Translated material
The data of Russians will be given to the project of Gref, Sobyanin and the government
German Gref and Sergei Sobyanin will be responsible for the development of artificial intelligence in Russia, with the participation of the presidential administration. In Moscow, under their leadership, a special experimental site will appear with a special legal regime and access to a huge amount of data, writes . Kommersant
What's happened. Sberbank is becoming an analogue of Rosneft in the digital sector of the economy. In any case, this is how one can evaluate the idea of giving away the giant data array of Russians - “new oil” - to an experimental platform for projects in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), which is being created in Moscow with the participation of the state bank.
Why is it needed. Access to a high-quality structured array of source data, most of which falls into the category of personal data, is one of the most important barriers hindering the development of the AI market in Russia. The new platform will allow to “jump over” this barrier and introduce even potentially risky solutions, the expert of the publication says.
- Officials, giving data to access for five years, count on the outstripping growth of the Russian AI market (about 200 billion rubles in 2018, 900 billion rubles by 2024).
Members. The coordinating council of the site will include Presidential Aide Andrei Belousov , First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Sergei Kiriyenko , Deputy Prime Minister for Digital Economy Maxim Akimov , Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and Sberbank President German Gref .
- At this year's St. Petersburg Economic Forum, Gref, Sobyanin and Kiriyenko spoke at a panel session of the state bank dedicated to the development of artificial intelligence.
Privileges. Vladimir Putin, confident that a monopoly in AI means power over the world , instructed the government and Sberbank to create conditions in Moscow for the introduction of AI back in June.
- A special legal regime for the new site will be introduced by federal law. It will include preferential regulatory conditions for the entry of technologies into the market, a temporary procedure for bidding and access to an array of anonymized data. AI implementation areas are intelligent transportation system, city contact center speech recognition, medical diagnostics, security facial recognition, predictive service provisioning, and claims handling.
In the context. Sberbank and the government are preparing an AI development strategy: Vladimir Putin was reported on it at a large meeting in May. Private companies, including Yandex, should also join its implementation.
- By October, a separate federal program should appear for the development of AI. The cost of it should amount to 90 billion rubles (about $1.5 billion) over six years. We wrote about its target parameters here .
- This is extremely small compared to China and the United States. So, only the administrations of the cities of Tianjin and Shanghai announced the creation of investment funds for the development of AI at 100 billion yuan ($14.5 billion) each. The Trump administration has budgeted $4.9 billion for 2020 only in unclassified spending on AI and machine learning research. Private investment in the United States is many times greater than public investment.
What do I get from this?
The configuration of the AI platform with Gref, Sobyanin, the presidential administration and a special regime means that the internal Russian technological revolution has followed the model of curatorship of state corporations and the Kremlin. The main questions are what kind of data will be transferred to this tandem, how it will be used and protected. Opportunities are likely to arise for private businesses as well: free big data is almost free oil these days.