Dear Colleagues!

On behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation and on my own behalf, I welcome the participants in the Global Technology Leadership Forum.

Today, the world faces important structural changes: the industrial model of development is being replaced by the knowledge economy, digital technologies are becoming the main factor of socio-economic growth.

Russia has all the necessary capacities for active influence on the global technology agenda. The state purposefully develops the national innovation ecosystem. The basic infrastructure for supporting high-tech business has already been formed. The next step should be the creation of an integrated platform for technological growth to ensure leadership in certain sectors of the global economy of the future.

This work requires a serious transformation of the interaction system of all participants of the innovative ecosystem, including large technology corporations and development institutions. In this sense, the Forum is a strategic platform to design new models of state technology policy with the active participation of business and support if the expert community.

I wish the organizers and guests of the Forum interesting discussions and fruitful work!

Leadership in cross-cutting technologies is becoming a key factor in global competition. Artificial intelligence, the Internet of things, quantum and wireless communications have transformational effects on a whole range of industries — from medicine to transportation, making a decisive impact on economic growth. The objective of the Forum is to find common ground between the various communities involved in defining the technology agenda. We invite developers, corporations, authorities, scientists and experts to join the dialogue. I hope that following the results of our two-day work will lead to tangible actions in solving the strategic tasks of the country’s development.

We are entering a new and definitely the «fastest» decade in world history. What is the global technology policy of the 2020s, and where is Russia’s place? It will be a world of cross-cutting technologies assembling the main processes; a world of abandoning lessons learned and a culture of maximizing the risks; a world of unexpected talents and teams capable of uniting these talents. And, of course, it will be an anthropocentric world: a world of networks and services built around a human.

What will we bring to a new era, in a new technological decade? These are our technologies, our digital platforms; our readiness for an endless second chance for ordinary human beings who do not want to stay overboard, but who is not easily could come aboard.

Our strategy for the 2020s is the struggle for share on global markets, the National Technology Initiative on global markets. Everyone who will enter 2020 and will show not only ambition but also results, we will continue to work with. Now we must decide which practices, institutions, policies, organizations leave in the past, and what we must take with us to create a better future.

The fourth industrial revolution is a new era in the development of mankind. Its most important component is artificial intelligence, which in the next decade will be able to forever change our life, business and the global economy.

Comfortable and safe cities, affordable and high-quality medicine, education, modern logistics and a reliable transportation system, high-tech industry and energy — the development of all these areas largely depends on our successes in the field of artificial intelligence. Not to notice changes means to lose the existing potential. No matter how powerful it is today, tomorrow it can rapidly become obsolete and reset to zero at all.

2019 has become a landmark year. In our country, the National AI Development Strategy was adopted. Market leaders created the Alliance for Artificial Intelligence. Our goal is the development of education and scientific potential in the field of artificial intelligence technologies, the creation of centers of competence and collective access to technology.

The Global Technology Leadership Forum, which will be held in Sochi in early December, will become an important communication platform for all the leaders of this digital race. We have to translate plans into concrete solutions, innovations into competitive and demanded products.