Vladimir Putin is poised to approve an ‘ambitious’ Russian strategy for the development of artificial intelligence (AI), warning that the monopoly of ‘alien’ systems is trying to cancel Russian culture.

The US and China are currently leading the way in the development of AI, including large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT which have the potential to transform industry and society.

Moscow has its own AI ambitions, but has seen a brain drain following its invasion of Ukraine as many specialists have left the country, while Western sanctions have throttled high-tech imports.

However, Mr Putin is aware there is no hiding from the march of AI progress.

‘You cannot ban something,’ he said. ‘If we ban it then it will develop somewhere else and we will fall behind.

‘Of course, the monopoly and domination of such systems, such alien systems is unacceptable and dangerous.’

Speaking alongside Sberbank CEO German Gref on Friday, Mr Putin said some Western online search engines and generative models ignored or even cancelled Russian language and culture. Such Western algorithms, he said, essentially thought Russia did not exist.

However, it is not just the US and China pouring resources into developing AI, with established and growing industries across Europe and Asia.

Mr Putin acknowledged this, making clear Russia needs to up its game on AI in both ambitions and action.

‘In the very near future, as one of the first steps, a presidential decree will be signed and a new version of the national strategy for the development of artificial intelligence will be approved,’ he said.

This will include ‘expanding fundamental and applied research in the field of generative artificial intelligence and large language models’.

He also said Russian researchers should be given better access to supercomputers, while top level Russian scientific education about AI needed to be improved.

Russia, he said, would have to change laws, boost international cooperation, and ensure much more investment for the development of AI.

Putin hailed two Russian companies, Sberbank and Yandex, for developing their own generative AI and language models – which he said needed to be developed further and applied to sectors of the economy.

Mr Gref is transforming Sberbank, once a Soviet savings bank where people queued for hours to pay bills, which now oversees investments in AI, cloud services, big data and smart devices. 

In June, Mr Gref told the president that Sberbank was making around $3 billion (£238 million) annually from $1 billion in AI investments.

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