2022 AI Index Report

This year’s report shows that AI systems are starting to be deployed widely into the economy, but at the same time they are being deployed, the ethical issues associated with AI are becoming magnified. Some of this is natural—after all, we tend to care more about the ethical aspects of a given technology when it is being rolled out into the world. But some of it is bound up in the peculiar traits of contemporary AI—larger and more complex and capable AI systems can generally do better on a broad range of tasks while also displaying a greater potential for ethical concerns. This is bound up with the broad globalization and industrialization of AI—a larger range of countries are developing, deploying, and regulating AI systems than ever before, and the combined outcome of these activities is the creation of a broader set of AI systems available for people to use, and reductions in their prices. Some parts of AI are not very globalized, though, and our ethics analysis reveals that many AI ethics publications tend to concentrate on English language systems and datasets, despite AI being deployed globally. If anything, we expect the above trends to continue: 103% more money was invested in the private investment of AI and AI-related startups in 2021 than in 2020 ($96.5 billion versus $46 billion).