Brazil could be about to roll out its own artificial intelligence (AI) plan, involving 23 billion real (about US$4 billion, or 32 billion patacas) of government investment over four years, International Valor reports.
The country’s national science council presented the proposal to President Luiz Inácio Lula last week. Its report highlighted that the US and Chinese governments had already invested many times that amount in their AI sectors – and implied it was time the South American giant made moves to catch up and improve its own technological autonomy.
Lula has shown enthusiasm for the proposed plan, which has been dubbed ‘AI for the Good of All’. After the presentation, he promised that the council’s work would not “just sit in a drawer” and agreed to discuss its proposal with ministers this week.
[See more: Brazil invites Chinese participation in its ‘neo-industrialisation’ process]
“Instead of waiting for AI to come from China, the US, South Korea, Japan, why not have our own?” Reuters reported Lula as saying. “Our artificial intelligence needs to be intelligent, it needs to be a source of income and employment.”
If accepted, the wide-ranging plan would allocate 1.1 billion real towards building a Portuguese-language AI model within 12 months and invest almost 14 billion real into supporting local businesses and startups developing AI technology. The national science council also proposed establishing a national research and study centre on AI risks, launching related scholarships and developing telehealth tools.
Brazil’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Minister Luciana Santos has said that one of the plan’s major projects would involve migrating classified data to a government-managed cloud environment by 2027, to avoid reliance on infrastructure developed by international companies.
