As part of an extended report on Artificial Intelligence – the “superpower” that many governments of technologically advanced countries are using – Italian Public broadcaster Rai-Radiotelevisione Italiana presents the perspectives of Armenia’s technological advancement.
Journalist Barbara Carfagna travels to small but agile countries such as Armenia and Israel, whose economies grow thanks to the massive use of Artificial Intelligence, to understand how computing power can help people.
In Armenia she holds meetings with President Armen Sarkissian, the heads of a number of tech companies and visits the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies.
“Currently, we are at the crossroads of the classical world and the new quantum world,” President Sarkissian says. The journalist notes, in turn, that the President’s political vision stems from science, like quantum theory, which in the last century turned classical physics and society upside down, causing the changes we are undergoing due to technological advances. She emphasizes that Armenia is one of the small countries that face great difficulties and tries to jump forward due to large investments in technology, like most technologically advanced countries – Korea, Israel and Singapore.
“We live a quantum life, and the first thing we need to do is change the education system. Armenia can become a world leader not in terms of military, political or physical strength, but can be a leader in development, being a data hub with global capacity,” President Sarkissian says.
“There is a lot of talk about Israel’s success, which is a small country, and about Singapore, a port in the ocean, with a significant flow of goods and a trade hub. In the new, immaterial world, there is another possible ocean – the information ocean. In this period, it is possible to become a hub where data is processed and released,” President Sarkissian says.
“The quantum world is the world where we are using the results of quantum mechanics and electrodynamics. This is the world where the relations between groups of people are changing,” Armen Sarkissian further elaborates.
According to him, political events, developments, revolutions can take place in different ways. Values, institutions, procedures must be reinterpreted.
“Nations that remain in the classical world will face insurmountable contradictions, as society will change, even if politics remains the same. It’s not about being democratic or non-democratic, it’s about answering the following question: have we entered the quantum world or not?” the President adds.
On Artificial Intelligence, President Sarkissian says “AI systems will be able to process huge amounts of data.”
“All aspects of our lives will change radically, in a way we can’t even imagine. We need to find the best way to process that data,” he adds.
The journalist notes that President Armen Sarkissian, who has spent his entire life between the University of Cambridge and the business world, wants to lead his country to a new digital age, making it a leader in the field of artificial intelligence.
The Program also refers to the President’s Advanced Tomorrow (ATOM) initiative aimed at the development of technologies and Artificial Intelligence.
“We are creating a city on research and development of artificial intelligence, where we will host large companies from Italy, France and the United States. First, a platform for cooperation with these enterprises will be created. Then we plan to have the best students there, creating new educational methods like TUMO for the new generations,” says President Sarkissian.
He also shares the dream to establish an AI-bases entertainment center – an AI-bases Disneyland as a museum of the future, where children will get acquainted with science and travel to the future.
