The Russian authorities have drastically reduced spending on the development of artificial intelligence (AI), and the assessment of the market itself has decreased by more than 10 times. This conclusion follows from the updated "road map" "Development of the high-tech direction "Artificial Intelligence" until 2030", which Kommersant managed to get acquainted with.
The document was approved by the Ministry of Economic Development in December 2022, and in January, relevant Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko signed agreements on the implementation of the road map with its direct executors, such as Sberbank, RDIF, the Skolkovo Fund – a total of 30 funds, universities and authorities. For seven years, the Russian authorities were ready to allocate only 24.6 billion rubles for the development of AI, although in the previous version of the program with a deadline in 2024, this amount was several times higher – 56.8 billion rubles.
Private financing has also been reduced: if earlier the authorities expected investments in the amount of 334 billion rubles by 2024, now only 111 billion in the period up to 2030. However, the assessment of the potential AI market in Russia suffered the most: in the 2019 concept, it was predicted that it would reach 160 billion by 2024, but in the new roadmap, its volume fell by more than 11 times, now it is only 14 billion rubles.
The authorities themselves explain the reduction in funding by focusing on the most demanded areas. Judging by the document, the authorities consider these to be: “natural language processing and speech synthesis”, “computer vision”, “promising methods of artificial intelligence” and “intellectual decision support”. Each direction will require research, registration of patents, investment in start-ups, the release of trial products, and then the start of production. We are talking about neural networks that, for example, can write texts, about creating computer vision systems for unmanned vehicles and other projects.
Sberbank will become the main investor in AI in Russia. German Gref's company has already promised to invest 99.7 billion rubles in the relevant developments, the rest of the money is ready to be provided by state institutions – the Ministry of Health, Moscow State University, the Ministry of Transport and others. However, even the truncated plans of the government will be extremely difficult to implement, experts say, since the main reason for the reduction in funding is not the lack of money, but the inability to obtain high-tech products for the development of such projects.
“We are talking, for example, about the Nvidia A100 and H100 integrated circuits and any future processors that can compare with the A100 in performance,” Vladimir Arlazarov, CEO of Smart Engines, told the publication.
According to him, the outflow of scientific personnel from the country against the backdrop of the war with Ukraine and the futility of working in Russia under severe Western restrictions will also affect the development. The combination of these factors will not allow us to achieve our goals in the near future, he is sure. Nevertheless, Sberbank does not see fundamental problems with the implementation of the tasks set; on the contrary, they see sanctions as an opportunity for “domestic solutions to enter the market”. At the same time, the bank claims that the sanctions will not be a serious hindrance to development, as the state bank has adapted to the new conditions.