Silicon Valley startups are notorious for the demands they place on early employees—and the more successful they are, the more demanding they can be. For the past three years, Stanford HAI has been an academic startup. We have accomplished a lot since our launch, and we are deeply grateful to our hardworking staff, faculty leaders, and generous donors for getting us where we are today.

In three years, HAI has established itself not only as a leading presence at Stanford, but as one of the leading centers for AI in the world. We’ve earned a reputation as a catalyst for innovative cross-disciplinary research and have developed a dynamic ecosystem for the study and advocacy of a distinctively human-centered approach to AI.

As we reflect on the past academic year, we’re excited to see the Stanford campus active again with faculty, staff and students back in person. We’ve settled into a new home on the ground floor of the Gates Computer Science Building, where we can host groups of people from across the campus and beyond.

Our foundational programs in research, education and policy are all thriving in the wake of an extremely productive year. Among the highlights from the 2021-2022 academic year:

• In Research: We’ve strengthened our Stanford scholar community through more than 20 in-person and hybrid format workshops, meetings and collaborations, while also collaborating with external organizations including the IEEE on its Planet Positive 2030 campaign.
• In Education: More than 7,000 individuals took part in our educational programs, and we helped to organize the largest AI+Health conference in Stanford’s history.
• In Policy: We engaged with more than 30 U.S. federal agencies, congressional offices, foreign government representatives and delegations this past academic year, which deepened HAI’s relationships with policymakers and accelerated their understanding about the impact of AI.

We sincerely appreciate the support and engagement of our advisors, affiliates, scholars and students–at Stanford as well as other universities and organizations worldwide–in helping us achieve these goals.

In the broader world of AI, 2021-2022 has been an extraordinary year, one that has convinced even the most diehard skeptics of the importance of AI technology. Gone are any worries about a coming “AI winter” or the sudden deflation of a hype-fueled bubble. It is impossible to ignore such developments as DeepMind’s near complete solution of the protein-folding problem, or the steady release of new foundation models for generating text, images and even computer code.

These developments are being addressed, from very different perspectives, by our Center for Research on Foundation Models and our Digital Economy Lab, the former focusing on expanding research, resources and community around emerging AI technology, while the latter assesses its impact on the economy and the future of work.

The breathtaking pace of AI technology only magnifies the importance of an institute devoted to a thoroughly human-centered perspective on this rapidly evolving technology. It is undeniable that AI holds extraordinary promise for improving the human condition, but only if we can successfully guide its future in a responsible direction.

Thank you for being with us on this most important journey.