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Technology in the quest for status: the Russian leadership’s artificial intelligence narrative

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Abstract

The gap between Russia’s aspirations to become a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to do so has become increasingly more visible, especially following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. I examine the mismatch between the Russian leadership’s AI narrative and the country’s technological capabilities via the lens of Russia’s quest for great power status and ontological security. Connecting literatures on status-seeking, ontological security, and narratives in International Relations, I show the need to scrutinise narratives surrounding technology, especially AI technologies and their associated ambiguities, as part of how states deal with the constant uncertainty about recognition of their self-perceived identity. Based on an analysis of textual and visual documents collected via open-access sources, I find that the Russian official AI narrative embeds three of the elements forming Russia’s conception of a great power, namely the ability to compete, modernise, and attain technological sovereignty. It features a plot where the state is the main protagonist leading Russia towards AI leadership despite the obstacles it is facing. Although the official rhetoric does not match the reality of Russian capabilities, the narrative is used as a cognitive tool in the quest for identity during times of uncertainty.

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Fig. 1

Source Government of Russia (2019), CC BY 4.0

Fig. 2

Source President of Russia 2017), CC BY 4.0

Fig. 3

Source JSC Marka (2021), public domain

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Notes

  1. In Russia, as elsewhere, the term ‘AI’ is employed by various actors to often mean different fields of study or computational techniques. The 2019 Russian National AI Strategy defines AI as a ‘collection of technological solutions that allow one to simulate human cognitive processes (including self-learning and the search for solutions without using a previously supplied algorithm) and to get results, when accomplishing concrete tasks, that are at least comparable with those of the human intellect’ (Nocetti 2020: 19).

  2. I would like to clarify that I do not intend to defend or elevate in any way the Kremlin’s narratives about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. See this journal’s 2023 special issue on the politics of knowledge production, expertise and (self) reflection in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

  3. These are not the only elements of Russia’s conception of great power status. Other crucial aspects include the possession of nuclear weapons, historical and cultural status, as well as military action abroad (Clunan 2014; Götz 2019; Götz and Staun 2022; Nadibaidze 2022; Neumann 2008). However, I focus on these specific elements due to their prominence in Russia’s official AI narrative.

  4. The initial search was conducted via the websites of the President of Russia, the Russian Government, as well as three main news agencies: Interfax, RIA Novosti and TASS. I have complemented these searches with relevant articles, photos, videos, and interviews with state officials from other media outlets. I have accessed most sources in Russian and translated them myself, except when official English versions were already available. The main list of sources can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10361033.

  5. I used the search function in each online resource to find documents related to the keyword ‘artificial intelligence (иcкyccтвeнный интeллeкт)’. From the search results, I manually selected documents related to the Russian political and military leadership, including interviews, articles, photos, and videos. As visual depictions of AI often take the form of anthropomorphised robots and robotic systems, my analysis of visual documents also integrates robotics.

  6. The narrative analysis also integrates some relevant documents outside of this timeframe. For instance, Putin famously declared in September 2017 that whoever masters AI ‘will rule the world’ (TASS 2017). However, in this article I do not consider this as the moment when the AI theme became more prominent in the Russian official discourse.

  7. In 2023, the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok featured an orchestra performance of a symphony reportedly ‘created’ by a neural network from Russian state corporation Sber.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the journal’s editors and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive and helpful suggestions. I would like to thank everyone who has provided feedback on earlier drafts and presentations of this article, especially Ingvild Bode, Vincent Keating, Maria Mälksoo, Sergey Utkin, Marc De Vore, Emil Archambault, Jenny Jun, and my colleagues at the Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark.

Funding

This research is part of a project which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 852123). The main dataset for this article is available open access at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10361033.

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    Anna Nadibaidze

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Nadibaidze, A. Technology in the quest for status: the Russian leadership’s artificial intelligence narrative. J Int Relat Dev (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-023-00322-1

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