László Palkovics, the government commissioner responsible for artificial intelligence, presented the most important elements of Hungary’s AI strategy in a comprehensive interview. According to plans, artificial intelligence education in primary schools could start as early as September, which could mean a epochal change in Hungarian education.

The government commissioner emphasized that artificial intelligence is not “brain surgery”, but a mathematical tool that learns relationships from past data and helps make decisions or complete tasks based on this. This approach can help society become less afraid of new technology.

Hungary has taken a significant step towards entering the world of supercomputing. Through a collaboration with the German Jülich research center, the country can access Europe’s largest computing capacity of 800 petaflops. The 1.6 exaflops supercomputer requires 100-120 megawatts of power, which is equivalent to the power of a Paks block.

The government has set ambitious goals in terms of economic impacts: artificial intelligence should increase Hungary’s GDP by 15 percent by 2030. This will also be supported by a private investment of 3 billion euros, which will require a huge amount of energy, but the heat generated can also be used for agricultural purposes.

In the field of education, the government commissioner says that teachers can already start teaching AI within the framework of curricula. He recommends using ChatGPT and similar tools, but emphasizes that one’s own knowledge and thinking will always remain the most important. AI knowledge will increasingly be an expectation on the labor market – in America, the number of job advertisements requesting AI knowledge increased fiftyfold last year.

The interest in humanoid robots deserves special attention. According to the government commissioner, they are considering creating a second test environment – the first for the ZalaZONE self-driving cars in Zala – which would serve humanoid and dog-like robots. This development is in line with his vision that anyone who can manufacture cars can also manufacture robots, and Hungary can be a leader in this field as well.