The ONT TV channel aired a new episode of the “People’s GOST” program, dedicated to the development and implementation of artificial intelligence. Representatives of the United Institute of Informatics Problems of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus became experts in the program and dispelled popular myths about AI.

In a large interview with the program, Deputy General Director for Scientific Work Sergei Kasanin emphasized that the era of theoretical discussions is over. Today, the applied implementation of artificial intelligence is becoming one of the main factors in the technological sovereignty of the country.

“It is the applied implementation of artificial intelligence that is becoming one of the key factors in the country’s technological sovereignty. If we talk about the next five years, I would highlight the following key areas: healthcare and biomedicine, industry and agriculture,” emphasized Sergei Nikolavevich.

For the next five years, the institute identifies four priority areas:

healthcare and biomedicine: intelligent support for medical decisions, analysis of medical images, creation of digital healthcare systems and computer modeling of potential medicinal compounds - many of these developments of the Institute of Scientific Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus are already successfully functioning in healthcare institutions of Belarus;
industry: process optimization, intelligent quality control, equipment wear prediction and creation of digital twins of complex objects to reduce costs;
agriculture: work is underway on a robotic platform that can independently move around the field and carry out targeted application of plant protection products; systems for predicting crop diseases based on satellite data are also being created;
space technologies and information security: satellite image processing and data protection, where the institute’s developments are already in demand in the real sector.
At the same time, large language models, computer vision and data analytics are considered not as separate industries, but as end-to-end technologies that permeate all spheres of life.

Deputy Director General for Scientific Work of the Institute of Industrial Problems of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus stated that any system must be transparent, safe and understandable to humans. That is why OIPI actively participates in the development of standards within the Interstate Technical Committee, and also became the author of a model law on AI technologies, which was adopted by the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly.

The film crew of the program visited the walls of the institute to show the audience the work of Belarusian laboratories using specific examples:

• Leading researcher at the Laboratory of Biomedical Image Analysis Vasily Kovalev demonstrated a system for supporting the diagnosis of soft tissue cancer, when a neural network is trained to recognize pathologies in giant images of histological specimens (for example, if breast cancer is suspected), which allows identifying the disease in the early stages;
• Leading researcher at the bioinformatics laboratory Olga Krasko explained that AI can be used in any process in medicine, but noted that there is still a practice of distrust in technology;
• Head of the development and support sector of the laboratory of information and analytical systems Tatyana Avdeeva spoke about the process of introducing information and reference systems into the work of healthcare institutions;
• The head of the laboratory of high-performance systems, Oleg Chizh, explained the principles of operation of specialized server nodes with powerful graphics accelerators and data warehouses necessary for bioinformatics and engineering modeling.

Experts agreed that artificial intelligence is becoming a common working tool. And the Belarusian scientific school is ready not only to follow global trends, but also to create its own competitive solutions.