 billion. According to an analysis of legislative records on AI in 25 countries, the number of bills containing the term ‘artificial intelligence’ that were passed into law grew from just 1 in 2016 to 18 in 2021. Spain, the UK, and the USA passed the highest number of AI-related bills in 2021, with each adopting three.