Stanford Human CenterAIStanford HAIThe 2024 edition of the Global Vibrancy Tool for Artificial Intelligence (Global Vibrancy Tool 2024) was released, showing thatThe U.S. continues to be the global leader in AI, with China and the U.K. in second and third place.
This tool assesses the AI ecosystem in 36 countries by looking at key metrics such as research papers, private investment, patents, and more. The results show thatThe U.S. has excelled in several core areas, including the introduction of moreFamousmachine learning models, attracting more private capital investment in AI, publishing more responsible AI research, and so on... Despite China's second place, there is a clear gap with the United States.
Developed by the AI Index research team, the Global Vitality tool integrates 42 AI-specific metrics to provide a comprehensive and quantitative view of which countries are leading in AI. The tool also reveals trends in the evolution of each country's AI ecosystem and identifies strengths and weaknesses.
"Artificial Intelligence has become a strategic priority for countries around the world, and accordingly there is a growing debate about AI leadership," said Nestor Maslej, Program Manager at AI Index. "However, there is a lack of data that clearly quantifies how countries are actually performing. With this rigorous tool, we hope to help policymakers, business leaders, and the general public drive a more scientifically informed geopolitical AI narrative based on facts."
U.S. leads by a wide margin
The U.S. has one of the most complete AI ecosystems in the world and is significantly ahead of other countries in a number of key areas. The Global Vitality Tool ranks countries based on a number of core areas, including AI research output, level of economic activity, and infrastructure. in 2023, the U.S. not only produces the highest-quality AI research, but also launches the largest number of notable machine learning models, attracts the highest level of private investment, and conducts the largest number of AI mergers and acquisitions. The U.S. also has the most AI job postings and new AI startups.
China ranks second, but gap widens
In recent years, there has been a lot of focus on the competition between the United States and China in the field of AI. However, the tool shows that the U.S. is rapidly pulling away. The U.S. leads China on several key metrics: the U.S. attracted $67.2 billion in private investment in AI in 2023, compared to $7.8 billion in China; and the U.S. launched 61 notable machine-learning models, compared to only 15 in China. However.China continues to dominate the AI patent space, with more AI-related patents than the US.
Countries around the world are increasingly focusing on AI
The Global Vitality Tool shows that AI is increasingly at the center of countries' political priorities and driving national development through increased AI vitality. For example, the UAE has committed to becoming a global AI leader in recent years, investing in high-quality research institutions such as the Technology Innovation Institute, which this year ranked fifth globally.
The UK ranks third and hosted the world's first AI security summit in 2023. South Korea ranked seventh this year and hosted its latest summit in 2024, while France ranked sixth and plans to host its next summit in early 2025. The Global Vitality Tool will be a key resource for tracking changes in international priorities for AI.
Flexibility, transparency and the call for data improvement
The Global Vitality Tool was first released in 2017, and this year's updated version offers more data as well as a more user-friendly interface.
"Unlike other AI-related country ranking tools, the Global Vitality tool allows users to adjust the weightings and assign different values to the metrics," said Vanessa Parli, director of research at Stanford HAI. "With this flexibility, we hope to give users a more complete understanding of the AI ecosystem based on their needs."
Parli also said she hopes the tool will raise awareness of the importance of AI data tracking. "The release of the Global Vitality Tool is just the beginning," she said. "We hope it will drive progress in AI data collection and open the door to new collaborations between HAI and countries around the world."
The Global Vitality Tool development team says it will continue to expand its dataset to represent more countries in the future. "We will continue to add new data and new countries as more countries build their AI ecosystems," Maslej noted.
