Romania's first artificial intelligence factory - RO AI Factory, a European project hosted by the National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics (ICI) Bucharest, could become operational in the first part of 2027, ICI Bucharest General Director Adrian-Victor Vevera said on Monday.

'Starting this year, Romania has a European project on the map: the first artificial intelligence factory, RO AI Factory. It will be hosted by the National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics, ICI Bucharest. We are the hosting entity of this project. Together with a consortium, we will develop the service component, which includes Politehnica Bucharest, the National Council of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, the Artificial Intelligence Institute in Cluj and the Institute of Bioresources. This project does not come out of nowhere. The ICI has been involved for at least four years in European Hypercomputing projects. We are the national competence centre for Hypercomputing. We then joined the project managed by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, an artificial intelligence factory built on the structure of the Barcelona supercomputer. We are involved in these projects, but the time has come, in the third wave of the development of the European artificial intelligence network: Romania has put a flag on the map. We are here, we are present and we hope that next year, sometime in March, April or May, depending on how this project develops, it will be fully operational. We will open the doors to be part of this ecosystem,' Adrian-Victor Vevera said at the official opening of the event called 'Bucharest Leaders Summit: United for a Better World.'

According to him, ICI Bucharest has started building the RO AI Factory ecosystem and has issued invitations to the private, public, research and academic sectors for partnership.

The head of the institution believes that new technology, artificial intelligence, is 'part of any conflict, in any hot war or in any cold war.'

'It is part of what the cybersecurity area means, it is part of the data manipulation space, because we see deepfakes. Artificial intelligence can generate many things which, of course, may or may not be real. As far as artificial intelligence is concerned, we must take into account the area of data sets, because data sets are becoming a weapon in any future conflict. Data will be that gold mine in the future. They already are,' the ICI Bucharest General Director said.

According to him, in order to continue protecting Romania, we will need to be much more attentive and better prepared when it comes to technology.

'It is no longer any secret that there are applications used for security purposes. We are talking about Palantir [Palantir Technologies - a US company specialising in data analytics software], which started before 2020. Any conflict of the future will also involve this merging of human and technology. It remains to be discussed how technology will be used ethically. In order to protect Romania, we must understand technology. We are surrounded by technology - and ultimately what matters is that the outcome is what we want, that greater, prosperous, beautiful Romania in which we want to live and which we want to prepare for our children and grandchildren, to be built by us with the help of technology. We will no longer be able to do anything without technology, but it is essential that the connection between people is not lost, that this interaction is not lost, that bridges are created because, in the end, without that handshake, only data remains, only flat things remain, things not devoid of life, but devoid of emotion and empathy,' Adrian-Victor Vevera added. AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Nicoleta Banciulea; EN - writing by: Rodica State)