On September 21, the Tbilisi Marriott hosted the highly anticipated Georgia & Armenia Tech/AI Hub Summit 2023, a collaborative effort between Georgia-Based law firm Klein & Pantsulaia and Armenia-based law firm Klein & Iskandaryan. The Tech conference was sponsored again by GEORGIA TODAY, GT Business and Tbilisi Marriott. Speakers included Lineate, Devexperts (in the Fintech space), Quantori (in Healthcare IT) and MaxinAI. An AI workshop was also held by Professor Jose Romero, who is a Mexican Intellectual Property residing in Georgia. DataArt was also present as a special guest delegate.
The Summit was honored to have as a panelist Giorgi Tsikolia, Lineate´s Regional Director and formerly Deputy Chief of Mission (COO) Embassy of Georgia to the US.
The panelists spoke about the challenges of doing business in Georgia and Armenia. One issue that some subsidiaries of foreign IT companies faced was the new due diligence on bank accounts by their banks, carried out even if their accounts were a year or more old. Apparently, some of these companies had had their bank accounts frozen in the process.
The consensus of the speakers was that AI will not impact staff numbers at least for the time being. MaxinAI is a local Georgian AI consultancy which assists companies in Georgia and other countries to use Artificial Intelligence to improve systems, and processes. For example, it helps factories to become more efficient and reduce waste. Another greening example is using AI to improve power plant efficiencies, resulting in cost savings and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
There were heated discussions about software coders and their tendency to use the likes of ChatGPT (owned by Microsoft) to create or aid in coding. Several issues were discussed about the legality of such a use and also if the company where said IT engineer works would own the resulting software. The idea was floated suggesting that companies should probably review code created by staff to ensure that AI had not been utilized, as, if the percentage of code created by developers is in majority done using ChatGPT, they may well find that the real owner of the resulting software is Microsoft.
Klein & Pantsulaia also announced that they are setting up a new AI business consultancy based upon a joint venture with a local Georgian AI consultancy, which has dozens of AI consultants.
The next event will be similar to past events, but with a bigger focus on artificial intelligence. The Georgia & Armenia Tech/AI Summer Summit will be held at the Marriott Armenia in Yerevan in mid-November. The date may be adjusted in accordance with the political situation in Armenia as it develops. There will also be an interactive AI training workshop. Devexperts and Oracle are already confirmed as speakers for the event, and IT companies will also be invited.
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