By Steven Scheer
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel will launch a tender next month to build the country’s first supercomputer to ensure the country remains a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, the CEO of the state-run agency said backed Israel Innovation Authority Wednesday.
Dror Bin said at an AI conference that while AI has been a friend to Israel’s technology sector, without action it could turn into an enemy as AI is a rapidly evolving technology.
He noted that the administration has budgeted $250 million for a national AI program involving government, industry and academia – 60% of which will be implemented in 2024 and completed in 2027, possibly with increased funding.
Technology accounts for 20% of Israel’s economic output and the country is widely considered one of the largest technology centers in the world. Bin noted that of the 9,000 startups in Israel, more than 2,200 use AI and that Israel – with 73 – has the third most generative AI companies in the world.
“Our goal is to ensure that Israel maintains its leadership, ranking and position in the world AI race,” he said.
Bin said a supercomputer for training large artificial intelligence models was crucial in this regard.
“If a high-tech company or researcher wants to train a large model, they have to buy time in the cloud (since there is) no local data center with a significant number of GPUs (graphics processing units) that can train those models here,” he said.
The supercomputer, Bin added, will be available to researchers and companies at a lower cost than the market price.
(Reporting by Steven Scheer; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)