Successes of medical AI, the race between the United States and China, the hype around autonomous vehicles and other topics of November about artificial intelligence from the @ict_moscow_ai Telegram feed in one digest.

Successes of medical AI

At the beginning of the month it was announced than Botkin.AI system for medical images analysis using artificial intelligence from Intellogic had received a registration certificate from Roszdravnadzor and had been admitted to circulation on the Russian market starting from November 3, 2020.

The company raised 100 million rubles (equivalent to $1.3 million)  investment for the startup last year. This solution became the second medical software using AI that is registered in Russia, the first one was the solution for analyzing images using AI.

Also in November Moscow reported that more than 500 thousand CT images has been analyzed using AI in the capital, and announced the results of the first year of the experiment for introducing artificial intelligence into the Moscow healthcare system: currently about 300 Moscow medical institutions use artificial intelligence services developed by 21 companies. Next year the authors of the project plan to increase the number of types of medical research using artificial intelligence from 4 to 10.

China is trying to overtake the USA

CB Insights analysts presented a list of the 10 most expensive AI companies in the world: 3 out of 10 are from China, the rest are from the USA. Later, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the China Internet Development Report 2020, which said that China had overtaken the United States in the number of patent applications in artificial intelligence. In total, 694 thousand applications were submitted in the country, and in the period from January to October of this year the number of applications almost reached 102 thousand. This is 56% more than during the same period of 2019.

The news agenda of the last month also included messages on bilateral cooperation between Russia and China. At the beginning of November it was announced that Russia and China had agreed to exchange experience in legal regulation. The areas of exchange include the regulation of digital economy, artificial intelligence technologies, personal data security, and legislative support of information security and scientific and technical cooperation. Russian RVC and Chinese DeepBlue Technology signed a memorandum on cooperation in the field of smart cities and industry 4.0. The first project will be aimed at attracting Russian teams for participation in the Smart City project of the Chinese city of Anshan. Priority search areas are intelligent and robotic systems, visual recognition and intelligent detection systems, solutions in artificial intelligence and big data analysis for manufacturing industries, production security systems.

Growing hype around AI and autonomous vehicles

Rostelecom released another notable report by publishing the fourth annual monitoring of global digitalization trends. For the second year in a row, AI remains the most notable trend. This is also confirmed by the quarterly review of the most notable media trends in IT by ICT.Moscow. According to the review, artificial intelligence was mentioned from 15.4 to 17 thousand times a month from July to September of this year.

Rostelecom also notes that autonomous vehicles trend has been growing rapidly over the past 5 years. Experts see a significant growth in the market of technologies for unmanned vehicles (merger of VW Group and Ford to create unmanned taxis and delivery services, expansion of the partnership between Uber and Toyota, active investment by large corporations in this area). According to Rostelecom analysts, the main barriers to commercial use are infrastructure and regulations.

NP “GLONASS” also claims that regulation and the lack of uniform technical standards as one of the barriers. In December the Moscow Region will launch the testing of the system of transport autonomous driving in traffic using V2X (vehicle-to-everything) equipment from six developers: Fort Telecom, MVS Group, Kaspersky Lab, Sreda Solutions, Keysight and FSUE NAMI. Based on the results of the launch, the domestic Russian standard for data exchange within the V2X infrastructure will be developed.

Regarding the UAVs area, the first center for the operation of unmanned aircraft systems was launched in Russia on the basis of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI. The unit is the first and only one in Russia and has already been granted an official national status. It was also announced that the Ministry of Transport had ordered to develop an information support system for unmanned aircraft flights in the Russian Federation.

The unmanned vehicles area is actively developing abroad as well. The UK has made an important step in this direction: at the beginning of the month, the testing of six autonomous vehicles began in Oxford under the government’s Endeavor program. This is the country’s first autonomous vehicle testing program on public roads. The testing will be conducted during the year in three major British cities, including London.

AI monetization

In November, companies continued to announce purchases of start-ups, report on finding new markets and technology profitability. For instance, TechCrunch wrote about another deal by Intel - this time the company purchased the Israeli developer cnvrg.io.

In Russia Sberbank claimed it expected an increase in profits from artificial intelligence. The technology will generate about 6% of the targeted net profit of Sberbank this year, as the company plans to use this technology in almost all processes in the expanding range of products. On November 30, the same idea was voiced by the first deputy chairman of the board of Sberbank Alexander Vedyakhin at the online presentation of Investor Day: Strategy 2023. He said that the company intended to issue more than 90% of all loans in 2023 using artificial intelligence.

Meanwhile, Tinkoff bank announced that it would create a separate department for the development of AI technologies. In another segment, Gazprom Neft and Zyfra Group announced the creation of a separate business - a joint venture for developing digital solutions in the oil and gas sector, including using AI. And VisionLabs (part of the Sberbank ecosystem) has opened an office in Dubai to promote its AI solutions in the UAE market. The company plans to continue its expansion by opening representative offices in Singapore and the USA, and is also considering the possibility of entering the markets of Latin America and Japan.

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Another notable event of November for the Russian AI industry was the inclusion of a Russian representative in the work of the interstate group for conducting global consultations in the Ad hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence of the Council of Europe. Andrey Neznamov, Sberbank’s executive director of the Center for Data Research for Government Bodies, was elected as the chairman of this group.

Original (in Russian)