Artificial intelligence has declined – Newspaper Kommersant No. 8 (7453) dated 01/18/2023

Until 2030, the government will send about 24.6 billion rubles. for the development of artificial intelligence technologies in the Russian Federation, about another 100 billion rubles. Sberbank will invest in the direction, follows from the road map approved by the authorities. By 2024, according to the document, the volume of the AI-based technology market in Russia will amount to 14 billion rubles, which is more than ten times less than the estimates included in a similar program from 2019. But even the updated plans will be difficult to implement, experts say: high-performance foreign equipment is simply not enough for this.

“Kommersant” got acquainted with the “road map” “Development of the high-tech direction “Artificial Intelligence” (AI) for the period up to 2030″, which was approved by the Ministry of Economy at the end of December 2022. On January 16, relevant Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko signed an agreement with the parties who will be engaged in the implementation of projects within the framework of the road map. In the text of the latter, which is at the disposal of Kommersant, among the performers are named, in particular, Sberbank, RDIF, the Skolkovo Foundation – a total of 30 funds, universities and authorities.

The main goal of the roadmap is to “accelerate the process of large-scale implementation of domestic AI solutions in the economy and the social sphere,” explained Kommersant in Mr. Chernyshenko’s office. “After the imposition of sanctions, we identified AI products that need to be developed on the territory of Russia, worked out a number of measures to develop and scale them, and included all this in the updated roadmap,” the Ministry of Economy added.

At the same time, judging by the document, the government has significantly reduced the estimated amount of funding for the development and implementation of solutions in the field of AI.

Thus, the “road map” “Neurotechnologies and artificial intelligence”, approved in 2019 (publishedand on the website of the Ministry of Digital Development), assumed that 56.8 billion rubles would need to be allocated from the budget for the development of AI. until 2024. According to the new concept, only 24.6 billion rubles will be spent for these purposes, and then within seven years, until 2030.

The volume of expected extra-budgetary financing decreased even more dramatically – from 334 billion rubles. until 2024 up to 111 billion rubles. until 2030 already. In addition, if the concept from 2019 assumed that by 2024 the volume of the internal market of AI technologies will be 160 billion rubles, then in the new road map this figure has been reduced by more than an order of magnitude – to 14 billion rubles.

Judging by the document, the development of AI technologies in Russia will go in four directions: “natural language processing and speech synthesis”, “computer vision”, “promising methods of artificial intelligence” and “intelligent decision support”.

Each involves conducting research, registering patents, financing start-ups, as well as releasing first prototypes and then finished products: new neural networks capable of writing texts, computer vision systems for unmanned vehicles and other solutions. Sberbank will mainly be engaged in their creation: by 2030, it will invest 99.7 billion rubles in the development of AI solutions. own funds. In addition to the bank, state institutions will also develop software – the Ministry of Health, Moscow State University, the Ministry of Transport and others.

The government’s plans to adjust state projects related to the development of AI technologies “taking into account the agenda for countering sanctions” became known at the beginning of April 2022: Kommersant’s sources said that the adjustment was required, among other things, due to limited access to global infrastructure and advanced technologies (see “Kommersant” dated April 6).

Most of the executors of state projects for the development of AI are under sanctions, because of which they may experience difficulties with access to high-tech equipment necessary for the development of solutions, Vladimir Arlazarov, CEO of Smart Engines, agrees: “We are talking, for example, about Nvidia A100 and H100 integrated circuits and any future processors that can match the performance of the A100.” According to the expert, the outflow of scientific personnel from the country, including candidates and doctors of sciences, is also essential, which will also complicate the achievement of the set goals.

However, Sberbank, for example, insists that the company has “quickly and almost seamlessly” adapted to the new realities: “The departure of foreign companies from the Russian market has also opened a window of opportunity to create and promote their own solutions on the market.”

After submitting the note, Kommersant received a response to a request from the Ministry of Digital Development. The representative of the ministry said that from a technical point of view, the sanctions did not complicate the work of Russian companies with AI in any way, since most of these algorithms are public open source projects available for download and modification. “Some developers have difficulties associated with the blocking of their accounts and an ambiguous attitude towards Russian programmers in various specialized communities. But all these are local cases that did not affect the overall development of AI technologies in Russia, ”added the representative of the department.

Nikita Korolev