While many fear the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) in society, Professor Luke O’Neill wants people to consider the reasons to be excited about new technology.
The AI Index report was published by the Institute for Human Centred AI at Stanford University this month, Prof O’Neill told Show Me the Science.
“This year’s report is the biggest ever – 400 pages long,” he said.
“And guess what – it was copyedited by AI itself... maybe eventually, reports will just be written by AI.”
A major finding of the paper was that codes relating to AI on GitHub increased from 810 in 2011 to 1.8 million in 2023.
“That's fantastic because lots of scientists and engineers are sharing their code with regard to AI so they can maybe collaborate,” Prof O’Neill said.
The number of publications discovering new facets of AI has also tripled in the same amount of time, allowing people to understand more about machine learning systems.
The report also featured four positive aspects of AI, which Prof O’Neill hopes will relieve people’s concerns about new technology.
One of the positive aspects is that AI is increasingly becoming smarter than PhD students.
The index reported that AI software and PhD students took the same 400-question multiple choice quiz based on fields they did not study but could use the internet for.
While PhD students scored on average 34% - a fail - AI scored 40%.
A different test found when PhD students scored roughly 65% on quizzes based on their field, AI was able to score 60%.
“What this means is AI systems now have almost the same knowledge in a given field as someone with a PhD,” Prof O’Neill said.
“The AI system is competing with people with PhDs with a level of expertise.”
AI and health benefits
Prof O’Neill also noted that in a separate study from the AI Index report, machine learning was found to have huge health benefits.
“AI is saving lives in hospitals,” he said.
“It was a publication that came out last week on AI predicting the risk of dying from heart disease and heart attacks,” he said.
“In this case, it was a proper randomised trial... the ones who use the AI system, they reduce death by 31% from any cause and they reduced death by 90% from heart issues.
“The AI system could tell the doctor, ‘Oh, treat this patient quick’.
“It's a big breakthrough, isn't it? And now this will now become a standard of care – it's being used in armies now.”
The AI Index report also found that the cost of training advanced AI models has surged, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4 using an estimated $78m to train systems.
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