The Global AI Company Rally is Continuing: +30,02% in Q1/2019. What’s Next in AI?

London, United Kingdom, May 11, 2019 –(PR.com)– The AI-42 INDEX™ grew +30,02% this year.

The rise of AI companies globally is continuing, with the AI-42 INDEX™ Q1/2019 closing at 10.677,55 points, an increase of 2.465,24 points (+30,02%) since the beginning of this year. The index, which is expressing the global growth of the 42 top public companies in the field of Artificial Intelligence, grew +127,53% since January 3rd 2017.

Cyber-Security, one of the strongest segments
The cyber-security sector continues to lead the most promising growth class. More and more devices are being connected with each other due to the trend of IoT (“Internet of Things”), it is becoming more and more challenging to provide the necessary security systems, especially for private individuals. The race against cyber threads is fuelled by upcoming new technologies, especially with Quantum computing coming soon.

Is China becoming the AI Superpower?
China is continuing to put massive efforts into becoming their self-declared goal of being the “AI Superpower.” The AI-42 expert team visited some of the most promising AI companies in China to get more insights into the status quo. One of the biggest advantages of China is the availability of data. With almost no privacy restrictions in place, the local AI companies are able to obtain millions of visual datasets, collected from CCTV systems all around the cities. This allows them to create unparalleled computer vision related machine learning applications like facial and emotion recognition.

“China’s AI presence in Western media is generating both alarm and acquiescence. The danger is that this can lead us to over and/or underestimate what is happening on the ground across China. Sticking to the facts, it was only in May 2017 when China’s Ministry of Science and Technology announced its decision to add AI 2.0 to the line-up of the planned Science and Technology Innovation 2030 Megaprojects. The overall initiative was launched as part of the 13th Five-Year National Science and Technology Innovation Plan, including (amongst others) robotics, big data and intelligent manufacturing,” says Mike Halsall, Expert Member of the Advisory Board of 42.

The Rise of the Digital Twin
Another trend, the notion of a Digital Twin, is now being widely adopted. It is rapidly becoming the technology of choice for virtualizing the physical and digital worlds. Similar to the evolution of AI, the notion of Digital Twin began around 60 years ago, in the pioneering era of the space exploration. At that time, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was grappling with the challenge of designing objects that could travel so far away they would be beyond the human ability to see, monitor or modify them directly. NASA’s innovation was the “digital twin” of a physical system – a comprehensive digital double which people could use to operate, simulate and analyse an underlying system led by physics.

“Digital Twins strengthen the ‘human front-end’ of all we do, making it more dynamic, faster learning, and also highly interactive. Furthermore, they offer excellent opportunities to investigate the unexpected and discover the very best solutions – true to the motto. It is not the technology that changes the world but the way people use it,” explains Jivka Ovtcharova, Expert Member of the Advisory Board of 42.

As simulations of – especially – real live environments is an extremely complex task, AI is empowering this trend.