
Understanding the state of Artificial Intelligence academic research (2016) - sytelus
https://blog.ai-academy.com/six-graphs-to-understand-the-state-of-ai-academic-research-3a79cac4c9c2
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barbegal
I wouldn't trust any of the graphs or much of the statistical analysis. I was
particularly intrigued by the last graph showing the geographic distribution
of research. Thankfully, the author has published their methodology on github
[1] so we can see that this data is in fact just papers published in the
"Energy" category containing the words "artificial intelligence" somewhere in
them. This explains why Iran and Malaysia rank above many European nations.

[1]
[https://github.com/gianlucahmd/Science_Direct_API_trends_ana...](https://github.com/gianlucahmd/Science_Direct_API_trends_analysis/blob/master/Science_Direct_API.ipynb)

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kenjackson
Where in the code does it indicate this?

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barbegal
In the "Get most active nations" section the URL being queried is:

"[http://api.elsevier.com/content/search/scopus?apiKey="](http://api.elsevier.com/content/search/scopus?apiKey=")
\+ apikey + "&query=Artificial+Intelligence+" \+ query + "&subj=ener" \+
"&start=" \+ str(start)

And "ener" is the id for the energy subject.

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kenjackson
Thanks. That is really odd.

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tischler
Maybe it is a typo: ENER (Energy) vs ENGI (Engineering)? Is there anyone with
a Science Direct API key to check what the actual numbers look like?

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rawnlq
The author is obsessed with fitting things with a logistic function and
drawing wild conclusions even when it directly contradicts itself.

You can't have the rate of publication be a logistic function and the
cumulative publication be a logistic function. The derivative(i.e., rate) of
the logistic function should be 0 at both tails which isn't S-shaped anymore.

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mkagenius
Yes, instead of slowing down, the curve could just continue growing straight,
there is no inflection point in the graph. Also, area under logistic function
is also more like a straight line:
[https://www.google.co.in/search?q=graph+log(1%2Be%5Ex)](https://www.google.co.in/search?q=graph+log\(1%2Be%5Ex\))

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tanilama
If you want to understand the state of AI research, just pull out the origins
of the papers from top conferences, that is it. Or for conference like ICLR,
there is a rating attached for each paper, even easier for sorting top out
influential ones. Anecdotally, US/UK/China are countries frequently popped
into my mind, Iran is nowhere to be found.

Research doesn't work by aggregate, in fact most of the papers are useless.
The top 1% influential ones are the ones that really matters.

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juanmirocks
Poor study IMO. I stopped when I read the

> “Computer Science”, “Mathematics” and “Engineering”, obviously the leaders
> in research, with respectively 963274, 491191 and 352870 publications.

Why "obvious" ?? I barely think so.

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sgt101
I think that the author is trying to point to the contains relation of CS,
Maths and Engineering to AI. I think that Engineering is tenuous as AI in
Aeronautical Engineering is obviously of interest as an application that would
create extrinsic value. But of course AI for software would also create value!

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TekMol
One thing I don't understand about human intelligence:

Why do instances like this one publish their articles on Medium? As a reader,
I am annoyed that Medium puts two dick bars on the page so it is hard to read.
As a writer, I would not want to have my content controlled by a third party.
And not have all these links to the third party on my content. What
counterweights this? Are there any benefits of giving your content to Medium?

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juanmirocks
Eh... extremely much larger exposure? Those playing the game of posting on
Medium and Linkedin are gaining the game of reachability. That's the point of
publishing out content.

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TekMol
What is that large exposure? How does the article reach more readers because
it is on Medium?

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juanmirocks
Because:

* It is __linked __(vs. a post in a personal blog post which would only be indexed by search engines) * There is a large community of users on Medium, and posts are easy to share. * Medium highlights popular posts.

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TekMol

        It is linked
    

Linked from where?

    
    
        Posts are easy to share
    

How can sharing be easier then ' read this: [https://blog.ai-
academy.com/3a79cac4c9c2](https://blog.ai-academy.com/3a79cac4c9c2) '?

    
    
        Medium highlights popular posts
    

But is it worth all the downsides? The post is on the HN frontpage, yet it
only has 51 likes on Medium. How much additional readers does such a post get
from Mediums free marketing?

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sanxiyn
[http://aiindex.org/](http://aiindex.org/) agrees and its AI Index peaked in
2015.

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denzil_correa
The AI Index does a reasonable job to understand the state of AI research [0].

> This report aggregates a diverse set of data, makes that data accessible,
> and includes discussion about what is provided and what is missing. Most
> importantly, the AI Index 2017 Report is a starting point for the
> conversation about rigorously measuring activity and progress in AI in the
> future.

[0] [https://aiindex.org](https://aiindex.org)

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willvarfar
Graphs? All I see is charts ;)

Early on the article made an interesting thought - once we get ai right, we
won't need to solve any other problems...

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jacquesm
> once we get ai right, we won't need to solve any other problems...

Only if it is superhuman AI, we already have 'human' level AI and as long as
that isn't enough there is no reason to believe that 'ordinary' AI will solve
anything that we can't solve.

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bobthechef
> we already have 'human' level AI

And you're able to say that with a straight face?

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skriticos2
He/she probably meant the AI that is perfectly capable of understanding human
sarcasm.

ps: explanation: AI is at best at simple insect level intelligence and sarcasm
is especially challenging for "AI assistants"

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jamez1
What does the number of publications have to do with anything? One paper can
change an entire field, while another hundred could be just filler non-sense
to get a PhD with.

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jtbayly
From October, 2016.

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sctb
Thanks, we've updated the headline.

