The Armenian government approved the Physical Artificial Intelligence Program.
“The proposed initiative stems from our strategic priorities in several areas at once,” said the Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport Zhanna Andreasyan.
“1. The first point I would particularly like to emphasize is the aspect of our science strategy that calls for investment in science by both the state and the private sector.
2. The second objective of this program is to promote more active scientific research at universities.
3. Another expected outcome is an improvement in university rankings, which we can achieve through this broader cooperation and improvements in the quality of research and education.
The proposal calls for approving a seven-year Physical Artificial Intelligence Program to be implemented through public-private cooperation and co-financing.
The program aims to build internationally competitive research and educational capabilities at the intersection of robotics and AI at Yerevan State University, the National Polytechnic University of Armenia and the American University of Armenia,” the minister said.
Zhanna Andreasyan noted that at least $14 million in investment is planned over the program’s seven years, with half coming from the state and half from the private sector. “In the first year, we will allocate AMD 168.4 million in state funding. This will primarily go toward scientists’ base salaries,” Andreasyan said.
“Clearly, we all interact with AI, which is developing rapidly, and a very natural question arises: what comes next? Naturally, AI and its tools will continue to develop,” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan noted.
“Our task, together with our partners already working in the AI sector in Armenia, is the following: we aim to build a skilled workforce at specific educational institutions and also establish laboratories where this software-based artificial intelligence will interact and integrate with physical objects, or where issues in this field will be studied. Of course, the long-term strategic goal is to make Armenia an attractive destination for investment in this area, because it is clear that a huge share of industrial investment in the coming years will focus on this.
Taking advantage of the fact that we have considerable expertise in the Diaspora, in the form of specialists working in this field who want to see it develop in Armenia, we are now making this decision so that we can create opportunities for such developments starting at the educational level,” Nikol Pashinyan said.
