Vladimir Putin asked AI to invent a New Year’s fairy tale – this is what it turned out

At the end of the working week, Vladimir Putin took part in the conference on artificial intelligence and machine learning Artificial Intelligence Journey 2023. Photo: Mikhail Metzel/TASS

At the end of the working week, Vladimir Putin took part in the conference on artificial intelligence and machine learning Artificial Intelligence Journey 2023. But first, the president received a visual demonstration of the capabilities of neural networks.

SANTA CLAUS AND THE SNOW MAIDEN ARE NOW TWO FRIENDS

At the Sber stand, the head of the country was shown how new services can help top managers organize their working time. And sometimes replace them.

– Your work will not lead to the dismissal of German Oskarovich (Gref, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sberbank – Ed.). No? – the president asked sarcastically.

“This is our task,” the girl at the booth honestly admitted.

– Do you understand? You are digging for yourself… – Putin noted, looking at the banker.

Thank God, the head of the country has not yet been replaced by neural networks. For now.

Next, Vladimir Vladimirovich learned the charms of generative neural networks and ChatGPT. Millions of people use it with all their might or have been doing so for several years, but for the Kremlin they are still new. Still, serious politicians prefer more traditional tools.

Jokingly, Vladimir Vladimirovich asked to come up with a New Year’s fairy tale. The neural network produced the following result:

“Two friends lived in a distant country: Father Frost and the Snow Maiden. They lived in a cabin on the edge of the forest and every year they prepared for the New Year holidays.

One day, when they had almost finished preparing for the New Year, a misfortune happened: the cabin caught fire,” the fairy tale begins.

Then Santa Claus and Snow Maiden could not put out the fire, but a passing wizard helped them in time. Then the magician asked to show him some kind of miracle… The plot, frankly speaking, is not very original, and even with obvious inconsistencies in the plot. But it should be noted that the request was as general as possible.

TRUST BUT VERIFY

After the sightseeing tour, Putin went to give a speech at the plenary session. He began by stating that neural networks are increasingly used in economics.

“The Gazprom Neft company, using artificial intelligence technologies, managed to significantly reduce well development costs, solve complex problems of safe logistics on the Northern Sea Route and a number of other tasks,” the head of the country listed.

First, the president received a visual demonstration of the capabilities of neural networks. Photo: Vyacheslav Prokofiev/TASS

He added that people trust these technologies more and more.

“With the introduction of artificial intelligence in science, education, health and in all spheres of our life, humanity begins a new chapter of its existence,” emphasized the Russian leader.

However, it should be noted that sometimes people trust AI too much. It turned out that generative neural networks easily invent non-existent facts in their responses. Careless students try to insert texts from ChatGPT into coursework and dissertations without double-checking them. And this already threatens large-scale falsifications; After all, in the future, someone may start referring to some facts simply because they have already been mentioned in some scientific works.

“Citizens see how artificial intelligence simplifies and makes many daily processes more convenient, improves the quality of management and public service delivery mechanisms,” said the President.

For the information of readers, Moscow has introduced a voice neural network to receive complaints about communal services. And it handles some simple requests quite well (for example, if the lights go off in the apartment).

FOUR STEPS TOWARD AI

Next, Putin made four proposals on how the government will support the development of AI in our country.

First.

– We need a mechanism that would provide domestic scientists with access to supercomputers that exist and are being created in Russia. Graduate students, students and schoolchildren who are already engaged in scientific and practical activities in the field of artificial intelligence should receive special benefits from the use of computing infrastructure,” the President noted.

Second.

– Of course, the current capacity of Russian supercomputers should be increased by at least an order of magnitude. This is fundamental for the further development of generative artificial intelligence,” he added.

Third.

– It is necessary to significantly expand the training of the most solid scientific developers. This task should be entrusted to the leader of the first ranking of universities for the quality of training specialists in the field of artificial intelligence. These are the Higher School of Economics, MIPT, ITMO, Moscow and St. Petersburg State Universities, as well as Skoltech, Vladimir Vladimirovich reported.

Four.

“We are ready to think about changing the structure of scientific funding and allocating additional funds to research and development in the field of generative artificial intelligence and large language models. As long as our leading companies commit to co-financing such works and ensuring the testing of relevant technologies,” the Russian leader said.

Let us observe for ourselves that a large number of technologies that use AI have already been invented. Now the most difficult thing is to introduce them into the business. Even the current potential of neural networks is far from being fully exploited.