The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI published its 2025 AI Index report this week, providing a comprehensive look at the global state of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The report, now in its eighth edition, tracks and visualises data on technical performance, economic impact, education, policy, and responsible AI to offer an empirical foundation for understanding the field’s rapid evolution.
The AI Index is a globally recognised source for credible and authoritative data and insights on AI. It has been cited in major news outlets like The New York Times, Bloomberg, and The Guardian, and referenced by policymakers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union. The AI Index’s growing significance is reflected in the increased size, scale, and scope of this year’s edition, which surpasses all previous versions.
I was awarded $10,000 from Stanford University to support the development of the AI Index. Given my extensive expertise in the field, I supported the Stanford team in developing various statistics around papers in AI. These included the number of publications and citations in the last 10 years, and how these compare with the whole Computer Science field. These publications were then categorised by country and region (e.g., North America, Europe); sector (e.g., academia, industry, government, non-profit); and AI subdiscipline (e.g., Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing).
Part of these activities also included updating the Computer Science Ontology with more than 150 latest trends in AI and further developing the CSO Classifier, our flagship product, with additional features tailored for this project. These were essential for categorising nearly 2 million AI research papers based on a highly detailed classification of research topics.
Here, I briefly report some interesting analyses, while I refer readers to explore the report for more details.
The figure below shows the total number of AI publications globally. From 2013 to 2023, AI publications more than doubled, increasing from about 102K to over 242K, with a substantial 19.7% rise in the last year alone. This growth shows a broader interest in AI across Computer Science, with many fields now contributing to AI research.
China has steadily increased its share of global AI article publications since 2016, leading the world with 23.2% in 2023 (see Figure below). This contrasts with Europe, whose proportion has fallen to 15.2%, and India, at 9.2%. While the United States’ share remained relatively stable until 2021, it has seen a slight decline in recent years.
Additional insights emerged from this research are:
- Industry continues to make significant investments in AI and leads in notable AI model development, while academia leads in highly cited research.
- China leads in AI research publication totals, while the United States leads in highly influential research.
- AI publication totals continue to grow and increasingly dominate computer science.
- The United States continues to be the leading source of notable AI models.
To learn more about these insights, you can read the report here: https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2025-ai-index-report.
I extend my sincere gratitude to Dr. Loredana Fattorini and Dr. Nestor Maslej of Stanford University for their invitation and grant, which allowed me to partake in this initiative. It was an honor to be involved.
