BAKU, Azerbaijan, Apr. 23
By Sadraddin Aghjayev – Trend:
Azerbaijan's private organizations specialized in robotics are closely cooperating with Canadian, Korean, German, Japanese and the UK companies on the ‘Robotics Programming Simulator’ program, Rashad Bayramov, adviser to the minister of transport, communications, and high technologies, told Trend.
According to Bayramov, the country in partnership with Japan produces robotics kits for schoolchildren.
"Given the importance of the development of artificial intelligence in strengthening the intellectual potential of our country, increasing the competitiveness and improving the position of Azerbaijan in international rankings, the Ministry of Transport, Communications, and High Technologies have formed a working group to prepare the draft National Strategy for the Development of Artificial Intelligence for 2021-2025 (Order A-154/20, December 2020). Work is already underway to prepare the appropriate strategic document," he said.
Besides, within the framework of the eSAS volunteer program, the ministry, jointly with Azerbaijan's 'Regional Development' public association and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), has begun collecting data for speech recognition in the Azerbaijani language, the adviser noted.
"The goal of the project is to accelerate and support the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning for speech recognition in Azerbaijani, the collection of large databases,” Bayramov further said. “At the initial stage, proposals were collected with the participation of eSAS volunteers for the preparation of the language corpus. The texts were posted in a special section on the open data website.az (ai.opendata.az). More than 350 hours of text were voiced within the framework of the project.”
According to him, the ministry also works closely with Microsoft Corporation, as well as with local private companies in the field of artificial intelligence.
He pointed out that UNESCO is currently developing ethical standards in the field of artificial intelligence.
"A three-day virtual sub-regional consultation was held to discuss draft recommendations on the ethics of artificial intelligence. The event was organized by the International Research Center on Artificial Intelligence (IRCAI) for the European Region (Group II), the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports of Slovenia, the Slovenian National Commission for UNESCO, and the headquarters of this organization," the official added.
The document is intended to ensure the observance of the rights enshrined in the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to provide support to the UNESCO member states in the study, design, development, and implementation of artificial intelligence systems.
"It’s expected that the final version of the project will be presented at the 41st session of the General Conference of UNESCO in November 2021 for adoption by the Member States," concluded Bayramov.
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