European Commissioner Zaharieva: Europe can be a leader in the introduction and use of artificial intelligence

Europe has a unique opportunity to be a world leader in the introduction and application of artificial intelligence in industry. This was said by European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva in a video address during the official event at Sofia Tech Park on the occasion of the successful completion of the implementation of the project to upgrade the Bulgarian petascale supercomputer. Discoverer is part of the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU). The event is taking place at Sofia Tech Park, BTA reported.

Europe has a powerful scientific potential and will continue to develop the environment for its researchers through better infrastructure, better living and working conditions, and easier mobility, stressed Zaharieva.

According to her, today we are marking an important milestone for digital leadership in Europe. Bulgaria is among the leading countries of this transformation and this is something to be proud of, she said.

Zaharieva identified Discoverer as one of the good examples in the world of the benefits of European cooperation in the field of scientific research and innovation. According to her, supercomputers are essential for most scientific fields and industries that make Europe competitive with the strongest economies - from discovering new life-saving medicines to designing safer airplanes and more sustainable cars.

Discoverer has been a powerful tool for researchers since its launch in 2021, but today we are taking it to the next level, she said. According to her, the Bulgarian supercomputer will now be faster and capable of performing more complex tasks.

This upgrade also paves the way for the Bulgarian artificial intelligence factory, Zaharieva said.

The artificial intelligence factories will bring together the best in computing power, data and talent in one place to develop the most advanced artificial intelligence models and applications, she added.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Innovation and Growth Tomislav Donchev said that he was last in Sofia Tech Park four years ago, when the Discoverer was installed, and he thought that in a few years the machine would be outdated, but today he finds it in better condition, more powerful and smarter.

According to him, there is something called fear of the future, and this has accompanied humanity in recent centuries. When I have time, I like to collect critical comments regarding technical innovations. For example, when Stevenson invented the locomotive, there were quite a few comments that cows would start a revolution and that the human body could not withstand speeds greater than 40 km/h, Donchev noted.

 According to im, this is a normal reaction to the unknown. There are many comments, including those related to artificial intelligence - what should be our position on it. There are many comments from political forces, from unions, who advise us to protect people from artificial intelligence, so that it does not take their jobs, so that it does not manage them, so that it does not manipulate them. We have a chance to make a mistake. The future will come anyway, and if we resist it, we will be in line. We have a unique chance to bring the future faster, Donchev pointed out.

According to him, the presence of such capacities, technical and human capacity, and the field of artificial intelligence are among the factors that will determine the competitiveness of our economy in the coming years.

The project to upgrade Discoverer, located in Sofia Tech Park, is under the EuroHPC JU procedure, and it is the first supercomputer in the EU network to be upgraded since its creation in 2021. The modernization of the high-performance machine is in the context of the EuroHPC JU mission to deploy a world-leading supercomputer infrastructure in Europe.

Discoverer+ has a new class of functionalities and systems specialized for work in the field of artificial intelligence, thus meeting the growing needs in this technological area of ​​users - scientific communities, business and the public sector in Bulgaria and Europe.

The Bulgarian petascale supercomputer Discoverer has a computing power of 4.5 petaflops and a peak performance of 6 petaflops. It is in the world ranking of high-performance machines TOP 500. Discoverer is managed by the consortium "Petascale Supercomputer Bulgaria" with participants "Sofia Tech Park" AD, Association "National Center for Computer Applications" and Strategic Center for Artificial Intelligence. The organization unites knowledge and over 15 years of experience of Bulgarian scientists and engineers.