Stanford Publishes AI Index 2021 Annual Report Like by Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) has published its 2021 AI Index annual report. This underlying data for this year's report has been expanded compared to the previous year's, and the report includes several perspectives on the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on AI research and development. To improve the latest report, over the last year the Institute requested feedback from over 140 members of academia, government, and industry. In response, the new report contains more data and analysis on technical performance, diversity, and ethics. The final report contains seven chapters, and the report summary distills nine key takeaways. In particular, AI applications for molecular biology and drug discovery received the most private investment, in part due to the pandemic. The pandemic also caused many AI conferences to switch to a virtual format, resulting in an increased participation. However, the pandemic has not adversely affected AI investment and hiring, and an increased percentage of PhD graduates in AI fields took industry jobs this year compared to previous years.