Researchers at Stanford University have released the inaugural report on the state of Artificial Intelligence in the form of an index. Although its authors are the first to acknowledge the shortcomings of their efforts to derive a representative index, the means by which they have done so has academic merit and is the first foray into trying to accurately plot where things stand with AI.
The report itself concludes with commentary from a number of luminaries in the sector, and I think this makes for the most interesting reading: what the experts think about the report and its findings. There is general consensus this is an excellent start to documenting the state of activity and progress in AI.
One of the biggest limitations to the comprehensiveness of the findings is that mostly US data used to compile the report. Sinovation Ventures‘s Kai-Fu Lee calls the report on this, and cites a number of compelling reasons why China leads the AI race, and is aiming to win:
- Mobile phone payments for goods: 50x Americans
- Food delivery volumes: 10x the US
- Bike-sharing company Mobike took 10 months to go from 0 to 20 million orders (or rides) per day, with over 20 million bicycle rides transmitting GPS and other sensor information up to the server, creating 20 terabytes of data everyday
- And, as if the race needed an accelerator, China’s State Council announced in July 2017 that its “Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan” has the goal of China becoming a global AI innovation hub by 2030
Without paying attention to what China is doing, we are missing a significant piece of the pie.
Having these experts pass an opinion about the real state of AI, as shown in the report, is a refreshing perspective on a very much over-hyped area of technological evolution. I was pleased to see my sense that for as much hope as we have in AI changing the nature of repetitive work for us humans, there is still a lot of sales-speak, was one shared by some commentators. For those of us who have to separate the hype from the hope, it’s helpful to know that even the experts are concerned. Oxford University’s Michael Wooldridge makes the following observation:
“There are plenty of charlatans and snake oil salesmen out there, who are quite happy to sell whatever they happen to be doing as AI, and it is a source of great personal frustration that the press are happy to give airtime to views on AI that I consider to be ill-informed at best, lunatic fringe at worst (for a good recent example, see: http://tinyurl.com/y9g74kkr).”
Read the report to better understand where exactly AI is today but, more importantly, where it’s not.