MINSK, 1 July (BelTA) – Belarus and Russia should step up joint efforts in ensuring cyber security. Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko made the statement during the plenary session of the 8th Forum of Regions of Belarus and Russia on 1 July, BelTA has learned.
Aleksandr Lukashenko described the creation and use of artificial intelligence as a promising avenue of cooperation. The president remarked that dozens of companies working in this field develop rapidly in the Hi-Tech Park in Belarus.
In his words, many IT products of theirs could be used in Russia, including in regions. “We have the experience. The Hi-Tech Park successfully competes on the toughest and most demanding markets,” Aleksandr Lukashenko stated.
The Belarusian leader is convinced: “Moreover, today we have no problems with IT professionals possibly thanks to the Hi-Tech Park and possibly because we realized the potential in time and started exploring this field. We have a huge layer of these IT professionals in the production sector and in the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. They do not simply develop software. They already create end products based on it. As I say, they convert it into hardware and make an end product. Unlike those in the Hi-Tech Park where they make high-quality software and are forced to sell it at half the price to large companies, primarily those in the United States of America. So, we should switch to end products in our Union State, too.”
Yet Aleksandr Lukashenko stated that there are fears in the world that an artificial intelligence can become an instrument of manipulations and the key weapon of hybrid wars.
The president said: “The universal nature of digital technologies, the lack of a geographical anchor and broad accessibility raise the matter of the digital sovereignty of countries and their information independence. As a result, we have another broad field for cooperation where we should step up joint efforts – cyber security.”
Aleksandr Lukashenko went on saying that both Belarus and Russia had directly encountered the destructive consequences of various networking technologies, which are used in the course of constant uncompromised fighting for people's minds and souls in the Internet. “It is our common threat. We should learn how to effectively counteract it,” he stressed. “Today when a door opens into a new world where artificial intelligence nearly matches the human brain, we have to remember that we shouldn't lose the key thing – the person and everything human in this person,” he stressed.
