The first artificial intelligence factory in Romania – RO AI Factory, a European project hosted by the National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics (ICI Bucharest), could become functional in the first part of 2027, the general director of ICI Bucharest, Adrian-Victor Vevera, said on Monday.
“Starting this year, Romania has a European project on the map: the first artificial intelligence factory RO AI Factory. It will be hosted at the National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics, ICI Bucharest. We are the hosting entity of this project. Together with a consortium we will develop the service part, which includes Bucharest Polytechnic, the National Council of Small and Medium Enterprises, the Institute of Artificial Intelligence in Cluj, the Institute of Bioresources.
This project does not come out of nowhere. ICI has been involved in European Hypercomputing projects for at least 4 years. We are the national competence center for Hypercomputing. After that, I joined the project managed by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, an artificial intelligence factory based on the structure of the Barcelona supercomputer.
We are caught up in these projects, but the time has come, in the third wave of the development of the European artificial intelligence network: Romania has put a flag on the map. We are here, we are present and we hope that next year, somewhere in March, April, May, it depends on how this project will evolve, to be fully functional. We will open the doors to be part of this ecosystem”said Adrian-Victor Vevera, at the official opening of the “Bucharest Leaders Summit: United for a Better World” event, according to Agerpres.
According to him, ICI Bucharest started building the RO AI Factory ecosystem and launched invitations to the private, public, research and academic sectors for partnership.
“We have already started to create the ecosystem and we have invitations launched to all the private area, the public area, the research area, the academic area, to be our partners in this journey that we have in this challenge, because, after all, artificial intelligence, as said, is a challenge. It is a challenge in the relationship with people, not only people are a challenge, and technology is a challenge. We have to take into account that artificial intelligence is a tool, it is a technology, we must use it to increase our capacity and yield, let’s not let it replace the decision-making part”added the general director of ICI Bucharest.
On the other hand, the head of the institution believes that new technology, artificial intelligence represents “take part in any conflict, in any hot war or in any cold war”.
“It’s part of what the cybersecurity area means, it’s part of the data manipulation area, because we see the deepfake. Artificial intelligence can generate a lot of things that, of course, can be real or not. As for the artificial intelligence part, we have to consider the area of data sets because data sets become a weapon in any future conflict. Data will be that gold mine in the future. It already is.”added the general director of ICI Bucharest.
According to him, in order to continue to protect Romania, we will have to be much more attentive and well prepared in terms of technology.
“It is no longer a secret that there are applications that are used for what the security part means. It is about Palantir (Palantir Technologies – an American company specialized in data analysis software), which started before 2020. Any conflict of the future will also mean this fusion between man and technology. It remains to be discussed how the technology will be used ethically. To protect Romania, we must understand technology. We are surrounded by technology – and in the end what matters is that the end is what we want, that big, prosperous, beautiful Romania, in which we want to live and which we prepare for our children and grandchildren, to be built by us with the help of technology. We will no longer be able to do anything without technology, but it is essential not to lose that connection between people, not to lose that relationship, to create bridges because, in the end, without that handshake, all that remains are data, all that remains are flat things, things devoid not of life, but devoid of emotion and empathy”added Adrian-Victor Vevera.
