The International Finance Forum (IFF) has officially released the much-anticipated second installment of its Global Artificial Intelligence Competitiveness Index Report, which builds on the signal success of the first part to paint a complete picture of international competitiveness in artificial intelligence (AI) using country-specific rankings.

This series of research, which arrives at some unexpected conclusions, presents an exhaustive summation of the current state of AI competition, and offers a tantalizing glimpse into the future trajectory of AI research and development, predicting which countries will leverage their early mover advantage to maintain their already impressive leads, and which will have to engage in a game of catch-up so as not to be left behind.

The study applies a system of evaluation from five core dimensions: technology development and application - as represented by AI companies - research and innovation, talent development, policy and regulatory environment, and market acceptance and infrastructure.

In part two of the IFF Global Competitiveness Index report, the researchers parsed more than 2 million AI-related scientific research articles from countries around the world to pinpoint those nations and regions with the greatest total number of AI papers globally - a major metric via which to gauge overall competitiveness. Their study further normalized data from two dimensions - the average number of citations to these papers, and the average impact factor of their journals - to comprehensively evaluate AI papers’ influence in various countries. ​​The two top contenders racked up scores exceeding 0.8, the results show, while those ranked 3-6 had values ​​surpassing 0.7, according to the researchers’ scale.

The study’s analysis of international cooperation on AI papers further reveals the most important foreign partners in articles published as first authors by scholars from various nations. The survey also identifies the region with the highest number of AI papers worldwide, and the top 10 countries globally, and calculates the number of AI papers per million in population for various of these industry leaders, thus indicating their robust AI research capabilities. One small nation holds a lead far ahead of all others in this regard, the research reveals.

The research also factors in the influence of these AI articles, finding a close correlation between their number and their overall impact, as gauged by such yardsticks as the frequency of their citations in other journals and the authoritativeness of these periodicals themselves.

The analysis further gauges academic infrastructure and funding for AI development in China, the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. It extracts relevant article data of the top 10 countries in the world in total number of AI papers, analyzes the keywords and themes of all articles, and defines 10 key topics based on the frequency of their appearance in these papers.

Turning to patents, the study determines the two largest AI patent powerhouses, which massively surpass all other nations, as well as ranking the occupants of the second tier.  A co-occurrence analysis of AI patents in China and the US shows intriguing divergences between companies in their focus on AI’s underlying foundation and intermediate technology layers, e.g., processor architecture and configuration, baseband system components, and machine learning. It further compares European countries’ tallies with the figures for patents granted in China, the US, Japan, and South Korea, and finds a surprising discrepancy with the AI research paper rankings, one likely attributable to varying national and regional patent application policies, rather than greater patent prowess.

It also addresses AI patents per million in population, with the front runner boasting over 2,000 per million inhabitants, far surpassing all other countries. The other four nations rounding out the top five are scattered over three continents, per the study.

As AI becomes ever-more ubiquitous and extends into every area of human activity - finance in particular - the IFF will continue redoubling its efforts to keep pace with developments in this transformative technology that is poised to usher in such barely imaginable changes. 

The report is available for viewing at https://link.iff.org.cn/IFFAICIREP2EN.