On June 17, Skoltech president Alexander Kuleshov took part in the session “Artificial Intelligence: Human Resources, Technologies, and Prospects” within the business program of the 25th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). The participants discussed the advancement of AI, new niches for implementing Russian research, support for the IT industry by the state, securing the best talent and creating a supportive working environment.
“Doing research, we sometimes start by obtaining experimental data and then come up with a theory that explains what we’ve got. The same is true for AI, which has long remained a magic blackbox that helped achieve different degrees of improvement in the final product. Now that the magic has faded, AI is turning into an exact science,” Kuleshov said while discussing the prospects of AI.
He stressed that with AI becoming a fixture, Skoltech is giving priority to the combination of AI, 5G and MEC (Multi-access Edge Computing) that has already been implemented in Skoltech’s 5G pilot zone. Russia’s first MEC testing platform has been deployed at Skoltech. According to Kuleshov, there is not a single knowledge domain where AI would not be capable of producing an impressive result.
The participants also discussed how to make up for personnel shortage and provide the development segment with top-notch professionals. “This is certainly a thorny issue. Every year, we turn out about 140 to 150 well-trained AI professionals who easily land jobs in Western companies and are paid a lot more than IT professionals in Russia with their handsome salaries. We at Skoltech believe that young people should be given a chance to look ahead and move their projects forward. This is the only way to stop them from leaving Russia,” Kuleshov says.
He noted that the global A* conferences regularly feature papers by only 20 Russian researchers, and those are the people who should teach students. “We should try and bring scholars of such caliber to Russia. This is hard but not impossible,” Skoltech president concludes.
At the “New Growth” session moderated by VEB.RF chairman Igor Shuvalov, Kuleshov commented on the opportunities for developing Russian technologies and taking them to the international market under the current circumstances:
“I remain reasonably optimistic, and I have a sense that we should set goals in a proper way. One of them is import substitution measured in per cent. For instance, I make 99% of the product and buy the other 1%. Does the percentage actually make a difference if I fail to come up with a product at the end? The problem here is that the goal is defined using the wrong criteria. Why not figure out instead how many parts of the overall process flow we can manage on our own and how many depend on imports? And in this sense, it is very important to identify those import-dependent components and fill the gaps ourselves. This should be our focus,” Kuleshov said.
Skoltech president believes that rather than trying to catch up on the big lag in industries, such as microelectronics, Russia should do exactly the opposite: “Trying to make every piece of microelectronics ourselves is overambitious and makes no sense. Right now, we need base stations. A base station, even one made from imported parts only, has two or three critical elements that we cannot buy from “friendly” countries, so they are the ones to be produced as the first priority. This means that we should first identify the critical requirements and then try to fill the gaps locally.”
Igor Shuvalov, for his part, said that Skoltech boasts world-class laboratories that offer technologies and patents for industrial production and deliver solutions to major corporate giants worldwide. The chairman of VEB.RF asked the president of Skoltech about the prospects for technology development. In response, Kuleshov expressed the hope that the current situation will change the national governance paradigm as regards technological sovereignty. “We should not try to produce everything on our own − this is impossible. What we need is identify the most pressing needs,” Kuleshov said.
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