A single digital platform will unite all the country's microservices on artificial intelligence
13.09.2022
There are fewer and fewer horror stories about artificial intelligence displacing all life on Earth. Today, we perceive it as an assistant in a variety of areas of life. From mechanical engineering to medicine. Artificial intelligence helps in the fight against fraudsters, in software development, equipment creation, banking and much more. The only thing left to do is to combine the work of scientists and programmers on a single digital platform, says Sergei Kruglikov, Director of the United Institute of Informatics Problems of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.
For all spheres of the economy
— Sergey Vladimirovich, what platform are we talking about?
— Information technologies in our country, as well as bioinformatics and other rapidly developing industries, are given great attention by the state. Information technologies have long penetrated into all spheres of our activities. Including the field of education. Every self-respecting university has a department of information technologies. Be it economics, agriculture, woodworking, and so on. Our institute has been working in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) since 1965, but it cannot cover all areas. Today, there are already a number of microservices in the field of artificial intelligence that can be implemented in various sectors of the country's economy. To this end, we are initiating the creation of a republican digital platform or integration bus, on the basis of which microservices in the field of AI would be strung like beads. According to the principle of an electronic prescription, where a number of electronic services are collected: medical information systems, pharmacological systems, and a number of laboratory services. Only much larger.
— What areas of application can these microservices be?
— Very different. One example could be a microservice that we are developing with the support of the Scientific and Practical Center for Bioresources of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus for the Ministry of Forestry. This is a service that recognizes the voices of birds and animals. We are currently working on this, creating a platform, collecting data. Including creating algorithms for processing the voices of representatives of the Belarusian fauna. This is not an idle interest. The forest is not homogeneous — there are also territories impassable to humans. So, with the help of artificial intelligence, it will be possible not only to establish the presence of certain endangered species, but also to assess the state of the Belarusian forests and the ecology of the country in general. This information will also be important for taking certain measures to preserve them.
Save and neutralize
— And what about pattern recognition? Where are these capabilities of smart machines used besides forensics?
— There are many areas of application. For example, we were approached by Gomselmash OJSC with a request to create a system for detecting people and animals in thickets of corn and sunflowers. Often, when equipment enters these fields, disoriented people and animals run to the combine itself. It is not difficult to imagine how this could end. Now, my colleagues from the Military Academy and I are conducting research work using their equipment (thermal imagers, other devices that allow us to detect the presence of living creatures in dense vegetation). Based on the images provided, we are developing algorithms for their processing. And we are determining the capabilities of modern detection tools in solving this problem. Or rather, a whole range of problems. After all, we are talking not only about possible economic losses for enterprises (breakdown of agricultural machinery and loss of part of the forage), but also about the possible death of people and representatives of the fauna.The full interview is available at the link >>