AI Alliance serves as a platform facilitating collaboration between universities and businesses in the realm of artificial intelligence

The AI Alliance has announced the creation of a platform that facilitates interaction between businesses and universities, aiming to introduce new approaches to education in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and address the issue of staff shortage. Alexander Vedyakhin, First Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sberbank, made this announcement at SPIEF-2023. Sberbank, along with Gazprom Neft, Yandex, VK, and others, is among the founding members of the AI Alliance.

According to Alexander Vedyakhin, “The global trends in the field of artificial intelligence are changing the labor market and require a more effective education system and new mechanisms of interaction between business and universities. For this purpose, an expert platform for interaction between universities and businesses on the quality of training in the field of artificial intelligence is being created based on the Alliance’s flagship initiative ‘Rating of universities on the quality of training in the field of AI’. The result should be important changes in the system of higher education in our country.”

The platform serves as a continuous dialogue space, as Vedyakhin states, “The platform is a place for continuous dialogue, which is necessary to ‘synchronize’ the educational process with the requirements of the market for professions, to support universities, the best teachers, and researchers, and to improve the quality of training in the field of AI.”

The main areas of work within the platform, as Vedyakhin highlights, include “support and constant updating of the matrix of professions and competencies in the field of artificial intelligence, analysis of the quality of educational programs and training of graduates, consultations for universities, which will help to identify points of growth and improve the effectiveness of the educational process, scaling of best practices of teaching AI disciplines, assistance in creating and developing industry programs on AI, mass professional development for teachers on the Alliance’s and member companies’ courses, a program of mass work with the Alliance’s and the companies participating in the Alliance’s program.”

Ilya Dementiev, Rector of Gazprom Neft Corporate University, expresses their goals, stating, “Gazprom Neft is actively involved in the development of professional IT education in Russia. We want to achieve ‘synchronization’ of the educational process with the requirements of the market to the profession, to increase by 2-3 times the number of quality specialists in Artificial Intelligence that universities produce annually. That is about 4000 additional graduates that the economy needs. Gazprom Neft alone will have about 1,000 vacancies for them by 2030. To ensure that the quality and quantity of specialists needed by the industry grows, we are creating joint educational programs, accrediting existing university training programs, and creating new competency models and educational standards.”

Alexander Krainov, Director of Artificial Intelligence Technology Development at Yandex, emphasizes the importance of updating and improving educational programs, stating, “It is not so much the number of specialists graduated by universities that is extremely important, but their quality. The main metric for the quality of graduates is their employability. Yandex has long partnered with leading universities and is developing its own educational projects. We are well aware that without constant updating and improvement of educational programs, it is impossible to train modern specialists in IT in general and in AI in particular.”

Andrei Kalinin, VK Vice President for Artificial Intelligence Technologies, stresses the significance of practical cases in training AI specialists, stating, “The development of artificial intelligence technologies in the coming years will be the basis for the growth of the digital economy, and training professionals in this area is one of the priority areas. VK has been engaged in IT education in Russia for many years, including training professionals in the field of AI. One of the most important aspects of training such specialists is working with practical cases from business: for knowledge to be applicable.

The university rating on the quality of AI training is being developed in accordance with the President of the Russian Federation’s Order from January 29, 2023, which resulted from the AI Journey 2022 International Conference. The publication of the rating results is planned for this year.

About AI Alliance:
The AI Alliance unites leading AI technology companies to foster AI development in Russia, ensuring technological leadership for both the country and its member companies in the global technology market. The alliance includes prominent companies such as Sberbank, Gazprom Neft, Yandex, VK, RDIF, Sibur, Uralchem, Rusagro, Severstal, and GK Samolet. Key activities of the alliance include the creation of the AI People profession, the development of a new generation of teachers, and the advancement of educational programs in AI.