The United States has come out on top in a new index measuring countries’ ability to deploy artificial intelligence for social and environmental benefits, by the Global AI Competitiveness Index Consortium.
The consortium’s AI for Social Good and Sustainability index, produced in association with Deep Knowledge Analytics, ranked 20 countries and 20 city-level innovation hubs on their deployment of AI across sustainability, public services, social inclusion, philanthropy and related topics.
The US earned a score of 97.7 in the country rankings, followed by the UK (90.1), Canada (72.5), India (68.3) and Germany (65.5).
In the city rankings, meanwhile, London led the way, followed by San Francisco, New York, Shanghai and Hong Kong. The remainder of the top ten included Beijing, Singapore, Toronto, Hangzhou and Tallinn.
‘True measure’
“The true measure of AI competitiveness should not be how advanced the technology is, but how effectively we use it to improve people’s lives,” commented Karen Abudinen, member of the Global AI Competitiveness Index Committee and former minister of information technologies and communications of Colombia. “The challenge ahead is to ensure that technological progress translates into measurable social progress.”
According to the report, sustainability and green technology were the main focus areas where AI was deployed for social good, accounting for 25% of total investment, followed by philanthropy and impact finance (13%).
Modern slavery, human trafficking and gender-based violence were among the least-served areas, according to the report.
Public benefit
“This edition measures a harder thing than AI capability: whether a jurisdiction can turn that capability into public benefit that is governed, deployed and measured,” added Dmitry Kaminskiy, general partner of Deep Knowledge Group, founder of Deep Knowledge Analytics and co-author of the report. “That is where the competitive frontier now sits.”
The index was published ahead of Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei’s recent call for firms leading the AI wave to slow down investment, warning of potential repercussions for the global economy and humanity itself. Read more here.
