The United States has been named as the country best prepared to realise the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) in its delivery of public services.
It comes out on top of the 2020 Government AI Readiness Index compiled by the United Kingdom-based Oxford Insights consultancy and Canada’s International Development Research Centre.
Meanwhile Singapore, which led the 2019 list, has fallen to sixth place.
The Index examines how well placed nations are to take advantage of the benefits of AI in their internal operations and the delivery of public services.
This year, 172 countries were reviewed.
The ranking measures AI readiness across three criteria: Government willingness to adopt AI, and the ability to adapt and innovate to do so; availability of AI expertise and tools from the technology sector, and capabilities in building AI tools.
The five leading nations — the US, UK, Finland, Germany and Sweden — scored highly in all categories. However, the report found that some of the world’s most AI-ready countries, including the US, UK, Singapore and Russia, performed badly when prioritising and practicing the responsible use of AI.
The Responsible Use Sub-Index measures nine indicators across four criteria drawn from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Principles on Artificial Intelligence — inclusivity, accountability, transparency and privacy.
On this measure, the top five nations are Estonia, Norway, Luxembourg, Finland and Sweden. The US is in 24th place and the UK in 22 nd.
Chief Executive of Oxford Insights, Richard Stirling said that taking a lead from countries in the Baltic-Nordic region, there must be a greater focus on data representativeness and protection.
“There must be privacy legislation and national ethics frameworks to protect citizens’ rights and prevent unfair and discriminatory outcomes for certain groups in society,” Mr Stirling said.
“AI is transforming the way in which countries are governed so it will become increasingly important that Governments, while capitalising on AI’s potential, also have protocols and regulations in place to ensure implementation is ethical, transparent and inclusive,” he said.
London, 3 October 2020
