President and Chairman of the Management Board of Sberbank German Gref spoke at a meeting of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of Russia.
The speech took place on Cosmonautics Day, and the head of the Beac stressed that now the world is gaining space momentum: the speed of technological progress continues to grow.
In his report, he presented the main technologies that determine the development of mankind. These are artificial intelligence, blockchain, the new Internet (Web 3.0), high-speed Internet (5G/6G), cloud computing, quantum technologies and robotics.
As noted by German Gref, the main of the above technologies is artificial intelligence, which is now available to every company and, moreover, to every person. If a couple of years ago it was thought that AI would replace only routine, easily algorithmizable professions, now neural networks have learned to solve much more complex tasks of highly qualified specialists — in particular, they already know how to write code.
Without AI, it is impossible to do science these days: for example, artificial intelligence has already deciphered all the proteins in the world in just a year. The new generative ChatGPT 4 network is already showing the beginnings of a strong AI, and neural networks are gradually acquiring all forms of perception that people have (text, code, image, sound, and so on).
Neural networks are reaching an expert level of knowledge, and one of the leaders in the field of image generation has become the Kandinsky 2.1 neural network, which gained one million unique users in just four days. Moreover, the model learns to generate not only images, but also videos, which is much more difficult.
"Already now we see great opportunities for the use of artificial intelligence in various sectors of the Russian economy, including medicine, ecology, education. Our projects in these areas are already being implemented in more than ten regions of Russia. We see that the use of artificial intelligence can bring one or two percentage points to economic growth in our country," said German Gref.
Two main questions arise in the discussion around general artificial intelligence, said German Gref. First: when will he appear? If earlier technosceptics believed that this would happen at the end of the XXI century, and techno—optimists - that in the 40-50s, now everyone understands that this will happen much earlier. The second question is: does AI bring good or danger? There are different points of view on this, but the development of increasingly powerful AI systems does not stop for a minute.
"Today, AI is actively used by children and adolescents, including for solving educational tasks. We need to invest a lot in understanding how we can live with the new technology stack. We need to teach children three things. First: every child should know how AI works. Second: he must understand the difference between AI and human. And the third: he must know how to work with AI in order to enhance his own capabilities.
And our future depends on how we answer the following questions: what kind of future do we hope for? what kind of automation do we want to have? what new professions will replace the old ones? what do we need to teach our children to adapt them to this future? and what does it mean to remain human in the era of AI?"— summed up Herman Gref.
Along with the closed nuclear club, a closed club of the largest powers in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) may appear in the world, Gref warned during a speech at the Federation Council.
Gref noted that we are talking about creating such complex systems as neural networks. "I think we need to make every effort to be members of this club, to be donors, not recipients of these technologies," he said.
The head of Sberbank called for the development of AI technology. According to him, in the future it may significantly affect the growth of the Russian economy in several years. Gref also admitted that he does not believe in the possible destruction of human AI, but urged to monitor security while working in this area.
Earlier, Microsoft founder Bill Gates opposed the introduction of a ban on AI systems training. He pointed out that such systems have serious advantages, but it is important to identify the risks of developing this area.
In March, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, billionaire Elon Musk and over a thousand experts in the field of AI and high technology signed a letter calling for the training of neural networks to be put on pause . The authors of the letter pointed out that the further development of AI could pose a danger to humanity.
