Nikita Korolev on the bleak prospects of scientific research in Russia
the launch of state programs was studied by the correspondent of the media and telecommunications department Nikita Korolev
Not that very often, but in the work of a journalist there are situations when the newsmaker who confirmed the information, after the publication of the article, suddenly refuses his words. But so that overnight an entire federal program would suddenly disappear from the government's plans is an almost unique case. Nevertheless, it seems that such unexpected consequences were caused by Kommersant's note about the possibility of allocating 54 billion rubles. state support for neurointerface technology (see Kommersant on June 22) within the framework of the Brain: Health, Intelligence, Innovation program.
On the eve, nothing foreshadowed. The Ministry of Education and Science gave a detailed answer to the inquiry with full confirmation and a lot of details: “In the draft federal program“ Brain: Health, Intelligence, Innovation ”, three areas are highlighted: basic brain research, biomedical research, neurotechnological direction. The program is designed for nine years, models and architectures of cognitive computing systems will be developed, capable of self-organized learning, adaptive change of their own architecture based on the goal. Autonomous training systems will also be proposed for the recognition of complex images for the formation of a goal, a situation, and forecasting the development of a decision-making situation. “
On the morning of June 22, my interlocutors in the government, noting the “somewhat provocative nature” of the material, admitted that it could draw attention to the problems of funding fundamental research. But by lunchtime, the situation had changed dramatically. Colleagues began to reprint material with the headlines “Chipization seemed fantastic, but it was on the doorstep,” “There will be cyborgs next,” “Putin allowed chips to be inserted into the brains of Russians.”
Thus, the idea of neural interfaces being developed all over the world was turned by a damaged phone into a banal scarecrow for people far from science in a couple of hours.
Apparently, the information wave has caused extreme discontent among the leading officials. “We have vaccinations going on here, and you are writing about chipping,” complained one of my sources.
The funny thing is that, although neurointerfaces are not directly related to chipping, even the Ministry of Education itself began to call the technology that way. As a result, closer to lunchtime, the ministry sent out a message that “the development of a federal program for brain chipping is not underway, at the end of 2020 it was recognized as inappropriate.” In response to my sincere bewilderment (and the official comment of June 21, which is in black and white in the e-mail box), the Ministry of Education and Science only asked me not to be angry. This is how an elementary distortion washed away state support for a whole layer of Russian science and medicine. We can only hope that after the completion of vaccination, they will return to him on the sly.
Read also:
