Putin bats for Russian AI, says Western search engines 'canceling' Russia culture

Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on Friday (Nov 24) that some Western search engines are "canceling" Russian culture and that Western countries should not be allowed to have monopoly in Artificial Intelligence (AI), saying that an ambitious Russia strategy to develop AI will soon be greenlit.

The US and China are current leaders in the field of AI development. Experts say that Artificial Intelligence has the potential to transform and revolutionise society much the same way computers did in late 20th century.

Russia harbours ambitions to develop AI too but it is currently engulfed in a war with Ukraine. The war has led to many scientists leaving Russia. After Russia invaded Ukraine, the Western sanctions have stifled sectors of Russian economy and hindered Moscow's high-tech imports.

Putin was speaking in an AI conference in Moscow with Sberbank CEO German Gref in attendance.

Putin said that banning AI was not a possible option, while flagging that the technology may have dangerous uses and it was unacceptable for Western platforms to have a monopoly in this field.

"In the very near future, as one of the first steps, a presidential decree will be signed and a new version of the national strategy for the development of artificial intelligence will be approved," Putin told the conference.

Speaking about the new strategy, Putin said it would lead to major changes which will include expanding fundamental and applied research in the field of generative artificial intelligence and large language models."

During his speech, Putin underlined the need to give Russian researchers better access to supercomputers which themselves needed a boost by orders of magnitude. He also said that top-level Russian scientific education with respect to Artificial Intelligence must be improved.

(With inputs from agencies)