Reusing our introduction to the 2024 report:
Although AI has been pursued for over sixty years, it was a 2013 post, "Why Is Machine Learning (CS 229) The Most Popular Course At Stanford?" that marked the blog's increasing intellectual interest in AI.
The next year, "Deep Learning is VC Worthy" marked the beginning of our interest in the financial aspects.
I mean, back in 2013-14 it was all about training the AI (and it still is, hence NVDA chips).
From Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
AI’s influence on society has never been more pronounced.
At Stanford HAI, we believe AI is poised to be the most transformative technology of the 21st century. But its benefits won’t be evenly distributed unless we guide its development thoughtfully. The AI Index offers one of the most comprehensive, data-driven views of artificial intelligence. Recognized as a trusted resource by global media, governments, and leading companies, the AI Index equips policymakers, business leaders, and the public with rigorous, objective insights into AI’s technical progress, economic influence, and societal impact.
Top Takeaways
1. AI performance on demanding benchmarks continues to improve.
In 2023, researchers introduced new benchmarks—MMMU, GPQA, and SWE-bench—to test the limits of advanced AI systems. Just a year later, performance sharply increased: scores rose by 18.8, 48.9, and 67.3 percentage points on MMMU, GPQA, and SWE-bench, respectively. Beyond benchmarks, AI systems made major strides in generating high-quality video, and in some settings, language model agents even outperformed humans in programming tasks with limited time budgets.
2. AI is increasingly embedded in everyday life.
From healthcare to transportation, AI is rapidly moving from the lab to daily life. In 2023, the FDA approved 223 AI-enabled medical devices, up from just six in 2015. On the roads, self-driving cars are no longer experimental: Waymo, one of the largest U.S. operators, provides over 150,000 autonomous rides each week, while Baidu’s affordable Apollo Go robotaxi fleet now serves numerous cities across China.
3. Business is all in on AI, fueling record investment and usage, as research continues to show strong productivity impacts.
In 2024, U.S. private AI investment grew to $109.1 billion—nearly 12 times China’s $9.3 billion and 24 times the U.K.’s $4.5 billion. Generative AI saw particularly strong momentum, attracting $33.9 billion globally in private investment—an 18.7% increase from 2023. AI business usage is also accelerating: 78% of organizations reported using AI in 2024, up from 55% the year before. Meanwhile, a growing body of research confirms that AI boosts productivity and, in most cases, helps narrow skill gaps across the workforce.
4. The U.S. still leads in producing top AI models—but China is closing the performance gap.
In 2024, U.S.-based institutions produced 40 notable AI models, significantly outpacing China’s 15 and Europe’s three. While the U.S. maintains its lead in quantity, Chinese models have rapidly closed the quality gap: performance differences on major benchmarks such as MMLU and HumanEval shrank from double digits in 2023 to near parity in 2024. Meanwhile, China continues to lead in AI publications and patents. At the same time, model development is increasingly global, with notable launches from regions such as the Middle East, Latin America, and Southeast Asia....
....MUCH MORE, including the report itself (456 page PDF)
Previously:
