How SAIFA will change Serbia – AI “antenna factory” drives innovation, modernizes healthcare and agriculture and promotes the Serbian language in Europe

Serbia is one of 13 countries in Europe that, thanks to good projects, were selected as future hubs that will be connected to European supercomputers in AI factories across the EU in the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU - European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking) competition. The so-called AI Factory Antennas will be established, in addition to Serbia, in Belgium, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Hungary, Slovakia, North Macedonia, the United Kingdom, Iceland, Cyprus, Switzerland and Moldova (7 EU member states and 6 associated countries).

That Serbia will be among the countries selected for AI “antenna factories” in Europe, was announced a few days ago by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

The Serbian “antenna factory” for artificial intelligence, called SAIFA (Serbian Artificial Intelligence Antenna Factory), aims to become a national center supporting the entire life cycle of innovations in the field of artificial intelligence, according to the EuroHPC JU website.

In fact, it will serve as a national platform for the development, testing and deployment of AI technologies.

SAIFA will be connected to the already existing European AI factories in Greece and Italy - Pharos AI Factory and IT4LIA AI Factory, through the integration of the existing national HPC (High-Performance Computing) infrastructure, which will enable the validation, testing and scalable deployment of AI solutions across Europe.

This will, in turn, provide access to European computing resources, AI tools, datasets and consulting services for academia, public administration, startups and industry.

Interestingly, Serbia has chosen to focus on the sectors of culture and language, sustainability, health and agriculture through the SAIFA project.

The SAIFA project is coordinated by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, and the consortium members are the Faculty of Science and Mathematics, University of Kragujevac, Institute of Physics, Belgrade, Mihajlo Pupin Institute, Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Institute of Molecular Genetics and Genetic Engineering, University of Belgrade, Faculty of Economics, Finance and Administration, Metropolitan University, and the Office for Information Technology and e-Government.

The website of the Kragujevac Faculty of Electrical Engineering emphasizes that the importance of this project, which will receive financial support of EUR 3.8 million from the European Union, is enormous, and that the connection with the domestic HPC infrastructure will contribute to the further development of artificial intelligence in Serbia.

What SAIFA brings to the economy

The economy, and especially startups and technology companies in Serbia, can benefit concretely from the SAIFA project thanks to access to powerful European AI and HPC resources - startups and small businesses, which do not have their own infrastructure, will be able to use supercomputers and AI tools to develop and test their solutions, thus reducing initial costs, which is crucial for innovation and facilitating entry into the European market.

Support in specific sectors that Serbia has chosen will be key - agriculture, healthcare, language and culture, and sustainability.

Companies can use SAIFA’s HPC resources to train and optimize AI models that serve as chatbots for customer support, for big data analysis for business decisions, automation of production processes, for testing AI tools for medical diagnostics, and also in agriculture for AI solutions for crop monitoring, yield prediction, etc.

SAIFA can help these solutions be developed and commercialized faster.

In addition to the economy, SAIFA will also be useful for the academic community - researchers and students will have access to advanced AI tools for research, public administration - institutions will be able to use European AI resources for more efficient management and provision of services to citizens, as well as for national culture and language - preservation and digitization of cultural heritage and development of tools for processing the Serbian language.

Speak Serbian so that the whole of Europe understands you

The latter can significantly contribute to the development of the Serbian language in the European and even global digital space, through the training of AI models specialized in the Serbian language and improved accuracy in understanding, translating and generating content in the Serbian language.

Thanks to Saifa, domestic companies can develop chatbots and voice assistants that communicate naturally in the Serbian language, and in this way, various systems in Europe will become capable of understanding our language, so that, for example, one day AI chatbots in EU institutions may also offer Serbian as an option.

B. P.

ETF Beograd

Prirodno matematički fakultet Kragujevac

Institut za fiziku Beograd

Institut Mihajlo Pupin doo Beograd

Istraživačko-razvojni Institut za veštačku inteligenciju Srbije Novi Sad

Institut za molekularnu genetiku i genetičko inženjerstvo Beograd

Univerzitet Metropolitan Beograd

Kancelarija za informacione tehnologije i elektronsku upravu Beograd

EuroHPC Joint Undertaking

Faculty of Electrical Engineering University of Belgrade

Faculty of Science and Mathematics University of Kragujevac

Institute of Physics Belgrade

Mihajlo Pupin Institute

Institute of Artificial Intelligence

Institute of Molecular Genetics and Genetic Engineering University of Belgrade

Faculty of Economics Finance and Administration Metropolitan University

Office for Information Technology and eGovernment

SAIFA

Serbian Artificial Intelligence Antenna Factory

Serbian AI antenna factory

Pharos AI Factory

IT4LIA AI Factory