Brnabic: "Serbia has the potential to be a regional leader in the development of global AI solutions"

4 July 2023

Ana Brnabic, Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia, participated online in the AI Innovation Summit, which is being held in Chicago, and also attended the opening of the "Innovation Hub and Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence 1871", the area's largest IT hub, with more than 3.5 billion dollars invested in their members.

In her introductory speech, the Prime Minister addressed the topic "The perspective of global transformation led by artificial intelligence", presenting Serbia and all of our achievements in the fields of information and communication technologies, digitization, artificial intelligence, innovation and biotechnology development, as well as future plans.

From the start of my first mandate in 2017, I made IT and digitization one of my top goals, and today marks precisely six years since my first working day as Prime Minister, Brnabic said during her speech at the online summit.

"The fact that our country's export of IT services was 345 million euros in 2012, and that it is expected to be four billion euros this year, speaks to the achieved growth of the IT sector here." We see potential in artificial intelligence and biotechnology, and we see Serbia as a country that can be a regional leader in the development of global AI (Artificial intelligence) solutions, as well as a place where we will adopt artificial intelligence to enable the continuous transformation of our economy, so that it is more productive and knowledge-based”, said Brnabic. All of this, according to the Prime Minister, will result in people having better jobs and a higher level of living.

She introduced the attendees of the aforementioned summit to the goal of the strategy we have adopted, which is the development of AI in education, research and development, as well as the adoption of AI in a responsible and ethical manner, and noted that Serbia is the first country in the Southeast Europe region to adopt the artificial intelligence strategy in 2019.

In addition, the Prime Minister stated that we were the first country in SEE to build the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in 2021, as well as one of the 11 countries to introduce AI to primary and secondary schools.

According to her, we also approved detailed ethical standards for the application of artificial intelligence this year, with the goal of developing legislation that permit the rapid development of technologies and thereby being among Europe's leaders.

She stated that work is being done on the establishment of the BIO4 campus, with which Serbia hopes to create an ecosystem that allows for the development of biotechnological solutions with flexible rules that adhere to the highest ethical standards.