- Russia is establishing a national artificial intelligence task force to ensure technological and national sovereignty
- President Putin emphasizes that only artificial intelligence developed by Russia will serve national security
- Sberbank and Yandex are developing local LLMs such as Gigachat and Yandex GPT
President Vladimir Putin has confirmed that Russia will establish a national task force to coordinate the development and deployment of domestically produced artificial intelligence.
The initiative aims to strengthen Russia’s technological sovereignty and reduce its dependence on foreign systems, while other countries promote the development of artificial intelligence.
The task force will focus on building new data centers and ensuring reliable energy sources, including small nuclear power plants, to maintain the AI infrastructure.
Putin is at the center of everything
Putin said AI-based technology is expected to contribute more than 11 trillion rubles to the country’s gross domestic product by 2030.
He called for a national AI implementation plan in collaboration with the task force and urged government agencies and private companies to further integrate AI into their operations.
“For Russia, this is national, technological and value-based sovereignty. Therefore, our country must have a complete package of its own technologies and products in the field of generative artificial intelligence,” Putin said during the AI trip, an artificial intelligence event in the country.
Although they are far behind the US and China, some Russian companies say they have developed multilingual models through Sberbank and Yandex, including Gigachat and Yandex GPT.
Sberbank in particular claims to have transformed itself from a traditional bank into a technology-driven company, showcasing everything from humanoid robots to health scanner machines at the event.
Emphasizing that dependence on foreign LLMs is unacceptable, Putin said that only Russian-developed artificial intelligence systems should be used for national security and intelligence gathering.
Russian authorities are reportedly working on autonomous drones that can operate in swarms and attack targets up to 100 kilometers away.
Ukrainian drone experts have stressed that these advances could transform military operations, including through artificial intelligence-based targeting and coordination.
Putin also said that excessive regulation should not hinder progress in artificial intelligence and that military or civilian applications should be developed within a national framework.
Western sanctions limiting imports of hardware, including microchips, have limited Russia’s ability to expand its computing capacity and develop large-scale artificial intelligence tools.
The national task force aims to alleviate these problems by focusing on domestic production of necessary components and ensuring energy supply.
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