MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Friday that the West should not be allowed to develop a monopoly in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and announced a much more ambitious Russian strategy for development of AI would be approved shortly.
China and the United States are at the forefront of the development of AI, which many researchers and world leaders believe will transform the world in ways comparable to the introduction of computers in the late 20th century.
Moscow wants to become a power in AI, but its efforts have been hampered by the consequences of the war in Ukraine, which led to sanctions from Western countries hindering imports of high-tech products, and caused numerous departures of researchers Russians.
Speaking at an AI conference in Moscow alongside German Gref, chief executive of Sberbank, Vladimir Putin said it was impossible to try to ban AI and warned it would be dangerous and unacceptable to allow Western platforms to obtain a monopoly on technology.
“In the very near future, one of the first steps will be to sign a presidential decree and approve a new version of the national strategy for developing artificial intelligence,” the Russian president said at the conference.
Vladimir Putin said the new strategy would bring big changes, including “the expansion of fundamental and applied research in the field of generative artificial intelligence and large language models.”
He added that Russia needs to make changes in legislation and investment to boost the development of AI.
(Report by Guy Faulconbridge, French version by Nathan Vifflin, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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