Lookahead Analysis and Discussion of Research Hotspots in Artificial Intelligence from 2021 to 2023

In current era, marked by advancements and achievements made in digital and intelligent fields, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a pivotal engine driving technological innovation, which indicates encapsulating and examining the latest trends and future trajectories in AI research makes sense on the development of future AI research. This can be implemented by collecting the research outcomes during recent three years from top-tier international conferences and journals in the field of AI that are recommended by the China Computer Federation (CCF-A category), introducing keyword-centric analyses based on a bibliometric methodologies, and analyzing research hotspots based on high-frequency keywords, discerning emerging trends through newly-added keywords, identifying high-impact studies using citation-weighted keyword analysis. The result of these analyses, which contain significant information about trends in AI research, can enable the principal directions of AI research to be delineated and the interconnections and integrative fusion within mainstream AI research directions to be unveiled. Moreover, an in-depth exploration of the current hot topics, such as Large Language Models (LLMs), AI-riven scientific research (AI for Science) and visual generation technologies, would help us reveal the underlying scientific theories and application prospects behind these technological innovations, thereby the latest trends and future trajectories in AI field getting demonstrated more adequately and concretely.