2020 AI Research Rankings: Can America Continue to Lead China?

Introduction

About the author: My name is Gleb Chuvpilo and I am a managing partner at Thundermark Capital , a venture capital firm that invests in AI and robotics startups . He holds a Master’s degree from the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and an MBA in Finance and Strategic Management from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Find out more about me here . If you’d like to talk about AI, robotics, innovation in general, or a startup idea, please contact us at gleb@thundermark.com🤖 .

・・・

Welcome to the 2020 edition of our annual AI research rankings ( links to the 2019 edition and 2017/2018 pilots are below). For the 2020 edition, we analyzed publications at two of the most prestigious AI research conferences. The two are the International Conference on Machine Learning ( ICML 2020 ) and Neural Information Processing Systems ( NeurIPS 2020 ). Using the proceedings, we examined each of the 2,986 accepted papers (1,087 for ICML and 1,899 for NeurIPS), compiled a list of authors and institutions, and calculated a publication index for each institution (metrics are described below). (see “Methodology”). The most intuitive way to think of the Publication Index is in terms of the equivalent of a full article. The 220 in Google’s Publication Index can be interpreted as Google having published 220 complete papers at the two major AI conferences held in 2020.

We begin this analysis with methodology details, continue with the 2020 AI Research Rankings, and then proceed to provide more interesting graphic details and progress to the changes in the rankings in 2019 and 2020, where the US continues to lead over China. I would like to conclude by discussing whether it is possible to do so and linking to the dataset at the end.

methodology

The publication index methodology is inspired by the Nature Index .

・・・

To capture the contributions of countries, regions and institutions to a paper and avoid counting them more than once, the Nature Index uses a fractional count (FC) that takes into account the author’s share of each paper. are using. The total FC available per paper is 1, shared among all authors, assuming co-authors contributed equally. For example, a paper with 10 authors means that each author receives 0.1 FC. For authors affiliated with multiple institutions, the author’s FC is distributed equally among the institutions. An institution’s total FC is calculated by summing the FCs of individual affiliated authors. This process is the same for countries and regions, but considering the complicated situation that some institutions have laboratories overseas, the FC assigned to an overseas laboratory of an institution is the country/region that led the research. is added to

The only difference between the Publication Index and the Nature Index is that the Publication Index counts foreign laboratories as the country/region of headquarters (rather than the country/region where the research was led). While such an approach is a controversial issue, we believe that it is better to have intellectual property rights and the actual allocation of profits arising from research reflected at headquarters rather than attributing it to the local laboratories where the research was conducted. . To clarify this difference, take a look at DeepMind, a British AI research institute that Google acquired in 2014. The analysis in this article counts papers published by DeepMind as the work of current owners Google, and even the United States, but this counting may disappoint our British friends. But given the complexity of locating each author on a map using only the proceedings, the metric we came up with is a consistent way to treat authorship. Let’s hope in the future that conference organizers will be able to publish author name details and create two versions of the ranking, one based on corporate authorship and one based on the author’s physical location. .

An example of calculation of the Publication Index is shown below. If a paper has five authors, three from MIT, one from Oxford, and one from Google, each author gets one-fifth of a point, or 0.2 points. As a result, this paper alone adds 3*0.2=0.6 points to MIT, 0.2 points to Oxford University, and 0.2 points to Google. Since MIT is based in the United States, the university’s attribution to the United States increases the country’s publication index by 0.6. Similarly, Oxford University is based in the UK, so the EEA + Switzerland + UK region category is increased by 0.2. Finally, Google is a multinational corporation headquartered in the United States, so the US Publications Index will increase by another 0.2, for a combined increase of 0.8 with MIT. If the author belongs to multiple institutions, divide the author’s FC by each institution. For example, in the case above, if the last author listed her two affiliations, Google and Stanford, then both Google and Stanford would get her 0.2 / 2 = 0.1 points. become.

Finally, we thought it was fair to combine the ICML and NeurIPS papers into the same dataset because of their similar prominence among top AI researchers and the similarity of participating institutions. and similar paper acceptance rates (21.8% for ICML and 20.0% for NeurIPS).

2020 AI Research Rankings

Top 50 countries leading AI research in 2020:

1. United States – 1677.8
2. China – 281.2
3. United Kingdom – 161.0
4. Canada – 114.5
5. France – 102.9 6. Germany
– 91.5 7. Switzerland – 86.7
8.
South Korea – 76.6 9.
Japan – 57.8
10. Israel – 57.7
11. Australia – 47.6
12. Singapore – 30.1
13. India – 22.7
14. Italy – 19.5
15. Russia – 19.2
16. Sweden – 16.0 17.
Netherlands – 15.1
18. Austria – 11.0 19.
Denmark – 10.3
20. Saudi Arabia – 10.2
21. Finland – 9.4
22. Belgium – 8.9
23. Portugal – 6.6
24. Taiwan – 5.9
25. Spain – 5.4 26.
Poland – 4.0 27.
Vietnam – 2.9 28. Brazil – 2.8
29.
Greece – 2.8
30. South Africa – 2.5
31.UAE – 2.2
32. Czech Republic – 1.8
33. Iran – 1.7
34. Chile – 1.3
35. Norway – 1.1 36. Romania – 1.0
37.
Turkey – 1.0
38. Pakistan – 0.9
39. Hungary – 0.7
40. North Macedonia – 0.3
41. Luxembourg – 0.3
42. Egypt – 0.3
43. Barbados – 0.3
44. Thailand – 0.3
45. Cyprus – 0.3
46. Qatar – 0.2
47. Malaysia – 0.2

Top 100 global institutions (industry and academia combined) leading AI research in 2020:

1. Google (USA) – 220.1
2. Stanford University (USA) – 106.1
3. MIT (USA) – 99.6 4.
UC Berkeley (USA) – 86.7
5. Carnegie Mellon University (USA) – 71.3
6. Microsoft (USA) – 66.5
7. Oxford University (UK) – 51.9
8. Facebook (US) – 48.5
9. Tsinghua University (China) – 46.8
10. Princeton University (US) – 45.0
11. UT Austin (US) – 40.1
12. Switzerland Federal Institute of Technology (Switzerland) – 39.0
13. EPFL (Switzerland) – 36.5
14. Harvard University (USA) – 36.0
15. Cornell University (USA) – 35.6
16. Columbia University (USA) – 33.3
17. New York University (USA) – 33.2
18. UCLA (USA) – 33.0
19. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) – 32.8 20.
KAIST (Korea) – 31.8
21. IBM (USA) – 29.7
22. Cambridge University (UK) – 29.3
23. UC San Diego (USA) – 27.8
24. Peking University (China) – 27.0
25. University of Pennsylvania (USA) – 26.5
26. Duke University (USA) – 24.9
27. National University of Singapore (Singapore) – 24.4
28. Georgia Institute of Technology (USA) – 23.9
29. Mary Rand University (USA) – 22.7
30. University College London (UK) – 22.4
31. University of Washington (USA) – 22.3
32. University of Toronto (Canada) – 21.5
33. Technion (Israel) – 19.9
34. University of Michigan ( USA) – 18.8
35. Inria (France) – 18.6
36. UMass Amherst (USA) – 17.4
37. University of Wisconsin Madison (USA) – 16.7
38. University of Southern California (USA) – 16.4
39. Texas A&M University (USA) – 15.6
40.Mira (Canada) – 15.6
41.Purdue University (USA) – 15.3
42.Boston University (USA) – 15.2
43.Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China) – 14.8
44.Seoul University (Korea) – 14.3
45.Huawei (China) – 14.3
46.NVIDIA (USA) – 13.9
47. Amazon (US) – 13.5
48. RIKEN (Japan) – 13.5
49. University of Minnesota (US) – 12.8
50. Johns Hopkins University (US) – 12.4
51. McGill University (Canada) – 12.4
52. Tel Aviv University (Israel) – 12.3
53. Imperial College London (UK) – 12.2
54. University of Sydney (Australia) – 12.2
55. University of Chicago (USA) – 12.1
56. California Institute of Technology (USA) – 11.9
57. University of Tübingen (Germany) – 11.9
58. University of Science and Technology of China (China) – 11.7
59. Northeastern University (USA) – 11.5
60. Samsung (South Korea) – 11.1
61. Rutgers University (USA) – 11.1
62. Rice University (USA) – 10.5
63. University of Tokyo (Japan) – 10.5
64. Alibaba (China) – 10.5
65. Nanjing University (China) – 10.4
66. Yale University (USA) – 10.2
67. University of Alberta (Canada) – 10.2
68. ENS Paris (France) – 10.1
69.KAUST (Saudi Arabia) – 10.0
70. University of British Columbia (Canada) – 9.9
71. Northwestern University (USA) – 9.8
72. Nanyang Technological University (China) – 9.7
73. Chinese University of Hong Kong (China) – 9.3
74. Tencent (China) – 9.2
75. Toyota Tech Institute of Technology Chicago (USA) – 9.0
76. CNRS (France) – 9.0
77. University of Edinburgh (UK) – 8.9
78. Weizmann Institute (Israel) – 8.8
79. Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (China) – 8.2
80. UC Santa Barbara (USA) – 7.9
81. University of Montreal (Canada) – 7.9
82. University of Technology Sydney (Australia) – 7.9 83. University
of Amsterdam (Netherlands) – 7.9
84. Technical University of Munich (Germany) – 7.8
85. Yandex (Russia) – 7.5
86. Apple (US) – 7.4
87. OpenAI (US) – 7.3
88. Baidu (China) – 7.3
89. MPI Intelligent Systems (Germany) – 7.2
90. UC Davis (US) – 7.2
91 Criteo (France) – 7.1
92. Ohio State University (USA) – 6.9
93.KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden) – 6.8
94.UC Irvine (USA) – 6.8
95.Uber (USA) – 6.8
96.Intel (USA) – 6.7
97.Aalto University (Finland) – 6.5
98.University of North Carolina ( USA) – 6.5
99. Hebrew University (Israel) – 6.5
100. Zhejiang University (China) – 6.1

Top 100 American Universities Leading in AI Research in 2020:

1. Stanford University – 106.1
2. MIT – 99.6
3. UC Berkeley – 86.7
4. Carnegie Mellon University – 71.3
5. Princeton University – 45.0
6. UT Austin – 40.1
7. Harvard University – 36.0
8. Cornell University – 35.6
9. Columbia University – 33.3
10. New York University – 33.2
11. UC Los Angeles – 33.0
12. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – 32.8
13. UC San Diego – 27.8
14. University of Pennsylvania – 26.5
15. Duke University – 24.9
16. Georgia Tech – 23.9
17. University of Maryland – 22.7
18. University of Washington – 22.3
19. University of Michigan – 18.8
20. UMass Amherst – 17.4
21. University of Wisconsin-Madison – 16.7
22. University of Southern California – 16.4
23. Texas & M University – 15.6
24. Purdue University – 15.3
25. Boston University – 15.2
26. University of Minnesota – 12.8
27. Johns Hopkins University – 12.4
28. University of Chicago – 12.1
29. Caltech – 11.9
30. Northeastern University – 11.5 31.
Rutgers University – 11.1
32. Rice University – 10.5
33. Yale University – 10.2
34. Northwestern University – 9.8
35. Toyota Tech Chicago – 9.0
36. UC Santa Barbara – 7.9 37.
UC Davis – 7.2 38.
Ohio State University – 6.9
39. UC Irvine – 6.8
40. University of North Carolina – 6.5
41. University of Pittsburgh – 5.7
42. University of Utah – 5.4
43. Indiana University – 5.1
44. SUNY Stony Brook – 4.5
45. University of Washington – Madison – 4.3
46. University of Virginia – 4.2
47. SUNY Buffalo – 4.1
48. University of Illinois at Chicago – 4.0
49. Iowa Universities – 3.8
50. Pennsylvania State University – 3.8
51. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute – 3.7
52. Brown University – 3.4
53. Allen Institute – 3.3
54. -Princeton Institute for Advanced Study 3.2
55.University of Florida – 3.2
56.North Carolina State University – 2.9
57.Virginia Tech – 2.8
58.Michigan State University – 2.8
59.Oregon State University – 2.7
60.Stevens Institute of Technology – 2.2
61. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory – 2.2
62. Washington University in St. Louis – 2.2
63. Dartmouth College – 2.1
64. University of Arizona – 2.0
65. University of Notre Dame – 2.0
66. UT Dallas – 2.0
67. UC Merced – 1.9
68 University of Delaware – 1.8
69. UC Santa Cruz – 1.8
70. Rochester Institute of Technology – 1.7
71. UC Riverside – 1.7 72.
Arizona State University – 1.6
73. University of Oregon – 1.5
74. UT Arlington – 1.5
75. New Jersey Institute of Technology – 1.3
76. Binghamton University – 1.3
77. Los Alamos National Laboratory – 1.2
78. Auburn University – 1.1
79. Lehigh University – 1.1
80. Sunny Albany – 1.0
81. Virginia Commonwealth University – 1.0
82. University of South Florida – 1.0
83. University of Connecticut – 1.0 84.
Minnesota State University
– 1.0 85. Carleton University – 1.0
86. Albert Einstein College of Medicine – 1.0
87. Vanderbilt University – 1.0
88. University of North Carolina at Charlotte – 1.0
89. Worcester Polytechnic Institute – 1.0
90. College of William and Mary – 1.0
91. Temple University – 0.8
92. Florida State University – 0.8
93. United States Army Research Institute – 0.8
94. University of Arkansas – 0.8
95. Louisiana State University – 0.8
96. Brigham Young University – 0.8
97. University of Toledo – 0.7 98.
Iowa State University – 0.7
99. Georgia State University – 0.7
100. University of Rochester – 0.6

Top 100 Global Universities Leading AI Research in 2020:

1. Stanford University (USA) – 106.1
2. MIT (USA) – 99.6
3. UC Berkeley (USA) – 86.7
4. Carnegie Mellon University (USA) – 71.3
5. University of Oxford (UK) – 51.9
6. Tsinghua University ( China) – 46.8
7. Princeton University (USA) – 45.0
8. UT Austin (USA) – 40.1
9. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Switzerland) – 39.0 10.
EPFL (Switzerland) – 36.5
11. Harvard University (USA) – 36.0
12. Cornell University (USA) – 35.6
13. Columbia University (USA) – 33.3
14. New York University (USA) – 33.2
15. UC Los Angeles (USA) – 33.0
16. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) – 32.8
17 .KAIST (South Korea) – 31.8
18. Cambridge University (UK) – 29.3
19. UC San Diego (USA) – 27.8
20. Peking University (China) – 27.0
21. University of Pennsylvania (USA) – 26.5
22. Duke University (USA) – 24.9
23. National University of Singapore (Singapore) – 24.4
24. Georgia Tech (USA) – 23.9
25. University of Maryland (USA) – 22.7
26. University College London (UK) – 22.4
27. University of Washington (USA) – 22.3
28. University of Toronto (Canada) – 21.5
29. Technion (Israel) – 19.9
30. University of Michigan (USA) – 18.8
31. Inria (France) – 18.6
32. UMass Amherst (USA) – 17.4
33. University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) – 16.7
34. University of Southern California (USA) – 16.4
35. Texas A&M University (USA) – 15.6
36. Mila (Canada) – 15.6 37.
Purdue University (USA) – 15.3
38. Boston University (USA) – 15.2
39. Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China) – 14.8
40. Seoul National University (Korea) – 14.3
41. RIKEN (Japan) – 13.5
42. University of Minnesota (USA) – 12.8
43. Johns Hopkins University (USA) – 12.4
44. McGill University (Canada) – 12.4
45 .Tel Aviv University (Israel) – 12.3
46. ​​Imperial College London (UK) – 12.2
47. University of Sydney (Australia) – 12.2
48. University of Chicago (USA) – 12.1
49. California Institute of Technology (USA) – 11.9
50. University of Tübingen (Germany) – 11.9
51 University of Science and Technology of China (China) – 11.7
52. Northeastern University (USA) – 11.5
53. Rutgers University (USA) – 11.1 54.
Rice University (USA) – 10.5
55. University of Tokyo (Japan) – 10.5
56. Nanjing University (China) – 10.4
57. Yale University (USA) – 10.2
58. University of Alberta (Canada) – 10.2 59.
ENS Paris (France) – 10.1
60. KAUST (Saudi Arabia) – 10.0
61. University of British Columbia (Canada) – 9.9
62.Northwestern University (USA) – 9.8
63.Nanyang Technological University (China) – 9.7
64.The Chinese University of Hong Kong (China) – 9.3
65.Toyota Technological Institute Chicago (USA) – 9.0
66.CNRS (France) – 9.0
67. University of Edinburgh (UK) – 8.9
68. Weizmann Institute (Israel) – 8.8
69. Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (China) – 8.2
70. UC Santa Barbara (USA) – 7.9
71. University of Montreal (Canada) – 7.9
72. University of Technology Sydney (Australia) – 7.9
73. University of Amsterdam (Netherlands) – 7.9
74 .Technical University of Munich (Germany) – 7.8
75.MPI Intelligent Systems (Germany) – 7.2
76.UC Davis (USA) – 7.2
77.Ohio State University (USA) – 6.9
78.KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden) – 6.8
79. UC Irvine (USA) – 6.8
80. Aalto University (Finland) – 6.5
81. University of North Carolina (USA) – 6.5
82. Hebrew University (Israel) – 6.5
83. Zhejiang University (China) – 6.1
84. University of Waterloo (Canada) – 5.9
85. University of Pittsburgh (USA) – 5.7
86. University of Utah (USA) – 5.4
87. IST Austria (Austria) – 5.4
88. IIS (India) – 5.3
89. Polytechnic Institute of Milan (Italy) – 5.2
90. Indiana University (USA) – 5.1
91. University of Melbourne (Australia) – 4.9
92.Xidian University (China) – 4.9
93.Ecole Polytechnic (France) – 4.7
94.Australian National University (Australia) – 4.5
95.Vector Institute (Canada) – 4.5
96.MPI Informatics (Germany) – 4.5
97.SUNY Stony Brook (USA) – 4.5
98.Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Russia) – 4.5
99.ENSAE ParisTech (France) – 4.4
100.University of Washington Madison (USA) – 4.3

Top 100 Global Companies Leading AI Research in 2020:

1. Google (US) – 220.1
2. Microsoft (US) – 66.5
3. Facebook (US) – 48.5
4. IBM (US) – 29.7
5. Huawei (China) – 14.3
6. NVIDIA (US) – 13.9
7 Amazon (US) – 13.5
8. Samsung (Korea) – 11.1
9. Alibaba (China) – 10.
10. Tencent (China) – 9.2
11. Yandex (Russia) – 7.5
12. Apple (USA) – 7.4 13.
OpenAI (USA) – 7.3
14. Baidu (China) – 7.3
15. Criteo (France) – 7.1
16 .Uber (USA) – 6.8
17. Intel (USA) – 6.7
18. Salesforce (USA) – 5.7 19. Adobe (USA) –
5.5
20. Qualcomm (USA) – 5.4
21. Bosch (Germany) – 5.1
22. NEC (Japan) – 4.0
23.SenseTime (China) – 3.8
24.JD (China) – 3.8
25.Flatiron Research Institute (USA) – 3.3
26.Bytedance (China) – 3.3
27.Element AI (Canada) – 3.3
28.Naver (Korea) – 3.2
29.NTT (Japan) – 3.2
30.Itrix (Korea) – 3.0
31.Data61 (Australia) – 2.9
32. VinAI (Vietnam) – 2.5
33. Borealis AI (Canada) – 2.5
34. Mitsubishi (Japan) – 2.3
35. Kakao (Korea) – 2.2
36. LinkedIn (USA) – 2.2
37. Preferred Networks (Japan) – 1.9
38. Hitachi (Japan) – 1.9
39. Autodesk (USA) – 1.8
40. Covariant AI (USA) – 1.8 41.
Idyapp (Switzerland) – 1.7
42. Shannon.AI (China) – 1.6
43. Neural Magic (USA) ) – 1.6
44.4 Paradigm (China) – 1.5
45.Spotify (Sweden) – 1.5
46.PROWLER.io (UK) – 1.5
47.Layer6 (Canada) – 1.4
48.JP Morgan (USA) – 1.3
49.Walmart (USA) ) – 1.3
50.Recital (France) – 1.2
51.Ali Group (China) – 1.2
52.Siemens (Germany) – 1.2
53.RealityEngines.AI (USA) – 1.2
54.Megvi (China) – 1.2
55.Pinterest (USA) – 1.1
56. Didi Chuxing (China) – 1.1
57. Speechmatics (UK) – 1.0 58.
Vicaris AI (USA) – 1.0
59. SAS (USA) – 1.0
60. Netflix (USA) – 1.0
61. Fujitsu (Japan) ) – 1.0
62.Graphcore (UK) – 1.0
63.ESTsoft (Korea) – 1.0
64.Lighton (France) – 0.9
65.Net Earth (China) – 0.9
66.CyberAgent (Japan) – 0.8
67.PROPHESEE ( France) – 0.8
68. Guangzhou Huya Technology Co., Ltd. (China) – 0.8
69. Sony (Japan) – 0.8
70. Latent Space (USA) – 0.8
71. NNAISENSE (Switzerland) – 0.7
72. AI21 (Israel) – 0.7
73. indust.ai (USA) – 0.7
74. Hug Face (USA) – 0.7
75. Instadeep (UK) – 0.7
76. Euclid Technologies (USA) – 0.7
77. D-Wave (Canada) – 0.7
78. Volkswagen (Germany) – 0.6
79. ASAPP (USA) – 0.6
80.ABacus.AI (USA) – 0.6
81.Algo AI (USA) – 0.5
82.Ant Financial (China) – 0.5
83.Shenzhen Smartmore Technology (China) – 0.5
84. Yahoo (US) – 0.5
85. Toshiba (Japan) – 0.5
86. RJ Research Consulting (US) – 0.5
87. Kuroba (Korea) – 0.5
88. Five Eyes (UK) – 0.5
89. Horizon Robotics (China) – 0.5
90.Twitter (USA) – 0.5
91.Radiance Technologies (USA) – 0.4
92.Invenia (Canada) – 0.4
93.iFLYTEK (China) – 0.4
94.TAL Education (China) – 0.4
95.XaiPient (USA) – 0.4
96. Honeywell (USA) – 0.4
97. Accenture (USA) – 0.4
98. RealAI (China) – 0.4
99. Petum (USA) – 0.4
100. Tuprox (Poland) – 0.3