From the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI)
Released April 15, 2024
The full report has 9 chapters addressing the impact of artificial intelligence in the context of research and development, technical performance, responsible AI, economy, science and medicine, education, policy and governance, diversity, and finally, public opinion. At the beginning of each chapter, there appears a list of highlights for that section.
While there is no executive summary, the report does offer the following Top Ten Takeaways:
1. AI beats humans on some tasks, but not on all.
2. Industry continues to dominate frontier AI research.
3. Frontier models get way more expensive
4. The United States leads China, the EU, and the U.K. as the leading source of top AI models.
5. . Robust and standardized evaluations for LLM responsibility are seriously lacking.
6. Generative AI investment skyrockets.
7. The data is in: AI makes workers more productive and leads to higher quality work.
8. Scientific progress accelerates even further, thanks to AI.
9. The number of AI regulations in the United States sharply increases.
10. People across the globe are more cognizant of AI’s potential impact—and more nervous.
A promotional write-up by the Research Manager and Editor-in-Chief of the AI Index includes the following quote:
Although AI was already showing exciting new capabilities in 2022, in 2023 the technology accelerated. The kinds of AI systems that were released a few years ago were limited in scope. For example, these models could process images but not generate text, and vice versa. However, recent models like Gemini, GPT-4, and Claude-3 have been impressively multimodal. They can generate fluent text in dozens of languages, process audio, and even explain memes.
"This year, we see more models able to perform across domains," said Vanessa Parli, Stanford HAI director of research programs. "Models can take in text and generate audio or take in an image and generate a description. An edge of the AI research I find most exciting is combining these large language models with robotics or autonomous agents, marking a significant step in robots working more effectively in the real world."
The full 502-page report may be downloaded in PDF format here.