09/08/2021

The AI Industry Risks Becoming Winner-Take-Most in the U.S.

AI activity has become extremely geographically concentrated

A new study warns the American artificial intelligence (AI) industry is highly concentrated in the San Francisco Bay Area and that this could prove to be a weakness in the long run. The Bay leads all other regions of the country in AI research and investment activity, accounting for about one-quarter of AI conference papers, patents, and companies in the U.S. Bay Area metro areas see levels of AI activity four times higher than other top cities for AI development.

"When you have a high percentage of all AI activity in Bay Area metros, you may be overconcentrating, losing diversity and getting groupthink in the algorithmic economy. It locks in a winner-take-most dimension to this sector, and that's where we hope that federal policy will begin to invest in new and different AI clusters in new and different places to provide a balance or counter," said Mark Muro, policy director at the Brookings Institution and the study's co-author.

The study, titled "The geography of AI," ranks nearly 400 U.S. metro areas based on their capabilities in AI, using metrics like AI job listings, early-stage company creation data from Crunchbase, published research, and federal research and development funding. It found that two-thirds of AI activity is in just 15 metro areas, largely along coastlines: the two "super-stars" of San Francisco and San Jose, plus 13 other "early adopter" locales like Austin and Seattle. Meanwhile, more than half of the metro areas together account for just 5 percent of AI activity.

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.