The 2022 AI Index: Industrialization of AI and Mounting Ethical Concerns

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Daniel Zhang, Jack Clark, and Ray Perrault: “The field of artificial intelligence (AI) is at a critical crossroad, according to the 2022 AI Index, an annual study of AI impact and progress at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) led by an independent and interdisciplinary group of experts from across academia and industry: 2021 saw the globalization and industrialization of AI intensify, while the ethical and regulatory issues of these technologies multiplied….

The new report shows several key advances in AI in 2021: 

  • Private investment in AI has more than doubled since 2020, in part due to larger funding rounds. In 2020, there were four funding rounds worth $500 million or more; in 2021, there were 15.
  • AI has become more affordable and higher performing. The cost to train an image classification has decreased by 63.6% and training times have improved by 94.4% since 2018. The median price of robotic arms has also decreased fourfold in the past six years.
  • The United States and China have dominated cross-country research collaborations on AI as the total number of AI publications continues to grow. The two countries had the greatest number of cross-country collaborations in AI papers in the last decade, producing 2.7 times more joint papers in 2021 than between the United Kingdom and China—the second highest on the list.
  • The number of AI patents filed has soared—more than 30 times higher than in 2015, showing a compound annual growth rate of 76.9%.

At the same time, the report also highlights growing research and concerns on ethical issues as well as regulatory interests associated with AI in 2021: 

  • Large language and multimodal language-vision models are excelling on technical benchmarks, but just as their performance increases, so do their ethical issues, like the generation of toxic text.
  • Research on fairness and transparency in AI has exploded since 2014, with a fivefold increase in publications on related topics over the past four years.
  • Industry has increased its involvement in AI ethics, with 71% more publications affiliated with industry at top conferences from 2018 to 2021. 
  • The United States has seen a sharp increase in the number of proposed bills related to AI; lawmakers proposed 130 laws in 2021, compared with just 1 in 2015. However, the number of bills passed remains low, with only 2% ultimately becoming law in the past six years.
  • Globally, AI regulation continues to expand. Since 2015, 18 times more bills related to AI were passed into law in legislatures of 25 countries around the world and mentions of AI in legislative proceedings also grew 7.7 times in the past six years….(More)”

Mission-oriented innovation

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Handbook by Vinnova: “Mission-oriented innovation aims to create change at the system level where everyone involved is involved and drives development. The working method is a tool for achieving jointly set sustainability goals on a broad basis and with great impact.

In this handbook, we tell about Vinnova’s work together with a number of relevant actors to jointly create mission-oriented innovation. You can follow how the actors under 2019-2021 test and develop the working method in the two different areas of food and mobility, respectively. This is a story about how the tool mission-oriented innovation can be used and a guide with concrete tips on how it can be done…(More)”.

The #Data4Covid19 Review

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “The Governance Lab (The GovLab), an action research center at New York University Tandon School of Engineering, with the support of the Knight Foundation, today announced the launch of The #Data4Covid19 Review. Through this initiative, The GovLab will evaluate how select countries used data to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings will be used to identify lessons that can be applied to future data-driven crisis management.

The initiative launches within the context of the 2nd anniversary of the announcement that COVID-19 was a global pandemic and the resulting lockdown restrictions. Countries around the world have since undertaken varied approaches to minimizing the spread of the virus and managing the aftermath. Many of these efforts are driven by data. While the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be a global challenge, there have been few attempts to review and evaluate how data use played a role holistically in the global pandemic response.

The #Data4Covid19 Review aims to fill this gap in the current research by providing an assessment of how data was used during the different waves of the pandemic and guidance for the improvement of future data systems. The GovLab will develop case studies and compare a select group of countries from around the world, with the input and support of a distinguished advisory group of public health, technology, and human rights experts. These case studies will investigate how data use impacted COVID-19 responses. Outputs will include recommendations for decision makers looking to improve their capacity to use data in a responsible way for crisis management and an assessment framework that could be used when designing future data-driven crisis responses. By learning from our response to the pandemic, we can better understand how the use of data should be used in crisis management…(More)”.

User-Centric Services Repository

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Repository by UserCentriCities: “…Including world-class innovative services such as Rotterdam’s Digitale Balie, a digital counter for public-service delivery through video calling; Madrid’s Madrid Te Acompaña, a mobile application for the elderly to find accompanying volunteers; Tallinn’s AvaLinn mobile application where citizens give feedback on city development plans; Milano Partecipa, Milan’s citizen participation platform, the User-Centric Services Repository will serve as a place for inspiration, knowledge-exchange and for highlighting genuinely user-centric digital services in Europe….(More)”.

Innovation and Data Use in Cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “This report is a first-of-its-kind work to provide evidence on how cities’ investments in innovation and data use can pay off in powerful ways for residents. It offers analysis on the different ways local governments build capacity at the strategic and technical level, from organisational structure and strategy, to resource allocation and outcome evaluation. It shows that cities with higher public-sector innovation capacity and data use practices have higher levels of city and life satisfaction. Furthermore, when looking across key well-being dimensions from housing to environment, health and walkability, cities with higher innovation capacity and data use practices outperformed cities with lower capacity. The lessons in the report have been distilled into 10 recommendations to help local leaders boost their data use and innovation capacity to improve resident well-being…(More)”.

Executive Order on Ensuring Responsible Innovation in Digital Assets

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Factsheet from The White House: “Digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, have seen explosive growth in recent years, surpassing a $3 trillion market cap last November and up from $14 billion just five years prior. Surveys suggest that around 16 percent of adult Americans – approximately 40 million people – have invested in, traded, or used cryptocurrencies. Over 100 countries are exploring or piloting Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), a digital form of a country’s sovereign currency.

The rise in digital assets creates an opportunity to reinforce American leadership in the global financial system and at the technological frontier, but also has substantial implications for consumer protection, financial stability, national security, and climate risk. The United States must maintain technological leadership in this rapidly growing space, supporting innovation while mitigating the risks for consumers, businesses, the broader financial system, and the climate. And, it must play a leading role in international engagement and global governance of digital assets consistent with democratic values and U.S. global competitiveness.

That is why today, President Biden will sign an Executive Order outlining the first ever, whole-of-government approach to addressing the risks and harnessing the potential benefits of digital assets and their underlying technology. The Order lays out a national policy for digital assets across six key priorities: consumer and investor protection; financial stability; illicit finance; U.S. leadership in the global financial system and economic competitiveness; financial inclusion; and responsible innovation…(More)”

The effects of AI on the working lives of women

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Clementine Collett, Gina Neff and Livia Gouvea: “Globally, studies show that women in the labor force are paid less, hold fewer senior positions and participate less in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. A 2019 UNESCO report found that women represent only 29% of science R&D positions globally and are already 25% less likely than men to know how to leverage digital technology for basic uses.

As the use and development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to mature, its time to ask: What will tomorrows labor market look like for women? Are we effectively harnessing the power of AI to narrow gender equality gaps, or are we letting these gaps perpetuate, or even worse, widen?

This collaboration between UNESCO, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) examines the effects of the use of AI on the working lives of women. By closely following the major stages of the workforce lifecycle from job requirements, to hiring to career progression and upskilling within the workplace – this joint report is a thorough introduction to issues related gender and AI and hopes to foster important conversations about womens equality in the future of work…(More)”

An intro to AI, made for students

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Reena Jana at Google: “Adorable, operatic blobs. A global, online guessing game. Scribbles that transform into works of art. These may not sound like they’re part of a curriculum, but learning the basics of how artificial intelligence (AI) works doesn’t have to be complicated, super-technical or boring.

To celebrate Digital Learning Day, we’re releasing a new lesson from Applied Digital Skills, Google’s free, online, video-based curriculum (and part of the larger Grow with Google initiative). “Discover AI in Daily Life” was designed with middle and high school students in mind, and dives into how AI is built, and how it helps people every day.

AI for anyone — and everyone

“Twenty or 30 years ago, students might have learned basic typing skills in school,” says Dr. Patrick Gage Kelley, a Google Trust and Safety user experience researcher who co-created (and narrates) the “Discover AI in Daily Life” lesson. “Today, ‘AI literacy’ is a key skill. It’s important that students everywhere, from all backgrounds, are given the opportunity to learn about AI.”

“Discover AI in Daily Life” begins with the basics. You’ll find simple, non-technical explanations of how a machine can “learn” from patterns in data, and why it’s important to train AI responsibly and avoid unfair bias.

First-hand experiences with AI

“By encouraging students to engage directly with everyday tools and experiment with them, they get a first-hand experience of the potential uses and limitations of AI,” says Dr. Annica Voneche, the lesson’s learning designer. “Those experiences can then be tied to a more theoretical explanation of the technology behind it, in a way that makes the often abstract concepts behind AI tangible.”…(More)”.

GovTech Practices in the EU

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Report by Kuziemski, M., Mergel, I., Ulrich, P. and Martinez, A.: “To support governments in the EU embracing GovTech, this report provides an overview of the diversity of GovTech programmes and shares lessons learnt for setting up government-run GovTech programmes. While the focus of this report is on national GovTech programmes, its findings and conclusions can be applied to others levels of government as well. The term GovTech refers to the use of emerging technologies and digital products and services by government from start-ups and SMEs – instead of relying on large system integrators. This report presents an overview of how the existing GovTech programmes are set up in different EU member states and introduces practical case studies. This is followed by a discussion of the rationale of governments’ investment in GovTech and the barriers countries have encountered when engaging with the GovTech ecosystem. The report then distils important lessons learned for setting up government-run GovTech programmes. This report is aimed at anyone wanting to understand how governments are already supporting GovTech, and especially public sector managers who are looking for a starting point for establishing or improving a GovTech programme. It is part of two twin reports on GovTech developed by the JRC with support from the ISA² programme…(More)”.

New Days Future Kit

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Toolbox by the Danish Design Center: “The New Days’ Future Kit is a toolbox with guides, materials, and visual tools that make it possible to bring diverse groups together to work experimentally, concretely, and co-creatively with aging and care of the future.

An essential part of the kit is the collection of speculative fragments from the future that consist of small glimpses, artifacts, and tales. The physical version contains actual versions of the artifacts and materials. These are introduced and used actively in workshops with us.

The toolkit is relevant for anyone working in the public or private sector with care. The digital version of the toolkit presented here is meant as an inspiration. The elements will provoke you and challenge your thoughts and ambitions for the future of care. If the tools make you curious, reach out to us and we’ll arrange a targeted workshop for you.

The toolbox results from a long-running process of exploring and learning from alternative and desirable futures and translating the insights into innovative experiments in the present…(More)”.