He shared his vision of how AI can become handy for the government at a conference in Moscow called'Artificial Intelligence Journey', which brought together 5,000 people, including representatives of over 1,000 companies working in the AI sphere. "AI technologies make it possible to get rid of the inertia and sluggishness of the bureaucratic machine to radically increase the transparency and efficiency of the administrative procedures," he said, adding that it could allow people to see "what the authorities are doing and what they are motivated by when taking certain decisions." Russia's red tape – and vast army of state and regional bureaucrats – have been quite an issue for the country for decades. The situation seems to have improved recently, as citizen-state interactions are done through computers more often. For AI to be more efficient, Putin said, it has to have wider access to various data – but there's a fine line between that and privacy rights, which must be protected.