At the public debate on the Proposal of the Strategy for the Development of Artificial Intelligence in the Republic of Serbia for the period 2024-2030 held in the National Assembly House Brnabic stressed that this document is important for every aspect of society, not just the economy, but for education, energy, environmental protection, medicine as well, because artificial intelligence is a key topic in today’s world.

She reminded the attending that Serbia was the first country in Eastern Europe to in 2019 adopt the first artificial intelligence development strategy by 2025 and thanked everyone who had worked on it.

She stressed that based on this strategy a series of activities was conducted for different institutions, thanks to which Serbia became a member of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence as one of only 29 countries of the world.

“Serbia was recently given the honour to chair the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence in the next three years and later this year, in December, the Serbian Government will organise, and I think Prime Minister Milos Vucevic will head the organisation board, the World Conference on Artificial Intelligence under the auspices of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence. Serbia will then certainly be the centre of the world as regards this exceptionally important topic”, she said.

Brnabic reminded the attending that based on the previous strategy, the Artificial Intelligence Institute was founded in 2021 based in Novi Sad.

“Serbia also got its first national AI platform i.e. supercomputer. The access to and the use of said supercomputer has been given completely free of charge to universities, scientific institutes and domestic start-ups in science and technology parks. So far, 35 institutions and 33 start-ups have access to the AI platform. Since the supercomputer is used almost completely, in full capacity, it was decided to invest additional five million euros to enhance and increase its capacity, as well as a new supercomputer”, she said.

Brnabic added that we are one of the 11 countries in the world, according to UNESCO research, which have included the topic of artificial intelligence, learning about artificial intelligence, in their compulsory educational program in primary and secondary schools.

As she said, seven new master's programmes in the field of artificial intelligence were introduced at six faculties within four universities. Brnabic said that it was estimated that artificial intelligence will affect about 40% of jobs in the coming period. She pointed out that it is important to talk about this topic and that it is necessary to additionally apply ethical principles in the use of artificial intelligence in our society.

"Also, how to expand the application of artificial intelligence in order to improve the efficiency of our economy, and how to, for example, in medicine enable faster examinations, preventive examinations, better healthcare for all our citizens, help and support for our doctors, nurses and technicians, the entire health sector in general. Of course, also how to use all that artificial intelligence mechanisms offer in some other important segments, such as agriculture, mining, energy," explained Brnabic.

 

Source: TANJUG