Although Serbia has traditionally lagged behind in adopting new technologies, this time the country has "caught the train" when it comes to artificial intelligence, a journalist from Newsmax Balkans said while introducing Dr. Marija Mitrović Dankulov from the HPC Serbia.

Speaking on the program, Dr. Mitrović Dankulov discussed the development of AI in Serbia, the country's growing ecosystem, available expertise, and future opportunities. She emphasized that Serbia already has internationally recognized AI experts, strong research teams, a significant number of startups focused on artificial intelligence, and considerable computing resources.

She highlighted several sectors in which AI is rapidly advancing, including cybersecurity, energy, environmental protection, and the preservation of language and cultural heritage. Particular attention was given to healthcare, where AI has the potential to dramatically improve the speed of diagnostics, enable more precise treatments, support medical decision-making, and accelerate the discovery of new drugs.

Dr. Mitrović Dankulov also pointed to the launch of the SAIFA project in May 2026. The initiative brings together a multidisciplinary team of researchers and experts from eight Serbian institutions, tasked with developing AI models and datasets in the coming years. In addition, the project aims to provide free training programs for industry, academia, and the public sector, helping organizations adopt new AI solutions more quickly and efficiently while also enabling Serbia to gain better access to European resources and infrastructure.

"We are a small country, and international financial support is certainly necessary", she said. "We do not have the capacity to independently finance advanced supercomputing resources, although Serbia is not doing badly in this area. Europe has been developing exascale supercomputers for the past six years, and through European projects we are able to access them. These are extremely powerful systems capable of processing enormous amounts of data and training large-scale AI models in a very short time".

Discussing Serbia's European partnerships in the field of artificial intelligence, Dr. Mitrović Dankulov said that through initiatives such as SAIFA and EuroCC3 — a network of national competence centers for high-performance computing and AI — Serbia has established valuable partnerships with experts and institutions across 35 countries, creating opportunities for collaboration and knowledge exchange.

Among Europe's leaders in artificial intelligence, she singled out France, which has developed the highly advanced Mistral large language model that Serbia is expected to use in the future, as well as Germany and Finland.