The AI Boom Is Happening All Over The World, and It's Accelerating Quickly - TH

The AI boom is happening all over the world, and it’s accelerating quickly - The Verge
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The AI boom is happening all over the world, and it’s accelerating quickly
9
The second annual AI Index report pulls together data and expert fndings on the
feld’s progress and acceleration
By
Nick Statt @nickstatt

Dec 12, 2018, 11:00am EST
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https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/12/18136929/artificial-intelligence-ai-index-report-2018-machine-learning-global-progress-research[12/16/2018 11:20:13 AM]

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
The rate of progress in the feld of artifcial intelligence is one of the most hotly contested
aspects of the ongoing boom in teaching computers and robots how to see the world, make
sense of it, and eventually perform complex tasks both in the physical realm and the virtual
one. And just how fast the industry is moving, and to what end, is typically measured not just
by actual product advancements and research milestones, but also by the prognostications
and voiced concerns of AI leaders, futurists, academics, economists, and policymakers. AI is
going to change the world — but how and when are still open questions.
Today, fndings from a group of experts were published in an ongoing effort to help answer
those questions. The experts include members of Harvard, MIT, Stanford, the nonproft
OpenAI, and the Partnership on AI industry consortium, among others, and they were put
together as part of the second annual AI Index. The goal is to measure the feld’s progress
using hard data and to try and make sense of that progress as it relates to thorny subjects like

workplace automation and the overarching quest for artifcial general intelligence, or the type of
intelligence that could let a machine perform any task a human could.
The frst report, published last December,

found that investment and work in AI was
AI WILL CHANGE THE WORLD,
accelerated at an unprecedented rate and that, BUT RESEARCHERS ARE STILL
while progress in certain felds like limited TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW
game-playing and vision has been AND WHEN
extraordinary, AI remains far behind in general
intelligence tasks that would result in, say, total
automation of more than a limited variety of jobs. Still, the report was lacking in what the
authors call a “global perspective,” and this second edition set out to answer many of the same
questions with new, more granular data and a more international scope.
“There is no AI story without global perspective. The 2017 report was heavily skewed towards
North American activities. This refected a limited number of global partnerships, not an
intrinsic bias,” reads the 2018 report’s introduction. “This year, we begin to close the global
gap. We recognize that there is a long journey ahead — one that involves collaboration and
outside participation — to make this report truly comprehensive.”
In that spirit of global analysis, the second AI Index report fnds that commercial and research
work in AI, as well as funding, is exploding pretty much everywhere on the planet. There’s an
especially high concentration in Europe and Asia, with China, Japan, and South Korea leading
Eastern countries in AI research paper publication, university enrollment, and patent
applications. In fact, Europe is the largest publisher of AI papers, with 28 percent of all AI-
related publications last year. China is close behind with 25 percent, while North America is
responsible for 17 percent.

Image: AI Index Report 2018
When it comes to the type of AI activity, the report fnds that machine learning and so-called
probabilistic reasoning — or the type of cognition-related performance that lets a game-playing
AI outsmart a human opponent — is far and away the leading research category by a number
of published papers.
Not far behind, however, is work on computer vision, which is the foundational sub-discipline of
AI that’s helping to develop self-driving cars and power augmented reality and object
recognition, and neural networks, which, like machine learning, are instrumental in training
those algorithms to improve over time. Less important, at least in the current moment, are
areas like natural language processing, which is what lets your smart speaker understand what
you’re saying and respond in kind, and general planning and decision making, which is what
will be required of robots when automated machines are inevitably more integral facets of daily
life.

A fascinating element of the report is how research in those categories breaks down by global
region. China is heavily focused on agricultural science, engineering, and technology, while
Europe and North America are focused more on the humanities and medical and health
sciences, though Europe is generally more well-rounded in its approach to research.
Some other interesting tidbits from the report include US AI research papers, which, despite
being lower in volume, outpace China and Europe in citations. Government-related
organizations and research outfts also account for far more papers in China and Europe than
corporations or the medical feld, while the US’s AI research efforts are largely dominated by
corporate efforts, which makes sense given the immense investment in the feld from Apple,
Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.

As far as performance goes, AI continues to skyrocket, especially in felds like computer vision.
By measuring benchmark performance for the widely used image training database ImageNet,
the report fnds that the time it takes to spin up a model that can classify pictures at state-of-
the-art accuracy fell “from around on hour to around 4 minutes” in just 18 months. That
equates to a roughly 16x jump in training speed. Other areas like object segmentation, which is
what lets software differentiate between an image’s background and its subject, has increased
in precision by 72 percent in just three years.

For areas like machine translation and parsing, which is what lets software understand
syntactic structures and more easily answer questions, accuracy and profciency is getting
more and more refned, but with diminishing returns as algorithms get ever closer human-level
understanding of language.
In a separate “human-level milestones” section, the report breaks down some big 2018
milestones in felds like game-playing and medical diagnostics where progress is accelerating
at surprising rates. Those include progress from Google-owned DeepMind in playing the
classic frst-person shooter Quake in objective-oriented game modes like capture the fag, as
well as landmark performances against amateur and then former professional players of the
online battle arena game Dota 2.

All of this hard data is fantastic in understanding where the AI feld stands right now and how
it’s been growing over the years and is projected to grow in the future. Yet, we’re still stuck in
murky territory when it comes to harder questions around automation and the ways that AI
could be implemented in areas like criminal justice, border patrol screenings, warfare, and
other areas where performance is less important than the underlying governmental policy at
play. AI will only continue to get more sophisticated, but there are a number of hurdles, both
technological and with regard to bias and safety, before such software could be reliably used
without error in hospitals, education systems, airports, and police departments.
Unfortunately, that hasn't stopped corporations and governments from continuing to plow
forward in deploying AI in the real world. This year, we discovered that Amazon was selling its
Recognition facial recognition software to law enforcement, while Google found itself embroiled
in controversy after it was discovered it was contributing computer vision expertise to a
Department of Defense drone program known as Project Maven.

Google said it would pull out of the project once

AI IS INCREASINGLY BEING PUT its contract expired, and it also published a
TO WORK BY GOVERNMENTS wide-ranging set of AI ethics principles that
IN SITUATIONS THAT ARE RIPE included a pledge never to develop AI
FOR ABUSE weaponry surveillance systems or to contribute

to any project that violated “widely accepted
principles of international law and human
rights.” But it’s clear that the leaders of Silicon Valley see AI as a prime business opportunity
and such projects and contracts as the fnancial reward for participating in the AI research
arms race.
Elsewhere in the world, AI is helping governments pioneer systems of surveillance and law
enforcement that constantly track citizens as they move about society. According to The New
York Times, China is using millions of cameras and AI-assisted technologies like facial
recognition to create the world’s most comprehensive surveillance system for its nearly 1.4
billion-person populace. Such a system is expected to link with the country’s new social credit
system for scoring citizens and stratifying society into layers of access and privilege based on
education, fnancial background, and other metrics, all of which will be informed by a day-to-
day data collection and analysis of people’s real-world and online behaviors.

With automation, we’ve come to an understanding that mass unemployment isn’t coming
anytime soon, and the bigger concern is whether we as a society are prepared for the nature of
work to transition toward less stable, lower-paid jobs without safety nets like health insurance.
Not everyone is going to lose their job right away. Rather, certain jobs will be eliminated over
time, while others will become semi-automated. And some jobs will always require a human
being. The fate of workers will depend on certain employer constraints, labor laws and
regulations, and whether there’s a good enough system in place to transition people into new
roles or industries. For instance, a McKinsey Global Institute report from November of last year
found that 800 million jobs could be lost to worldwide automation by 2030, but only about 6
percent of all jobs are at risk of complete automation. How that process of moving from a
human-only job to an AI- or robot-assisted one is developed could mean the difference
between a full-blown crisis and a historical paradigm shift.

A paper from US think tank, the Center for

Global Development, that was published back AUTOMATION WON’T
in July centered on the potential effects of AI ELIMINATE EVERY JOB, BUT IT
and robotic automation on global labor WILL COMPLICATE THE
markets. Researchers found that there is not
NATURE OF WORK
nearly enough work being done to prepare for
the overall automation fallout, and we’re
spending too much time debating the general ethics and viability of complete automation in a
narrow set of markets. “Questions like proftability, labor regulations, unionization, and
corporate-social expectations will be at least as important as technical constraints in
determining which jobs get automated,” the paper concluded.
Not everything is all doom and gloom. Part of the philosophy behind the AI Index report is
about asking the right questions and making sure that the people making policy, the public,
and the leaders of the AI industry have data to make informed decisions. It may be too early to
reliably measure the impact of AI on society — the industry is only just getting started — but
preparing ourselves for what it all means and how it will affect daily life, work, and public
institutions like health care, education, and law enforcement is perhaps just as important as the
research and product development itself. Only by investing in both can we avoid the risk of
creating technologies that change the world for the worse.
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Getting in early on this….
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on Dec 12, 2018 | 1:59 PM

Posted
rowdt1
Good piece, although I do fnd it quite biased towards the positive stuff AI could potentially bring to our lives. It would be
interesting to also every now and then read a piece on the downsides of it. The reports listed do not view AI as a threat right
now, but that does not necessarily mean that they aren’t. Great thinkers such as Sam Harris, Yuval Harari and Richard
Dawkins have already voiced their concerns about AI.
on Dec 12, 2018 | 2:56 PM

Posted
I'll take the blue pill. Cheers.

There’s been decades of AI apocalypse theories. I’d rather read something a little more positive.
on Dec 13, 2018 | 9:01 AM

Posted
misterni
Writing about aggregate studies while leaving out more in-depth info about the countries mentioned by name is a bit… lazy.
Isn’t it.
on Dec 12, 2018 | 7:18 PM

Posted
ChrisCW
If you mean AI like with Apple’s "Advanced Neural Network" supposedly in their phones, given that Siri still responds "Sorry, I
can’t help you with that" over and over again means I am not worried about any AI taking over anytime soon. So far the only

thing that has increased in the last few years is the use of AI and machine learning terminology used for vapid marketing
rhetoric to drive phones over $1000 price range because they take slightly better pictures and slightly better sounding
human-like responses to our stupid questions.
on Dec 13, 2018 | 6:48 AM

Posted
rowdt1
That’s not at all what’s being meant. You’re right that companies nowadays misuse the word for marketing purposes. But AI
is way more than just that. When we refer to AI, we refer to the (potential) applications it can deliver in the services and
health industry, how it can potentially change our lives for the better (or for the worse even) and much more. The whole
concept of AI is that in time it should be a self-learning mechanism that knows what works and what doesn’t work. The
‘threat’ that so many people nowadays talk about is that at one point AI will surpass human intelligence. Back in the days,
human had a great advantage over robots; we had to program them and they did exactly what we wanted them to do. The
robots’ advantage over humans was purely mechanical. They could outperform humans mostly based on e.g. heavy duty or
other production tasks. Humans were still smarter than robots. If those two can be combined, both ‘robot-like strength’ and
an overall intelligence that is far greater than what we humans could ever achieve, we’re defnitely talking about a threat.
on Dec 13, 2018 | 8:06 AM

Posted
I'll take the blue pill. Cheers.

While I’m still getting adverts for stuff I’ve already bought, I’ll rest easy.
on Dec 13, 2018 | 9:02 AM

Posted
K.Kong
Can someone help to explain what the below means?
"the time it takes to spin up a model that can classify pictures at state-of-the-art accuracy fell "from around on hour to around
4 minutes" in just 18 months"
Also, what is defned as state-of-the-art? Is Google Photos automatic indexing of my photos state-of-the-art? It is pretty
dismal. I typed in "car" and lots of photos containing nothing associated with cars were included. It was worse when I typed in
"red car".
on Dec 15, 2018 | 8:20 AM

Posted
Arrenw
???, I don’t see any AI booming.at all.
How can you say it is booming all over the world when the basic foundation of AI is consumerism.
Simply put, AI is not happening after a while when you learn that the economic engines aren’t there for people to buy the
products.
Three types of people will come from this, the idiots that use AI, the smart ones that don’t and will resist and the ones that will
exploit to build their wealth, eventually the world will have more divisions as always and the AI culture will be dissolved and
scatter like a person’s wealth after they die.
on Dec 16, 2018 | 2:20 AM

Posted

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The AI boom is happening all over the world, and it’s accelerating quickly - The Verge

TECH SCIENCE CULTURE CARS REVIEWS MORE

REPORT BUSINESS US & WORLD

Nick Statt @nickstatt

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/12/18136929/artificial-intelligence-ai-index-report-2018-machine-learning-global-progress-research[12/16/2018 11:20:13 AM]

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/12/18136929/artificial-intelligence-ai-index-report-2018-machine-learning-global-progress-research[12/16/2018 11:20:13 AM]

The frst report, published last December,

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/12/18136929/artificial-intelligence-ai-index-report-2018-machine-learning-global-progress-research[12/16/2018 11:20:13 AM]

Image: AI Index Report 2018

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/12/18136929/artificial-intelligence-ai-index-report-2018-machine-learning-global-progress-research[12/16/2018 11:20:13 AM]

Image: AI Index Report 2018

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/12/18136929/artificial-intelligence-ai-index-report-2018-machine-learning-global-progress-research[12/16/2018 11:20:13 AM]

Image: AI Index Report 2018

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/12/18136929/artificial-intelligence-ai-index-report-2018-machine-learning-global-progress-research[12/16/2018 11:20:13 AM]

Image: AI Index Report 2018

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/12/18136929/artificial-intelligence-ai-index-report-2018-machine-learning-global-progress-research[12/16/2018 11:20:13 AM]

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/12/18136929/artificial-intelligence-ai-index-report-2018-machine-learning-global-progress-research[12/16/2018 11:20:13 AM]

Google said it would pull out of the project once

FOR ABUSE weaponry surveillance systems or to contribute

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https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/12/18136929/artificial-intelligence-ai-index-report-2018-machine-learning-global-progress-research[12/16/2018 11:20:13 AM]

A paper from US think tank, the Center for

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on Dec 12, 2018 | 1:59 PM

on Dec 12, 2018 | 2:56 PM

I'll take the blue pill. Cheers.

on Dec 13, 2018 | 9:01 AM

on Dec 12, 2018 | 7:18 PM

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/12/18136929/artificial-intelligence-ai-index-report-2018-machine-learning-global-progress-research[12/16/2018 11:20:13 AM]

on Dec 13, 2018 | 6:48 AM

on Dec 13, 2018 | 8:06 AM

I'll take the blue pill. Cheers.

on Dec 13, 2018 | 9:02 AM

on Dec 15, 2018 | 8:20 AM

on Dec 16, 2018 | 2:20 AM

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