Zhiyuan Guide: On December 10, Nature Index released its AI supplement (Nature Index AI supplement). Academic research conducted the analysis and ranking. However, according to the rankings of the two databases, China's ranking has changed a bit. The former ranks fourth after the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany; while the latter ranks first, far surpassing other countries.
After carefully analyzing these two data rankings, we found that China is indeed at the forefront in the direction of AI, but we are still lacking in applying AI to traditional basic disciplines. This lack, in addition to suggesting that we should pay more attention to basic research, may also tell our AI experts that there may be more new fields to explore in traditional disciplines, rather than being limited to the core tasks of AI.
To put it simply, according to the data of the Nature Index, from 2015 to 2019, despite the rapid increase in the number of papers in the Nature Index paper database (the number of papers in 2019 increased to 340% in 2015), it still ranked first in the United States and the United Kingdom. , Germany, ranked fourth. It can be seen here that the Share (the meaning will be explained later) in the United States is greater than the sum of all 2 to 10 people.
Figure 1: Country rankings by Nature Index
However, according to the larger Dimensions database, the countries and regions leading in AI are clearly different. China ranked first with 318,534 publications between 2015 and 2019, while India ranked third with 91,563 publications.
Figure 2: Country rankings based on Dimensions Data
The reason for this difference is that the Nature Index data analysis focuses on the number of AI-related articles published in the 82 high-quality natural science journals tracked by the index. These journals mainly cover chemistry, physics, life sciences, earth and environmental sciences, etc. Therefore, according to the ranking of natural index data, more emphasis is placed on the application of AI in chemistry, physics, life sciences, earth and environmental sciences, etc.
Dimension is relatively more extensive, including various journals and conference papers related to artificial intelligence, and can track the publication of AI-related articles in all fields.
The comparison between the two highlights that although China's AI research ranks first in the world overall (in terms of the number of publications), its application in traditional disciplines such as chemistry, physics, biology, and geography is a shortcoming.
01 Chinese AI in Dimensions Data
Using Dimensions Data, Nature Index AI not only analyzes the ranking of each country, but also gives a more detailed AI 100 ranking of research institutions. On this list, research institutions from China dominate the top ten institutions.
Seven of the top 10 are from Chinese universities/research institutes: Tsinghua University (No. 1), University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. 2), Shanghai Jiao Tong University (No. 3), Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (No. 4), Zhejiang University ( Fifth), Harbin Institute of Technology (sixth), University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (eighth).
Among the top 100 institutions, 39 are from China.
| noun |
Research institute |
country / region |
Publications 2015–2019 |
| 1 |
Tsinghua University |
China |
11,867 |
| 2 |
Chinese Academy of Sciences University |
China |
8,835 |
| 3 |
Shanghai Jiaotong University |
China |
8,796 |
| 4 |
Beihang University |
China |
8,605 |
| 5 |
Zhejiang University |
China |
8,337 |
| 6 |
Harbin Institute of Technology |
China |
8,315 |
| 7 |
Nanyang Technological University |
Singapore |
6,985 |
| 8 |
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China |
China |
6,954 |
| 9 |
Stanford University |
USA |
6,609 |
| 10 |
MIT |
USA |
6,314 |
| 11 |
Southeast University |
China |
6,180 |
| 12 |
University of Tokyo |
Japan |
6,058 |
| 13 |
Huazhong University of Science and Technology |
China |
6,048 |
| 14 |
University College London |
U.K. |
5,988 |
| 15 |
Wuhan University |
China |
5,797 |
| 16 |
Beijing Institute of Technology |
China |
5,641 |
| 17 |
Beijing University |
China |
5,612 |
| 18 |
Harvard University |
USA |
5,553 |
| 19 |
University of Michigan |
USA |
5,464 |
| 20 |
Xi'an Jiaotong University |
China |
5,364 |
| 21 |
National Defense University |
China |
5,361 |
| 22 |
Xi'an University of Electronic Science and Technology |
China |