Russia's Putin calls for national AI task force

By Gleb Bryanski

MOSCOW (Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday called for a national task force to coordinate Russia's work on homegrown generative artificial intelligence models, which he said were vital to preserving Russian sovereignty.

Putin said large-language models have become a major instrument in spreading information and are capable of influencing the views of entire nations. He added that dependency on LLMs designed in other countries was not acceptable for Russia.

"For Russia, it is a matter of national, technological and value-based sovereignty. Therefore, our country must possess a comprehensive set of its own technologies and products in the field of generative AI," Putin said at AI Journey, Russia's flagship AI event.

Putin said the task force should focus on developing data centres across the country and ensuring nearby energy sources such as small-scale nuclear power stations.

While Russia lags the United States and China in AI, two large-language models, Gigachat and Yandex GPT, have been developed by the country's main AI-focused companies, Sberbank and Yandex.

Sberbank, which grew from a traditional bank into a technology company, announced a new version of Gigachat on Wednesday and presented AI-powered products, from humanoid robots to health-scanning ATMs, to Putin.

Putin said that AI-powered technologies' contributions to Russia's gross domestic product should exceed 11 trillion roubles ($136.57 billion) by 2030. He called for development of a national AI implementation plan in addition to a task force and urged state institutions and companies to make increasing use of AI.

By blocking hardware imports including of microchips, Western sanctions have been an obstacle to Russian efforts to expand computing capacity and develop AI.

Putin warned against excessive regulation of AI but said only Russian models should be used for national security and intelligence gathering to ensure data does not leave the country.

($1 = 80.5455 roubles)

(Writing by Gleb Bryanski; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)