Skolkovo Foundation chairman, Arkady Dvorkovich, opened Friday’s forum – part of the France-Russia Trianon Dialogue – which focused on the hot topic of AI-based technology solutions. The forum took place on February 26 and brought together the business communities, science and research institutes as well as other higher education institutions of both Russia and France.
The forum goal is to improve the ties between Russia and France in science and technology, with particular attention paid to the development AI technologies. Among the representatives on the French side were the rector of the University of Western Brittany Matthieu Gallou and Jean-Pierre Mascarelli, the former mayor of Bouyon and deputy chair of the Sophia Antipolis technology park.
The forum took place over the course of five sessions where participants discussed the adoption of AI-based technologies in industry, healthcare, environmental protection, transportation and energy. Among the participants were representatives from Russia’s Ministry for Economic Development, the French National Assembly, Sberbank, the CEO of the NTI center at Bauman Moscow State Technical University.
Chairman of the Skolkovo Foundation Arkady Dvorkovich. Screenshot: Sk.ru.
Chairman of the Skolkovo Foundation Arkady Dvorkovich opened the forum by highlighting the aims the bilateral cooperation intends to fulfil and some of the achievements attained by Russian companies over the last year.
“Our French colleagues have shared their opinions on artificial intelligence, and for us it is a priority topic as is the adoption of AI into social activities, government management, and of course the most important services: medicine, education, security, and so on,” said Mr. Dvorkovich. “Skolkovo deals with all issues built into government work, ministry work, and state initiative programs. We recently presented our best developments in the field of artificial intelligence that are aimed at achieving the Millennium Development Goals and the UN Sustainable Development Goals on a UN platform that was put in place by the International Telecommunication Union. Those developments are primarily connected to healthcare and medicine and were adopted during the pandemic for diagnosing illnesses such as lung cancer, covid-19, and other respiratory diseases. They are at the forefront globally and we hope for their widespread implementation; that is not to say that Russian developments are the best, but they are among the best in this field.”
Mr. Dvorkovich went on to outline some of Skolkovo’s key AI technologies that have been implemented over the last year, citing AI-based environmental technologies designed to forewarn on dangerous environmental events, particularly regarding ocean activity.
“There are also cybersecurity technologies that can differentiate between real people and deep fakes, protecting individuals from fraud and other threats from cyberspace. We are prepared to exchange and sell these technologies and support research aimed at a new generation of technological services. For us, the most important thing is ESG; that is environment, social and corporate governance. Today we are working on this together with Russian companies while adhering to the European agenda, and we believe that our companies can be among the leaders in implementing AI technologies. We would like the collaboration between our universities reach a new level, we have many partnership agreements and we need to decide where to direct our resources in the near future. For us, French universities are close colleagues and partners and we will soon be discussing what projects we can complete together.”