Russia Plans AI Strategy to Challenge West

Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to establish a national AI strategy. He added that it will contest what he described as the Western domination of technology, a landscape that has led to biased models.

Putin made the remarks at an AI conference, revealing a revamped Russian AI framework will soon be approved and that it will have significant changes to rival what the president claimed as a dangerous and unacceptable AI monopoly by Western countries. Putin pointed to a plan to expand fundamental and applied research in the field of generative AI and large language models as he urged the state to make legislative and investment changes to boost the technology’s development.

Meanwhile, the newspaper Barron’s reported Putin also hit out at search engines and tech platforms developed by the West, stating they often work in a very selective, biased way trained on Western data for the Western market, which he believes has led to the exclusion of Russian culture online. The president also called for Russia to be ahead of the curve. Outlets stated that Moscow’s AI ambitions had been set back by the Ukraine war which led to top researchers and technologists fleeing the country, and by sanctions that block Russia’s access to advanced computer parts.