Alexander Lewis
Nov 26, 2023
President Vladimir Putin expressed dissent over the Western monopoly gaining ground in the realm of artificial intelligence (AI), saying that a much more ambitious Russian strategy for the development of AI would be approved shortly.
"You cannot ban something - if we ban it then it will develop somewhere else and we will fall behind," Putin remarked on the development of AI, adding that Russia needed to up its AI game.
While saying that some Western online search systems and generative models ignored Russian language and culture, he added such Western algorithms essentially ignored the existence of Russia.
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"Of course, the monopoly and domination of such systems, such alien systems, is unacceptable and dangerous," he added.
The Russian president said, "In the very near future, as one of the first steps, a presidential decree will be signed and a new version of the national strategy for the development of artificial intelligence will be approved," according to Reuters.
He maintained the new strategy would make significant changes, including "expanding fundamental and applied research in the field of generative artificial intelligence and large language models."
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He demanded that Russian researchers be given better access to supercomputers and that top-level, AI-centric scientific education be improved.
Russia would have to change laws, enhance international cooperation, and ensure much more investment for the purpose, he added.
In terms of AI research China and the United States are far ahead of other countries, according to most rankings, though a second tier of European countries as well as India, Russia, Israel, South Korea and Japan also appear at the top of ranking.
For Russia, however, the war in Ukraine and the mobilisation of rival parties led to a massive number of educated Russians fleeing away while Western sanctions have dismissed the collaboration of international elements to be a part of the Western AI powerhouses.
Putin appreciated Sberbank — a Russian state-owned banking and financial services company — and Yandex — a search engine and web portal — for developing their own generative AI and language models which he said needed to be developed further.
