Dmitry Chernyshenko: artificial intelligence will become the main driver of our country's technological independence

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Russia is among the top 10 leading countries in terms of total computing power, and the overall level of implementation of artificial intelligence in priority areas of the economy amounted to 31.5%. Such figures were announced at the plenary session "Artificial Intelligence — the Main Technology of the XXI Century" held at the RUSSIA EXPO.

The moderator of the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Chernyshenko, spoke about why the introduction of AI is of special importance for the development of science, economy and industry of the country.

"We see that artificial intelligence is becoming a key technology, the increase in efficiency in all spheres of life is inextricably linked to its development. Thanks to AI, the transition from an economy of deficiency to an economy of abundance is becoming possible. In conjunction with other technologies, AI is able to reduce the cost of many goods, cutting the cost of their production," emphasized Dmitry Chernyshenko.

It is no coincidence that comprehensive support of AI development has been in the center of attention of the top officials of the Russian authorities. Last year, President Vladimir Putin gave a number of instructions concerning the need to intensify the introduction of generative artificial intelligence technologies. Today, this work is yielding significant results: for example, already one third of Russian companies use AI to perform work tasks. At the same time, in the current conditions, the development of AI is of fundamental importance for Russia in the context of strengthening economic sovereignty.

"In the President's opinion, which he expressed at the AI Journey 2023 forum, AI technologies are particularly important because they open up the possibility of increasing efficiency in all spheres, because AI is an end-to-end technology. We are betting on AI as the main driver of technological independence in the next few years, as this is also a direct instruction from the President," said Dmitry Chernyshenko.

Maxim Reshetnikov, the head of the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia, noted that the shortage of personnel, competition for them, wage growth are among the key challenges in the economy in the near future. They can be solved by artificial intelligence, which by optimizing processes, reducing costs and improving product quality allows to influence labour productivity. To establish the AI industry as a whole, the Government has formed the national AI development strategy until 2030.

"The main thing now is to maintain the trend for implementation, to ensure mass use and replication of the technology in industries. Due to the scale, this is the task of the entire Government. System-wide measures to remove regulatory restrictions, use experimental legal regimes, and build up the talent pool will help to support work with AI among businesses that use the technology," Maxim Reshetnikov emphasized.

According to him, it is necessary to create incentives for those who have not yet implemented AI, to develop the market of solutions for them. At the same time it is important to develop fundamental science, Maxim Reshetnikov believes: methods of calculations for neural networks, new ways of model formation, optimization of calculations.

"We will form scientific schools, allocate additional funding and open new research centers, attract business to this, increase computing power so that future top specialists will have plenty to work with," the Minister emphasized.

According to the national AI development strategy, by 2030, the introduction of AI will increase GDP by 11.2 trillion rubles, and business and government investment in AI will increase from 120 to 850 billion rubles per year. At the same time, up to 95% of priority industries will actively implement AI.

In his turn, Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation Maksut Shadaev spoke about the areas of artificial intelligence that are already at a sufficient level of maturity. According to him, these include safe city, healthcare, geodata analysis, among others.

"A big area is healthcare. 2/3 of regions are actively implementing medical image recognition technologies. More than half of call centers use voice robots, voice recognition. They answer questions, make an appointment with a doctor, in MFC. Huge work is being done to introduce AI technology to analyze geodata. These are remote sensing images, aerial photography materials that allow us to look at places of illegal deforestation, to track potential technological and environmental problems," said Maksut Shadaev.

He also noted the great potential of using AI in the sphere of public services.

"Our goal is that a person would basically forget about applications, regulations, forms. So that they would say what they need to a robot, speaker or in a messenger, answer questions, and the application would be formed and sent," the Minister emphasized.