An obsession with computer vision shows the lopsided nature of the AI boom - Will Knight, MIT Technology Review

A new report on global AI patents and publications has offered an interesting snapshot of the current boom—including the uneven way it is being commercialized. The report (pdf) from the World Intellectual Property Organization shows that since the field of AI was established in the 1950s, 340,000 AI-related inventions have been patented and over 1.6 million scientific papers published. Around 49% of all AI patents relate to computer vision, and that number is growing 24% year on year. What it means: Together, deep learning and computer vision stand to have a huge impact in many commercial areas: medical imaging, autonomous driving, and surveillance, for instance. But the figures show that AI isn’t transforming every industry. https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/612870/an-obsession-with-computer-vision-shows-the-lopsided-nature-of-the-ai-boom/