“In recent years, artificial intelligence, or AI, has gained a surge in attention from policy makers, universities, researchers, corporations, media, and the public. Driven by advances in big data and computing power, breakthroughs in AI research and technology seem to happen almost daily. Expectations, but also fears, are mounting about the transformational power of AI to change society. In this whirlwind of attention and development, terms are getting confused.
“artificial intelligence,” “machine learning,” and “data science” are often used interchangeably, yet they are not the same. AI is often intuitively understood as an umbrella term to describe the overall objective of making computers apply judgment as a human being would. Themes, such as deep learning, drop out of the AI umbrella to become their own research fields and technologies.
The confusion of terms, in a field with such potential to transform lives, needs to be addressed to ensure that policy objectives are correctly translated into research priorities, student education matches job market needs, and media can compare the knowledge being developed in various countries and regions across the globe. This is exactly the challenge we have set ourselves to tackle with this report. After all, we are an information analytics company focused on research and health, with data assets that can provide valuable insight into these important issues.
