Report: US AI development is concentrated in 15 metro areas

Last week, the Brookings Institution published an examination of the "extent, location, and concentration" of AI activity in 400 US metro areas, hailing it as the "next great'general purpose technology,'" with the power to spur economic growth. Key takeaways: Although it already feels like AI is everywhere, the tech is still in its early days--and in the US, AI development and commercialization is mega-concentrated in a handful of mostly coastal locales. But, but, but: Brookings also identified 13 other metro areas with "above-average involvement" in AI, including hubs you may have seen coming--New York, Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., San Diego, Austin, Texas, and Raleigh, North Carolina--as well as smaller metro areas like Boulder, Colorado, Lincoln, Nebraska, Santa Cruz, California, Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, California, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Zoom out: The above 15 metro areas account for two-thirds of AI activity nationwide--and for that matter, more than 50% of the areas Brookings looked at make up just 5% of AI activity, Wired reported.