'Whoever controls AI will control the future of states:' Israel's AI Chief launches impact institute
The new institute will focus on nine national challenges, among them the health system, aging population, education, and national resilience. Its goal is to implement five missions within a year
Brig. Gen. (res.) Erez Askal, head of the National AI Staff in the Prime Minister’s Office, delivered the opening lecture at AI Week at Tel Aviv University. “We are at the threshold of a different sovereign reality,” he said. “Within a few years, national infrastructures will operate based on artificial intelligence; whoever controls it will control the switch of states.”
To lead in the field, Askal said, Israel must build technological sovereignty across the main layers: investing in energy, computing power, a national model, quantum computing and training of personnel. The targets he presented include an energy infrastructure of 2 gigawatts, 100,000 GPU processors, a sovereign foundation model and an Israeli quantum computer.
Alongside building infrastructure, he said, Israel must develop an ecosystem of fair AI that can be trusted, with clear responsibility for how it operates and its results. He also pointed to AI security, using AI for cyber defense and defending AI systems.
Israel also launched the National Institute for Impact Oriented AI (NIIA), part of the National AI Staff in the Prime Minister’s Office. It is meant to narrow the gap between AI’s technological capabilities and their practical use to improve citizens’ lives, by connecting government ministries, industry, academia, civil society and philanthropy. Its work will focus on nine national challenges, among them the health system, aging population, education, national resilience, environment and climate, equality and economic growth.
Askal presented a plan to take on ten challenges a year for five years, identifying in each the main barrier: regulation, data, technology or process. Examples include fourth-grade math, traffic congestion on Highway 6 and the first meeting between a doctor and a patient.
The initial work plan calls for 10 to 14 missions a year, with a goal of bringing five of the first ten to the implementation stage within a year. The emphasis is not only on developing technologies or running pilots, but on creating measurable change in daily life and handing solutions to bodies that can operate them independently and over the long term.