Israel dropped from 5th place to 7th place in the global artificial intelligence ranking

Israel dropped from 5th place to 7th place in the global artificial intelligence ranking published by Tortoise Media, after Singapore and South Korea overtook it. Although even after the drop, Israel is still in a very high place in the world ranking, but the drop reinforces the fears that the lack of government investment in infrastructure and academic research may cause Israel to lose its lead - and open a gap with other countries in the field of artificial intelligence.
Tortoise Media's AI Index report presents a ranking that represents the 62 countries leading the global artificial intelligence race. It combines a long list of indicators and parameters such as talent, infrastructure, operating environment, research, development, government strategy and commerce. The ranking is used many times Official bodies in Israel, including the Innovation Authority, to check Israel's situation in the field.
The fourth update of the ranking was published today, after the last one was published in 2021. The USA remained at the top of the ranking (by a large margin), followed by China. Singapore took third place, jumping from 10th place in three years. "Singapore has made huge investments in the fields of innovation, research and human capital, through an explicit government effort aimed at boosting the field of artificial intelligence." The authors of the report write.
In fourth place is Great Britain, followed by Canada and then South Korea - and Israel in seventh place. For comparison, in 2019 Israel was ranked 12th, rose to fifth place in 2020 and 2021, and is now falling again. Among the reasons for the decline, we noted Israel's deterioration in the indices of talents (talent), meaning the availability of skilled professionals in the field of AI; Acadamic research; As well as another decrease in the index in which Israel is the weakest in the world and is a government strategy, which represents the depth of the state's commitment to the field, in terms of investment and national strategy. However, Israel ranks second in the world in terms of "density" - the capabilities of artificial intelligence in relation to the size of the population.
All this is not very surprising. As we published last week, although there is a national program for artificial intelligence in Israel, experts warn that its mandate is too limited, its progress is too slow, the budget is much smaller than what is required, and parts of it quickly lose relevance. In addition, the academy warns that academic research in the field of artificial intelligence is indeed leading, but is very small quantitatively, and not enough has been done to train workers and researchers at a sufficient level.