AI report: Artificial intelligence increasingly becoming part of everyday life

Contents

Artificial intelligence is playing an increasingly important role in social and economic life. This is the conclusion of the State of AI Index 2025, which is published by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) in the USA. After the initial years of hype and major technological leaps, the figures suggest that AI appears to have entered a consolidation phase. One of the reasons for this is that smaller models are getting better and better and operating costs are becoming cheaper. Acceptance in society is increasing, but so are the problems. And China is noticeably catching up.

The report for the year 2024, published on April 7, is the result of an independent initiative by the Stanford Institute, which is led by the AI Index Steering Committee, an interdisciplinary group of experts from academia and industry. For several years, the publishers have been documenting technical progress, new achievements, trends and investments.

More and more AI medical devices

Examples of how AI is increasingly making its way into everyday life include the approval of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In 2023, a total of 223 AI-supported medical devices were newly approved. In 2015, there were only six. According to a survey, more and more companies are relying on at least one AI function. In 2023, 55% of those surveyed confirmed this; by 2024, this figure had risen to 78%.

According to the figures, approval is also increasing as AI becomes more widespread. Curiously, the USA is one of the more skeptical countries, even though it dominates the topic of AI in terms of technology and is where the highest investments are made. When asked whether AI brings more advantages than disadvantages, only 39% of respondents there agreed in 2024 – However, this figure is increasing year on year. Germany is in the middle of the pack with 47% – an increase of 5% compared to 2023 and 10% compared to 2022.

Greatest optimism in Asia

The greatest AI optimism prevails in Asia: China tops the list with 83 percent, followed by Indonesia (80 percent) and Thailand (77 percent). In the case of China, this was already apparent in 2017. In view of this, it is not surprising that China is increasingly catching up with the USA in terms of the best new AI models. In 2024, 40 major models came from the USA, 15 from China and only three from Europe. According to the surveys, China invested significantly less in AI – 9.3 billion US dollars in 2024. By comparison, private investment in the USA amounted to 109 billion US dollars, compared to 25.5 billion in the EU and the UK.

However, as AI becomes part of everyday life, the problems are also growing. Although the list of incidents in the index only touches the surface, the publishers say that there were 233 incidents, an increase of 56.4 percent compared to 2023. Incidents include, for example, deepfake intimate images or chatbots that drive teenagers to suicide, as well as algorithmic discrimination in job application processes.

Lower AI costs

The report also shows that the costs of AI systems have fallen dramatically. For example, a system at the level of GPT-3.5 became 280 times cheaper between November 2022 and October 2024. At the same time, the energy efficiency of the hardware has increased by 40 percent. This will make AI accessible to more and more users.

The entire report with many more details and figures is freely available online.

(mki)