Artificial Intelligence (AI) is spreading into all areas of the world economy. There is scattered but strong evidence that it contributes to significant improvements in worker productivity, although it still appears prone to errors and fabrication. Its impact is also evident in many aspects of research and higher education, and there is a widespread perception that it contributes to greater research productivity in preparing grant proposals, collecting and cleaning data, conducting literature searches, and revision and correction. It is likely that very soon we shall see entire papers written, reviewed, and read from start to finish by LLMs with modest human intervention, although their quality will probably be very poor.

It is possible that eventually the problem of AI hallucinations will be overcome or mitigated, and that we will see a new era of AI-driven discovery and innovation. There is, however, a risk that AI will simply reflect the biases and mediocre cognitive skills of its human trainers and auditors. Whatever happens, there is a good chance that the future belongs to those countries that make progress in the implementation and reform of AI and the selection of human intelligence to train and supervise it.

The following rankings are very simple: a count of all documents on the topic of Artificial Intelligence indexed in the Web of Science databases in 2024.

The first table shows that China has now overtaken the USA in the production of AI research. India is ranked third in the table, but if England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland were combined, the UK would be in third place.

Following those countries, the top twenty includes Western European, Anglophone, and East Asian countries such as Germany, Italy, Canada, and South Korea. An interesting feature of the table is that three Middle Eastern countries, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, and Iran, are now in the top twenty.

The table for universities and research centres is headed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, followed by the University of California system. Harvard is in fourth place, but it would be at the top if it included Harvard Medical School and medical affiliates.

Chinese, Asian, and Middle Eastern universities and research centers are performing well in the output of AI research. It is also noticeable that Saudi Arabian institutions are now forging ahead, with five Saudi universities in the top 200.