Stanford Releases 386-Page Report On the State of AI

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Writing a report on the state of AI must feel a lot like building on shifting sands: by the time you hit publish, the whole industry has changed under your feet. But there are still important trends and takeaways in Stanford's 386-page bid to summarize this complex and fast-moving domain. The AI Index, from the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, worked with experts from academia and private industry to collect information and predictions on the matter. As a yearly effort (and by the size of it, you can bet they're already hard at work laying out the next one), this may not be the freshest take on AI, but these periodic broad surveys are important to keep one's finger on the pulse of industry. This year's report includes "new analysis on foundation models, including their geopolitics and training costs, the environmental impact of AI systems, K-12 AI education, and public opinion trends in AI," plus a look at policy in a hundred new countries. But the report goes into detail on many topics and sub-topics, and is quite readable and non-technical. Only the dedicated will read all 300-odd pages of analysis, but really, just about any motivated body could. For the highest-level takeaways, let us just bullet them here: - AI development has flipped over the last decade from academia-led to industry-led, by a large margin, and this shows no sign of changing. - It's becoming difficult to test models on traditional benchmarks and a new paradigm may be needed here. - The energy footprint of AI training and use is becoming considerable, but we have yet to see how it may add efficiencies elsewhere. - The number of "AI incidents and controversies" has increased by a factor of 26 since 2012, which actually seems a bit low. - AI-related skills and job postings are increasing, but not as fast as you'd think. - Policymakers, however, are falling over themselves trying to write a definitive AI bill, a fool's errand if there ever as one. - Investment has temporarily stalled, but that's after an astronomic increase over the last decade. - More than 70% of Chinese, Saudi, and Indian respondents felt AI had more benefits than drawbacks. Americans? 35%. The full report can be found here.

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