AI Watch. Defining Artificial Intelligence 2.0. Towards an operational definition and taxonomy of AI for the AI landscape

We present here the second edition of our research aimed at establishing an operational definition of artificial intelligence (AI), to which we refer to in the activities of AI Watch. This edition builds on the first report, published in February 2020, and complements it with several recent developments. Since then, the European Commission has proposed a regulatory framework on artificial intelligence (AI Act) that establishes a legal definition of AI, which we incorporate in the current review. In addition to this legal definition, an operational definition is still needed to better delineate the boundaries and analysis of the AI Watch AI landscape. The proposed AI Watch operational definition consists of an iterative method providing a concise taxonomy and list of keywords that characterise the core domains of the AI research field, complemented by transversal topics such as AI applications or ethical and philosophical considerations - in line with the wider monitoring objective of AI Watch. The AI taxonomy is designed to inform the AI Watch AI landscape analysis and is also expected to cover applications of AI in closely related technological domains, such as robotics (in a broader sense), neuroscience or internet of things. The literature considered for the qualitative analysis of existing definitions and taxonomies has been enlarged to include recently published reports from the three complementary perspectives considered in this work: policy, research and industry. Therefore, the collection of definitions published between 1955 and 2021 and the summary of the main features of the concept of AI appearing in the relevant literature is another valuable output of this work. Finally, alternative approaches to study AI are also briefly presented in this new edition of the report. These include the classification of AI according to: families of algorithms and the theoretical models behind them; cognitive abilities reproduced by AI; functions performed by AI. Applications of AI may be grouped also according to other dimensions, like the economic sector in which such applications are found, or their business functions. These approaches, complementary to the taxonomy used for the analysis of the AI Watch international landscape, are useful to gain a wider understanding of the AI domain, and suitable to be used in studies related to these dimensions.