Catch up with China and the USA: Putin will approve the state program for the development of artificial intelligence

Sberbank introduced to Vladimir Putin a strategy for the development of artificial intelligence in Russia. RDIP is ready to spend $ 2 billion on it

Russia wants to become a full -fledged participant in the world's leading race in the field of artificial intelligence. Today, Vladimir Putin will discuss the AI ​​development strategy prepared by Sberbank in Russia, and the RDI is already ready to invest $ 2 billion in projects in this area. Since 2017, China has successfully implemented the same strategy, and in early 2019 it began to develop it.

• The purpose of the strategy, whose projects were familiarized with “Vedomosti”, “The Formation of Russia as one of the world leaders of artificial intelligence”. Most of the proposals are common points for such a document: financial and tax benefits for specialized companies, assistance to research and educational centers, the creation of special mechanisms of public-private partnerships.
• An important point: the strategy offers to provide business access to large data arrays collected by state bodies and budget organizations, for example, to depersonalized medical data. The strategy is not said about this, but the national data management system in which information about citizens from all state information systems will probably be able to help in this. Yesterday, her concept approved the government; The tests will begin in 2019, and the system should fully earn in 2022.
• The projects list the strengths of the development of AI in Russia-a high level of physical and mathematical training, high penetration of smartphones, the availability of the Internet and the distribution of 4G, the dominance of domestic companies in the Russian market and world leadership in individual areas-for example, in computer vision. The main problems are the lack of demand for AI in real business (“improving the efficiency of products and services”), the outflow of specialists to other countries and sanctions that may prevent access to technologies.
• How much money will be needed for the implementation of the strategy, in the projects that were at Vedomosti, it is not said. But the Russian direct investment fund (RDIP) is ready to invest $ 2 billion in AI projects, it says in its proposals - although there will be problems with demand: there are simply no projects in the field of artificial intelligence in Russia, experts say. So far, the Fund approved the investment only in Visionlab, which is engaged in the recognition of persons, this industry in Russia, according to CB Insights, is higher than the rest in terms of elaboration and market demand.
• The main example of a large -scale program of state support for the development of artificial intelligence is China: back in 2017, the government of the country adopted a development plan for AI, which suggests that China will become a world leader by 2030. The plan involves multi -billion dollar state investments and already gives the first fruits - in 2019, Chinese scientists will publish more cited articles on AI than American ones. The United States is preparing its answer. In February 2019, Donald Trump signed a decree on the development of his own development program. The United States has good chances - American companies occupy 4 out of the first 5 lines in the ranking of patents on artificial intelligence technology. Other Western countries are not far behind: last week, participants in the organization of economic cooperation and development signed an agreement on joint policy and development of AI.

What am I to me?

Russia has no prerequisites to catch up with China and the USA, but for a business working with artificial intelligence, this is an opportunity, especially since at the current stage of development the state is the main buyer of decisions with AI around the world, and not only in Russia.