News – Russian Government

Start selection The third wave of AI research centers will take place in the first quarter of 2025. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko spoke about this at the opening of Science Day as part of the international conference “Journey into the World of Artificial Intelligence” (AI Journey 2024). Together with the Deputy Prime Minister, the Scientific Day was opened by the Senior Vice President, Head of the Technological Development Block of Sberbank Andrey Belevtsev.

“At the end of this year, the three-year cycle of work of six research centers of the first wave will be completed. Therefore, in 2025, the next competitive selection of flagship research centers will take place. A key feature of the new centers will be a focus on the development of strong AI,” said Dmitry Chernyshenko.

The winner will be approved by the working group of the STR subcommittee. The main requirements for selection will be: the presence of practical groundwork, scientific results and industrial partners, the level of compliance of the scientific program with the tasks of creating strong AI, as well as compliance with 10 areas of foresight in AI science. For the first time, such a foresight took place in the spring of 2024; from 2025, on behalf of the head of state, an international foresight will be held annually.

The 10 areas of fundamental research include: “Architectures, machine learning algorithms, optimization and mathematics”, “Computing for AI”, “Data for AI”, “Fundamental and generative models”, “Security, trust and explainability”, “AI for narrow tasks”, “Management, decision making and agent/multi-agent systems”, “Elements of strong AI”, “Human-AI interaction”, “Socio-humanitarian and economic aspects.”

Dmitry Chernyshenko announced that at the beginning of next year a Strategic Agency for the Support and Formation of AI Developments will be launched in Russia on the basis of the Skolkovo Foundation. Short name – SAPPHIRE. Tatyana Soyuznova will become the head of the agency. It will also help in selecting the third wave of research centers in the field of AI.

During his speech, the Deputy Prime Minister presented an overview report on the development of artificial intelligence in the country. He said that on December 12, the first meeting of the International Alliance in the Field of Artificial Intelligence took place, the creation of which was announced on December 11 at the AI ​​Journey plenary discussion with the participation of President Vladimir Putin. 15 countries of the world have already joined this alliance.

Dmitry Chernyshenko added that the global race for leadership in artificial intelligence is intensifying. It’s hard to think of an industry where AI wouldn’t be applicable. He recalled the words of the President that Russia should become a world leader not only in the creation, but also in the scale of application of artificial intelligence in all spheres of life.

The National Strategy for the Development of Artificial Intelligence established performance indicators. The key indicator is GDP growth due to artificial intelligence by 11.2 trillion rubles by 2030. The contribution of artificial intelligence to the global economy could reach $15 trillion.

According to some estimates, the volume of the Russian market for LLM products for business at the end of this year will be 35 billion rubles. And in the next three years, this figure will grow at double-digit rates.

“In the near future, every Russian citizen should have his own “squad” of professional AI agents who increase the speed and efficiency of work and help in everyday affairs. This is possible, and there are two reasons. First: historically, Russia has one of the highest levels of education and awareness in the world about all the advantages and products that exist in the field of artificial intelligence. We are in the top 5 countries in terms of the share of citizens with higher education, and 84% of all respondents know about artificial intelligence and its capabilities. At the same time, every fourth person already uses generative artificial intelligence, and of these, every second person uses Russian solutions. The second reason is the state’s high readiness and commitment to the development of artificial intelligence,” added the Deputy Prime Minister.

As Andrey Belevtsev noted, the entire third day of AI Journey will be devoted to science. We will talk about how scientific research contributes to the emergence of strong artificial intelligence and how AI can help other areas of science develop faster, become more and more breakthrough and effective.

The Sberbank top manager emphasized that this year two Nobel Prizes – in physics and chemistry – were awarded for the development of artificial intelligence. Perhaps in the future there will be a separate Nobel Prize for work in the field of AI. This year, Sber opened a special center “AI for Science”, one of the tasks of which will be the development of technological platforms for researchers, where artificial intelligence will help do work in the field of chemistry, physics, biology and other sciences.

Andrey Belevtsev also noted that on the Scientific Day of the conference the results of a large competition in the field of artificial intelligence will be summed up and a prize will be awarded to young scientists and a prize for the best scientific article on AI.

“17 articles by scientists from Sberbank and the AIRI Institute were presented at the top NeurIPS conference, which is taking place right now. Many guys from Russia are participating in this conference, which indicates great global recognition and that everyone in the world wants to continue to cooperate in the field of artificial intelligence development,” emphasized Andrey Belevtsev.

In continuation, a session was held with research centers in the field of AI. Dmitry Chernyshenko also toured the exhibition of the international conference “Journey into the World of Artificial Intelligence”, including stands of such companies as Sberbank, Kaspersky Lab, T-Bank, Yandex.

The Deputy Prime Minister also spoke with young specialists. First-year students Maxim Mashtaler from MIPT and Mikhail Shperling from ITMO united 15 winners of artificial intelligence Olympiads into a team called RASCAR (Russian Association of Students: Competitions and Research). Currently, they are opening their own direction in the ITMO laboratory. The system of transcription and automatic recording of meetings developed by the students has already been tested “in action” by Dmitry Chernyshenko’s team to process the plenary session with the President, allowing them to quickly respond to key instructions from the head of state on the topic of science and personnel in the field of AI.