Official website of the President of Russia

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Prior to the plenary session, Vladimir Putin toured an exhibition of Russian companies’ achievements in artificial intelligence. The display featured a range of innovations, including the first Russian anthropomorphic robot developed by Sberbank, a suite of intelligent assistants based on the GigaChat large language model, and the Alice AI generative model from Yandex.

The President was also briefed on the application of artificial intelligence across various sectors, such as industry, sports, and healthcare, including the AI-assisted development of pharmaceutical drugs.

During his tour of the exhibition, Vladimir Putin was accompanied by Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Maxim Oreshkin, Minister of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media Maksut Shadayev, and President and Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank German Gref.

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The 10^th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence Journey 2025

Chairman of the Management Board and CEO of Sberbank German Gref: Mr President, this year marks the tenth anniversary of the AI Journey conference. I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for regularly participating in it and supporting the advanced technology and the high-tech sector in our country.

Allow me to give you the floor.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Thank you very much.

Today’s events are titled “Artificial Intelligence Journey.” Mr Gref has just taken me on such a journey. How long did it last? Three hours? Two and a half? We apologise for making you spend this time discussing the agenda. Anyway, I am genuinely pleased to welcome to Sber’s headquarters all AI Journey conference participants, as well as wide audiences from around the world which, I believe, are joining us online. As is customary, I will share with you what Russia is working on and discuss new steps to create and apply advanced technologies, including as part of international interaction.

Since this conference marks its tenth anniversary, I would like to thank Sber’s Chairman of the Management Board Mr Gref, as well as the Russian Artificial Intelligence Alliance, for your persistent efforts to promote the values of progress and to bring together the efforts of the state, business, and science in order to accomplish the technological development objectives.

You have heard me say it many times before that it is important to not only appreciate the importance of what we are doing, but also to keep moving forward even after achieving intermediate results. We should strive to bring our joint work to a whole new level in order to match the pace and the daunting scale of ongoing changes.

At previous conferences, we discussed in detail generative AI and language models trained on vast amounts of data, including texts and images. Just a short two years ago, such systems could tackle fairly simple tasks, but today generative AI is being used to create intelligent assistants known as AI agents, as well as self-driving vehicles and robots.

Importantly, they are not just following predefined algorithms; but are capable of making increasingly autonomous decisions without human input. Those who possess and apply such products gain significant advantages in efficiency and productivity.

Clearly, generative AI technology is becoming core and strategic technology. Major companies and leading countries are vying to develop proprietary fundamental language models.

According to various estimations, the development of artificial intelligence may be one of the largest technological projects in human history. Meanwhile, the primary focus of investment is on expanding computing power and generating additional gigawatts of energy: resources essential for the reliable functioning of the rapidly growing digital infrastructure. This energy is required to train the next generations of even more efficient generative AI systems. As I have already noted, electricity consumption by data centres will more than triple in this decade alone.

Alongside rapid transformations across all sectors, the number of users of generative artificial intelligence tools is steadily increasing. In Russia, the vast majority of young people are already actively employing neural networks and language models for tasks related to their studies, jobs, and daily lives.

But something else is equally important. These models generate enormous volumes of new data and are becoming one of the key instruments for information dissemination. As such, they have the capacity to influence people’s values and worldviews, shaping the semantic environment of entire nations and, ultimately, humanity as a whole.

We cannot allow critical dependence on foreign systems. For Russia, this is a question of state, technological, and, one could say, value sovereignty. Therefore, our country must possess a complete range of its own generative artificial intelligence technologies and products.

First and foremost, this includes national language models: both fundamental and smaller, industry-specific ones. The entire spectrum of such models must be trained and fully overseen by Russian specialists at every stage, including the quality assurance of the final product.

Work on these complex systems should become a significant driver for strengthening the national engineering school in this crucial domain. We must develop unique competencies across the full cycle of creating fundamental language models: from their initial development and training to their adaptation for the needs of various industries. In fact, all countries seeking leadership, independence, and sovereignty in this field are following the same path.

Second, a key direction, encompasses the entire infrastructure required for the development and implementation of such national products, specifically the electronic component base, data processing centres, and computing capacities with a stable energy supply.

The tasks to which I am referring are complex and carry significant responsibility – we all understand and acknowledge this perfectly well. We will address them in collaboration with domestic companies. In this context, I would highlight that the products of Sber and Yandex are ranked among the best in the world. During the upcoming Direct Line at the end of this year, we will once again utilise Sber’s language model, which has already demonstrated its effectiveness in analysing and systematising the vast volume of public appeals.

Let me reiterate: it is not merely the presence of our own technologies that is important. What is crucial is ensuring their widespread practical application. We must achieve their comprehensive introduction in industry, transport, healthcare, public administration, and other sectors. On this subject, I would like to elaborate in slightly greater detail.

The National Strategy for the Development of Artificial Intelligence sets the objective that by 2030, the aggregate contribution of this critical technology to the country’s GDP must exceed 11 trillion rubles. To advance this objective, I ask the Government and regional heads to formulate a national plan for the implementation of generative artificial intelligence at the national level, as well as across industries and regions of the country.

Earlier this morning, the Prime Minister and I discussed this subject. He reminded me that the Government has already established an Analytical Centre on this matter, which is currently operational with a team of 50 individuals. Officially, the Ministry of Digital Development oversees this work. However, neither one nor the other is sufficient. This is no longer adequate; we need a real operational headquarters to lead this sector, if we want this work to proceed confidently and proactively across all the aforementioned directions – that is, across industries, regions, ministries, and agencies. We need a headquarters capable of setting tangible tasks, ensuring execution, and monitoring results.

This analytical group is highly commendable, but it lacks administrative resource. That is what is absent – administrative resource is needed. Therefore, I ask the Presidential Executive Office and the Government – the Minister and the Government as a whole – to consider how we should establish this very headquarters to lead not just the sector but this entire endeavour, leveraging the capabilities of all those who are either already interested or do not yet realise they should be interested. Together, we must make this clear.

I emphasise that the implementation of this plan will become a crucial tool for generating demand for national fundamental models, effectively forming an entire market for the application of generative artificial intelligence systems.

Products developed on the basis of this plan must be integrated across all key industries by 2030. This includes solutions such as intelligent personal assistants and AI agents, which should be employed in the majority of management and production processes.

By March 2026, the Government, ministries, and agencies must provide comprehensive information on the use of artificial intelligence in the economy, the social sphere, and the regions of the Russian Federation. The pace of introducing these technologies in the regions should become a key indicator in the annual digital transformation ranking. I would like to request that this ranking be compiled using the updated methodology as early as the end of next year, 2026.

In this regard, I would like to appeal to the heads of ministries and agencies, as well as to regional leaders. This is not about preparing reports, but about achieving concrete results. You must clearly understand the demand for innovation coming from companies and enterprises, maintain permanent contact with scientists and engineers, and create conditions for testing and practical application of advanced technologies. Such successful experience is presented in the demonstration area of our conference. I believe it is useful, and if anyone has not yet visited it, I recommend doing so.

What is crucial is that we must create a market for the practical application of artificial intelligence technologies. My colleagues and I have just been discussing this, and they have been telling me how this sector is developing. In principle, the situation is similar to that in any other sector, but we now have the opportunity, whether fortunately or unfortunately, to build this market almost from scratch. This requires establishing certain standards across various areas of activity and ensuring that users of artificial intelligence technologies pay for these services, thereby creating a financial base for further development. We need to get this process going and give it an impetus for development.

I would also like to note that there are already tangible examples of how the experience of one Russian region in applying artificial intelligence is becoming the foundation for transformations across the entire country. For example, nearly two thousand medical organisations from more than 70 regions have joined the Moscow digital healthcare platform. This system has provided doctors from various cities and towns with access to artificial intelligence algorithms for the automatic analysis of medical images and radiological examinations.

Administrative and legal barriers that hinder both the creation and the implementation of sovereign, domestic technologies must be lifted more rapidly. Let me remind you in this context that in a number of countries, attempts to impose overly strict regulation on artificial intelligence have slowed down the development of new products and ideas. Let me repeat: we must not follow this path and repeat other countries’ mistakes. At the same time, we must bear in mind that there are certain areas of activity, such as public administration, the work of special services and law enforcement agencies, where we must rely exclusively on our own domestic developments.

Naturally, all of this must be done in direct dialogue with the tech businesses. We must thoroughly and substantively discuss the most bold and innovative regulatory and legislative initiatives that may, at first glance, fall outside conventional approaches. If necessary, they should be tested within experimental legal regimes. Such regimes are already in effect in Moscow and Sakhalin, as well as in a number of other regions of the Russian Federation, and will soon be extended to one-third of Russia’s territory: namely, the entire Far East. And, of course, we must make wider use of so-called “soft law.” I am referring primarily to the Code of Ethics in Artificial Intelligence.

Furthermore, as I have already noted today, in order to augment the potential of domestic generative artificial intelligence technologies and train our own language models, we must ensure the stability and independence of the national digital infrastructure. This will, among other things, allow us to guarantee data sovereignty, so that user information remains within the borders of Russia.

In this regard, I propose working with the business community to implement a programme for the development of data processing centres for artificial intelligence needs and to ensure that start-ups, scientific organisations, and technology companies have easy access to these centres.

The development of such data centres is intended to serve as a catalyst for the emergence of new enterprises and companies, as well as for job creation in promising sectors. This includes the domestic electronics industry, the deployment of production of components and spare parts, and the development of software and engineering systems for data processing centres.

The most critical and fundamental task is to ensure a constant, stable, and reliable energy supply for data centres. Consequently, plans for their placement must be clearly aligned with the further development of our national energy infrastructure as a whole, which includes advanced, modern, environmentally clean coal generation and other clean energy sources, such as nuclear. This is our strategic asset and competitive advantage.

We have just discussed this with experts, and it transpires that the mere availability of energy sources is insufficient. Powerful, constant energy sources are required to address specific tasks, while for the rapid utilisation of processed and refined data, energy sources must be located close to the consumers of the deliverables. This is a serious challenge, but it is one we are equipped to overcome, as we are perhaps the only country in the world currently capable of, ready for, and already producing and utilising small nuclear power plants.

Thus, in Kuzbass, for instance, coal generation can be utilised, while certain tasks can be conducted at our large hydroelectric power stations. In locations with large nuclear units, specific research and preparation can be carried out. However, to guarantee the rapid delivery of necessary information – with timeframes, as I have just been informed, measured in seconds and fractions of a second – and to ensure operational efficiency, small nuclear power plants can also be deployed. The imperative is to execute this swiftly.

We possess unique solutions that can be utilised for powering data processing centres. We plan to transition to the serial production of small floating and land-based nuclear stations, as well as to continue the construction of data processing centres at the largest nuclear power plants. We are ready to offer such comprehensive products to our international partners as well.

Looking ahead, within less than two decades, we intend to build 38 nuclear power units, primarily in the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East. Their combined capacity will be practically equivalent to that of the entire current nuclear generation. The growing potential of our domestic nuclear energy sector will enable us to consistently expand the computational capabilities required for artificial intelligence.

Friends,

I would like to address international cooperation separately. We will establish a joint framework with our partners in the field of artificial intelligence. This work will be conducted both on the basis of bilateral agreements and within integration associations such as the EAEU, BRICS, the SCO, and other formats. Furthermore, we propose to actively pursue the harmonisation of our nations’ legislation regarding the implementation of artificial intelligence, utilising the best practices accumulated in this area within the BRICS platform.

Naturally, we intend to jointly implement research projects. In this domain, we already have tangible examples of cooperation. For instance, at the initiative of the International Alliance for Artificial Intelligence established last year, a profound scientific discussion is now underway about how artificial intelligence technologies will evolve in the coming decade and what impact they will have on industry, transport, and other sectors, as well as on people, families, society as a whole, and social processes. I instruct the Government to ensure that the results of this forecast are applied in practice to update and fine-tune our plans for the development of economic sectors and the social sphere.

Meanwhile, it is evident that digital progress will gain strength and momentum. In the foreseeable future, technologies that surpass the capabilities of existing systems will undoubtedly emerge, and this will happen very quickly; I am referring to generative artificial intelligence, among other things. I am convinced that the younger generation of our scientists and engineers will make a significant contribution to addressing these highly complex research and development challenges.

I am aware that Russian school and university students – winners and prize-winners of international artificial intelligence tournaments – are present in this hall today. Let us welcome them together.

Friends, I wish you every success in your future endeavours, and I wish the participants of the AI Journey conference meaningful and fruitful deliberations.

Thank you for your attention.

German Gref: Mr President,

I would like to once again thank you for your focus on technology. I owe you an apology for taking much of your time today to dive into what is probably the most critical, yet the most complex, technology. I do not think many national leaders are as deeply immersed in technology as you are. Thank you very much for the comments you provided and the tasks you issued.

Now is the moment for me to announce that we have decided to make publicly available as open source our advanced, indeed, our most advanced, flagship AI models, such as GigaChat Ultra Preview, GigaChat Lightning, the next-generation GigaAMv-3 speech-recognition model, the Kandinsky image generation models, and the Kandinsky 5.0 video model, which we presented at the conference today.

These models will be distributed under a license that will allow using some of them even for commercial purposes. This will be Europe’s largest open-source project. These models will be released in full, including all their weights, and made freely accessible.

We also presented today our humanoid robot, the first humanoid robot named Green, based on the GigaChat neural network. It has a good sense of direction in unfamiliar environments and can operate autonomously in such environments.

Without a doubt, this is a new phase in domestic robotics and artificial intelligence aka embodied artificial intelligence, or physical artificial intelligence, because its hardware is of applied nature and is built around AI.

We are in a new phase of autonomous robotics, and Russia must have a strong presence on this global market. Importantly, Russian companies, including our Artificial Intelligence Alliance partners and Yandex are working to advance this area of research as well.

What do all these trends and new models mean to each of us as heads of respective organisations, as citizens, and simply as people who daily come across artificial intelligence, everyday problems, and questions such as how and for what we should prepare our children at a time when every child has unrestricted access to an enormous number of AI models?

Without a doubt, these questions need to be reflected upon, and they call for transformations. We cannot delay these transformations. Our panel is titled “The Future with Artificial Intelligence.” Clearly, we will have to live alongside artificial intelligence and robots, where robots will be among us. All of that must be processed and properly planned so as not to stress out people or organisations, and to get ready for the upcoming changes in advance, because we can no longer fence ourselves off of them.

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Vladimir Putin: We touched upon a critically important matter related to education when Mr Gref and his colleagues were immersing me in the world of artificial intelligence. All you need to do is press a button and things will happen, correct? A pupil at school, even a university student, can get the solution to almost any problem. Why use brains then? You know, it may sound like a joke at first glance, but, in fact, it is a serious matter. After all, students at schools, universities, and colleges must be taught to think, not just to push buttons to get answers. It is a challenging task, indeed.

A colleague of ours who took part in the presentations today, a young man, is a father of five children. I am not sure how he pulled that off. Good for him, five children is a great accomplishment. Let’s give him a round of applause if he is in this audience.

German Gref: He works at Yandex.

Vladimir Putin: Not only at Yandex. He is doing great on other fronts as well. Five children, well done. I asked him how he was going to teach his children to think, rather than press buttons.

You know, jokes aside… He’s a very intelligent person. He is conversant with matters that I myself do not quite understand, yet he was unable to answer that question. You see? This is no joke. It is not that simple in the emerging global system. We cannot afford seeing a select group of super-intellectuals – highly developed elite, an intellectual elite – form in our country, while everyone else will be reduced to “robots” pressing buttons.

This is a genuine challenge for the education system, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education alike. How do we encourage people to think? It is a challenge for the teaching staff and the entire education system. We need to develop an approach to education where a child solves math problems and uses capabilities offered by artificial intelligence. How do we do that? We need to engage them in playing chess and doing mathematics.

That is what I am asking you to do. Think about it, because the Ministry of Education alone will not be able to solve this problem. This is a serious matter for future generations and for Russia, in particular.

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Vice-Chancellor of Sai University (India) and Dean of its School of Artificial Intelligence Ajit Abraham: First, I will take a few moments to summarise our AI foresight event. During the last AI Journey, as per the advice of President Putin, we organised a foresight session to understand some of the current challenging problems, future opportunities and finding ways how we can work together to solve cutting-edge problems, contributing to the community, to the country, and doing something great for the planet.

So, we had close to 270 researchers from industry and academia, from nearly 36 countries participating in this massive exercise during the last year. Personal interviews, sessions in different countries online, offline – all this helped us to bring all this knowledge together.

I would like to take this opportunity, on behalf of all the members and the participating nations, to thank Russia for chairing this session and for providing this opportunity for all of us to work together.

We have seen a massive transformation, how AI is changing the world: from machine learning to large language models to multi-modal models, to agentic systems, to contact server systems. We have our colleagues working in new areas like responsible AI, explainable AI, ethical AI, digital twins with cognitive capabilities, human and AI working together systems, something like that.

So, all these things are changing in a very big way, in the technological field. AI is going to change the way we live, the way we operate, the way we do business, the way we teach our students, the way we do many things in daily life.

I would like to quickly point out how scientific literature or should I say advancing scientific progress is going to be affected by using artificial intelligence. From understanding literature, if scientists wanted to do something new, it would have taken months to years to summarise a new area. But with generative AI, we can summarise this in a few days to a few weeks, starting a new area, formulating hypotheses, doing experiments, analysing data, augmenting data. Sometimes you don’t have the data but we can augment it using various generative AI tools. All this will definitely speed up scientific discovery, and we can even produce results within a few days to a few weeks, which would have taken sometimes months to years five or ten years ago.

So, I think AI is going to change things in a very big way and there could be questions about our own existence, whether scientists will lose their jobs. Apparently, no. Scientists will be working like a lab by doing multiple things, accessing areas, datapoints, problems. We can scale up our own productivity, our own research, contributing a lot of things to the community, which will all speed up scientific discovery and the way many things would progress on the planet.

Some of us could ask: will AI affect cognitive abilities? Will it take away critical thinking? But again, without that, without critical thinking, without reasoning, without cognitive abilities, we might not be able to challenge these platforms so that we can get the best fruits off these platforms.

It is taking on a very different dimension from smart homes to smart cities, manufacturing hubs, smart transportation systems, smart hospitals. Imagine that you walk into a hospital for a regular checkup, take some blood samples, use imaging, and you get predictive diagnostics that you are going to get a neurological disorder within the coming few months or a few years. That is how healthcare is progressing in a very different way.

In the Indian context, the Government of India is doing a lot of wonderful things. The AI mission invested about $1 billion in sending technologies from urban areas to rural areas, helping various stakeholders in various aspects from manufacturing, healthcare, agritech, media and legal tech. Across all these areas, the Government of India is doing wonderful things. Startup AI Mission is another big initiative by the Government of India training the youth. India has about 350 million young people, probably almost the size of the Russian population. So, the Government of India is trying to encourage entrepreneurship within this young talent. The International AI Alliance chaired by Russia is a new platform. As of now, we have membership from more than 20 different countries.

This is going to take AI in a very new direction in the coming months and years. I am sure it will again scale up in a very big way, providing massive opportunities for collaboration, networking and contributing something to the society at large. Thank you very much.

Vladimir Putin: I would like to underscore that, first and foremost, we are collaborating with our Indian friends and will continue to do so.

I am aware that India plans to host an artificial intelligence summit in February next year. We will gladly participate in this event. I hope and am confident that the initiative proposed by our Indian friends will be conducted at the highest level.

As for human cognitive capabilities, I have just mentioned, prior to your speech, that we must under no circumstances allow a situation where an intellectual elite emerges, capable of properly utilising artificial intelligence and developing itself, whilst the majority of the population merely uses artificial intelligence to press buttons and receive ready answers. Naturally, much is to be done to prevent this.

I briefly mentioned that we must make significant efforts, including the creation of national platforms based on our own foundation, our own intellectual framework, our traditional values, our history, and so on. What do I mean? When we speak of developing cognitive capabilities, these advancements must reach the overwhelming majority of our country’s citizens.

I have already mentioned that in schools today, one can press a button to instantly receive an answer to any teacher’s question, without the need to think. The same applies to foreign languages. Try convincing a young person today of the necessity to study a foreign language. Do you know the response? “Why bother? Just ask Alice or Mr Gref’s chatbots.” Boom! Everything is translated online. So why study a foreign language? You speak or listen, and everything is translated instantly. What is the point? But you understand that for every issue, we must find the right answer and instil this perspective, in this case, into the minds of young people.

What is the study of a foreign language? It is not merely about using it in daily life or professional activities. A young person must understand that mastering a foreign language immerses them in an entirely different world, offering the opportunity to live another life. It is one thing to read, say, War and Peace in the original, and another to read a translation. This is especially true for poetry. It is one thing to read Heine in translation, even a very good one, and another in the original. There are countless nuances, and a one hundred percent accurate translation is impossible because the subtleties of the author’s intent cannot be fully conveyed. But when you know the language, you immerse yourself in these subtleties, understanding, at least in part, the soul of the native speaker and the soul of that culture. This is an immense cultural value.

The same applies to chess. One can play online games: connect to a system, and the computer solves everything for you, winning against everyone. Does this bring satisfaction? Or do you realise it is simply deception, not your victory?

Earlier, a young lady spoke about how Sberbank assists athletes in ensuring fair judging. We discussed football, where fans know that mistakes are unfortunately frequent. This deceives the fans, and what joy is there for players beyond receiving their salaries? But when you win honestly, the emotions are entirely different.

This is tied to our cultural code: an honest approach to work, immersion in another culture. The pleasure derived from this is internal – emotional and intellectual. This is delicate work.

If together we can establish such an educational approach in schools, universities, and colleges, I believe we will maximise the benefits of artificial intelligence and achieve the greatest results.

German Gref: Mr President, thank you very much. Indeed, you have accurately identified the key areas requiring special attention. How can we maintain children’s motivation, and how can we sustain people’s drive for high-quality education? How can we explain to children that they are not developing their minds when, today, they can achieve results with the click of a button without exerting any intellectual effort? How can we ensure that the advent of artificial intelligence does not lead to the atrophy of cognitive function but, on the contrary, stimulates it?

These are the questions we must all answer together today. In fact, this was precisely the focus of the work initiated by you last year and carried out by scientists, as our Indian colleague, Mr Abraham, has just outlined.

I would like to thank our partner in the AI Alliance, Kirill Dmitriev of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, for his immense international efforts in organising all of this. Kirill has personally dedicated a great deal of time and effort to this endeavour. I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to you, Kirill, and your organisation. Without your involvement, we would likely not have achieved such international collaboration.

I would now like to turn to our next speaker, Mr Chen Qiufan, a representative of China and a highly distinguished expert who has worked for over a decade in technology companies, including China’s largest firm, Baidu, and America’s largest, Google, where he headed the strategic research department. He then explored the role of a writer and, alongside a very well-known figure in the world of artificial intelligence, Mr Kai-Fu Lee, co-authored the book AI 2041. He is the author of numerous books and is one of the leading experts in the field of futurism.

Mr Chen, I would like to pose two questions to you.

The first question is: What is your view on the predictions made by Mr Kurzweil, one of the most renowned technological futurists, who claims that all those who live through the next six to seven years will not only have the chance to live to 100 and beyond but will achieve immortality? His latest forecast suggests this will occur some time between 2030 and 2035, around 2032.

My second question is: In your opinion, what will the life of an ordinary person look like in 10 to 15 years, say in 2041, the year you and Kai-Fu Lee wrote about in your fascinating books? What will become the key driver of trust between society and artificial intelligence?

It is well known that technology is advancing so rapidly that society struggles to adapt. What must we do to help people understand and pre-adapt, to grasp what and how they need to learn? How can we preserve the motivation our President spoke of and ensure our own relevance in the labour market and the world at large during these highly challenging and rapidly changing times?

President of the World Chinese Science Fiction Association Chen Qiufan: Thank you for introducing our book AI 2041.

I want to start by sharing a personal story. Two years ago, my mum, who is 70 years old, had a stroke at home while I was away. But luckily, my dad found her and took her to the nearest hospital, and she got everything she needed, all the treatment, and now she is fine.

But what if she had been by herself? What if the hospital had been too far away? And what if we could have an AI doctor in our pockets that could subtly monitor our everyday behaviour like our voice, our expression, the way we hold the phone and even our biomarkers? It could warn us about a stroke or some other disease before it happens. And not only that. If you need some medication, it could, based on all your data and your history, 3D-print the medicine and deliver it to your doorway within minutes. This is not only about saving lives, not only about curing diseases, but also about what Raymond Kurzweil mentioned: it will tremendously extend lifespans and increase the level of wellbeing.

Why does this matter so much? China, as a country, is as big as Russia, but has 1.4 billion people, so the resources are unevenly distributed. It is vastly different, distributed to mega-cities from the rural areas; but on the other hand, fascinatingly, we have almost 100 percent coverage of smartphones and we have 80 percent internet coverage. So, think about it. In the future, we can deploy AI models, hybrid with human expertise, and we can help everyone to improve their everyday lives with all this infrastructure and technology.

So, AI in healthcare is one thing. Also, like I mentioned before, a mutli-agent assistant on your phone could be your children’s personal tutor, could be your family’s finance manager, could be your yoga instructor or your therapist. Everything is possible. You don’t have to travel far away. You don’t have to go to a big city for all these resources.

And what is more crucial is, like Mr President mentioned, we can use the technology to reconnect the younger generation with history. For example, my fellow students from Hong Kong, they are now using generative AI and 3D printing to transform Chinese mythology figures into toys, which makes folklore and culture more accessible and relevant. Russia has as deep a history and culture as China. We can definitely use technology to strengthen their love for history and culture. My friend’s daughter, a fourteen-year-old girl, is using an AI tutor to read Russian literature, which is quite amazing, right? So, AI technology definitely helps us increase cultural exchanges.

So, going back to my mum, what is happening to her? During her recovery, my dad has been using AI as a tool to create all these funny little animations to cheer her up and make her laugh. So, this reminds me that in Chinese, “AI”, “artificial intelligence”, sounds almost the same as the word “love.” This reminds me, technology is always about love, about caring, about connecting people. I think that’s why the Chinese Government invests so much in supporting the development of AI technology, from infrastructure to legislation, creating tremendous impact across areas from education, healthcare, manufacturing to smart cities, etc.

As a science fiction writer, I really want to invite everyone to imagine a bright, optimistic and constructive future about the technology together. Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: If I may, I would like to first of all wish your mother a swift recovery on behalf of everyone here. That is the most important thing.

Second, Mr Gref has just recalled that some experts – and today we are speaking specifically about Chinese experts – say that it is possible, under certain conditions (I will not go into details now) to extend human life to 150 years.

In this context, I would like to note the following. There was a time when people lived 20, 30, maybe 35 years, and that was considered normal. Later, average life expectancy in some countries gradually increased – to 35, 45, 50 years – and that, too, became the norm. Today, in some countries, it has already reached 80. And we are working to ensure that average life expectancy rises in our country as well; it is slightly higher for women and a bit lower for men. We have set specific targets for increasing life expectancy, and we are moving in the right direction.

Perhaps it is indeed possible to reach 150 years. But, first of all, it will never feel like enough – just as there is never enough money. Never. And in my view, the main question is not how long one lives. The main question is how one lives and for what.

It is our traditional values that answer those questions. I say that without any irony. That is why, as I noted in my remarks and would like to emphasise again now, our national platforms must be built first and foremost on the traditional values shared by all the peoples of the Russian Federation.

German Gref: Mr President, thank you very much for your participation and your remarks. I watched our Healthcare Minister’s reaction when we started talking about 150 years and even immortality. I think we may indeed need to merge the Ministry of Digital Development and the Ministry of Healthcare if we want to reach 150 as soon as possible.

In fact, one thing is absolutely clear: humanity is entering a fundamentally new era at an extremely rapid pace. Today we discussed how the industrial revolution unfolded over 200 years. This revolution will be at least ten times faster – roughly 20 years. And 20 years, within a human lifetime, is a very short period indeed. And of course, in our view, we must make our contribution.

Mr President said: it matters not only how long we live, but how and why. We bear the responsibility for helping people enter this new era smoothly, without upheaval, without stress, and without losing this essential “how and why.” Together with our colleagues, we will do everything to fulfil this mission – perhaps this is our own “why and how”: to ensure technological progress, to strengthen the country’s competitiveness, but not to trigger shocks and stresses that would affect millions of people who, after all, have no direct involvement in the development of these technologies.

We are responsible for adapting these technologies so that people’s lives genuinely improve, so that medical care becomes more accessible everywhere across the country, so that education becomes more accessible, and so that digital services make life a little easier and a little happier.

To attain this objective, we are uniting a vast network of our partners and colleagues with a view to establishing an international alliance for the development of artificial intelligence. Mr President, last year you initiated the development and signing of an agreement in this field, and this year, with the assistance of our colleagues, we are expanding the number of countries that are signing the declaration and joining this alliance. Allow me to proceed with this ceremony.

(Ceremony marking the accession of new participants to the International Alliance for Artificial Intelligence. Representatives of national alliances and institutions for the development of artificial intelligence from 11 countries around the world joined the alliance in person and remotely: Brazil, Vietnam, India, Congo, Oman, Turkey, Chile, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa. The total number of alliance members now stands at 28 organisations.)

Allow me to congratulate all the new members of the alliance, as well as the existing members. Thank you very much, colleagues, for undertaking this journey, and thank you for your commitment to international cooperation in the development of the most critical technology of the century. Thank you very much.

I would also like to express my gratitude to all the participants present here today. I would like to extend special thanks to the Presidential Executive Office and to Maxim Oreshkin, with whom we have worked closely on this. I would also like to extend my deepest gratitude to our Government, to the Ministry of Digital Development, to Dmitry Chernyshenko, to Dmitry Grigorenko, and to all our partners who have approached this matter very seriously.

Under the Prime Minister’s leadership, we endeavour to discuss this topic in detail every month to ensure we do not fall behind, so to speak, in the progress of this advanced technology. Today, we reported to the President that Russia is now among the seven countries in the world with an almost fully comprehensive technology stack – the most modern, state-of-the-art technologies possessed by the most advanced nations.

Your personal attention, Mr President, helps maintain the appropriate level of technological development, as well as the interest of students, scientists, entrepreneurs, and public officers at all levels. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to you for this. We will do everything to ensure our country continues to forge ahead with confidence.

Thank you very much.