ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE NATIONAL PLATFORM PRESENTED

BANJA LUKA, JUNE 19 /SRNA/ – The National Artificial Intelligence Development Platform was presented in Banja Luka today, providing modern technological infrastructure intended for the development, testing and deployment of AI-based solutions.

Dražen Višnjić, Director of the Republika Srpska Information and Communication Technologies Agency, said that the launch marks the beginning of joint development and implementation of artificial intelligence projects, which will directly contribute to the advancement of information and communication sciences in the field of AI.

"If the steam engine was the catalyst of the First Industrial Revolution, artificial intelligence is the catalyst of the Fourth. No scientific discipline has penetrated every field of applied science as extensively as artificial intelligence," Višnjić told reporters in Banja Luka, stressing that a society that does not participate in developing its own AI models has little place in the 21st century.

Bogdan Stešević, head of the Artificial Intelligence Development and Application Group within Serbia's Office for IT and eGovernment, said it is crucial that the Serbian language and historical heritage be represented through AI models in today's digital world.

Slobodan Marković, Digital Technologies Advisor with the United Nations Development Programme /UNDP/ in Serbia, emphasized the importance of developing language technologies for the Serbian language, noting that artificial intelligence has become the primary means through which culture is reproduced.

"In the past, newspapers and television played that role. Today, much of what a culture reproduces is generated through artificial intelligence, which increasingly mediates our interactions," Marković said.

The Republika Srpska Information and Communication Technologies Agency and the Serbian Government's Office for IT and eGovernment signed a cooperation agreement granting researchers, academic institutions, institutes and startup companies from Republika Srpska access to the capacities of the National Artificial Intelligence Development Platform, located at the State Data Center in Kragujevac.

Users will have access to advanced computing resources for scientific research, the development and training of machine-learning models, analysis of large datasets and the testing and deployment of various artificial intelligence solutions.