Israel is about to invest billions in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and is looking for a national director in the field to help the “Start-up Nation” throughout this change. Telem, the National Infrastructure Forum for Research and Development, has announced that it is on the lookout for a “director of a national program to accelerate the field of artificial intelligence and data science” in the country.

This forum is an “umbrella” organization that oversees multiple agencies, including the Higher Education Council’s Planning and Budget Committee, the Israel Innovation Authority, and the ministries of finance, science, and defense.

The goal is to hire a new director. The specified job requirements indicate that the forum is looking for an industry insider. “The director for this national program should be someone with deep knowledge of AI, experience with technology and management, and who is familiar with the public sector”, the organization stated.

Last December, the business newspaper TheMarker published a story on the work of an artificial intelligence committee led by Dr. Orna Berry. After 10 months of work, the committee established a plan to promote the area in Israel.

The committee concluded that, although the country has a bustling startup industry working with AI, there remain several relevant gaps in academia and in research, in sophisticated computer infrastructure (especially the lack of supercomputers), and in regulations that would allow AI applications to be used in both public and private sectors.

 

Between cybernetics and quantum computing

The members of Telem agreed with the organizational and operational infrastructure required to execute the program. “The main principle is establishing a sleek framework with functionalities, capabilities, and tools that already exist within Telem’s member entities”, stated the forum in its authorization letter.

This wording reflects the forum’s desire of not creating bloated government agencies that may become impossible to simplify or close down later on.

Telem’s plan is in competing, in a way, with a broader plan promoted by Professor Isaac Ben-Israel. He is considered to be the prime mover behind Israel’s National Cybernetics Board, an agency that employs hundreds of people.

The managing committee will supervise the plan’s implementation. Additionally, there will be an advisory committee – a volunteer group of scholars and industry experts who are at the cutting edge of the field and “up to speed on the material”.

The national AI plan is quite similar to the Israel National Quantum Initiative launched in 2019. The difference is that quantum technologies are still in their infancy – which means that it is still in the academic stage, and the number of Israeli startups in that field can be counted on two hands. AI, in turn, is already in the market stage, and there are thousands of Israeli startups in the field.

In other words, this is a scenario that suggests multiple opportunities in the sector in the next period. Not just opportunities within Israeli territory – due to the global character of its advancements, opportunities are presented for the entire technology sector, directly or indirectly influenced or related to the country.

We will closely monitor the arrival of these new opportunities.