The Coming Age of Artificial Intelligence: Challenge or Opportunity for Armenian Tech?

The Coming Age of Artificial Intelligence: Challenge or Opportunity for Armenian Tech? Raffi Kassarjian

Why Tech Matters

The idea behind this column is simple: while we often reference the incredible global asset that the Diaspora is for Armenia, we have yet to find a formula for the systemic engagement of this asset for Armenia’s development. Yes, there are ample individual examples of diaspora-Armenia cooperation leading to significant progress forward for the country, but no structured, concentrated and coordinated effort to put into play the full force of the diasporan network across sectors of Armenia’s economy. Over the next few months, we will explore not only successful examples of this cooperation, but highlight areas where a similar approach will lead to outsize benefits. 

Raffi Kassarjian is CEO and Principal Advisor at Sensyan, a boutique advisory firm focused on the growing Armenian tech sector. Since moving to Armenia in 2008, Raffi has led the following organizations as CEO: iCON Communications (pioneer wireless internet service provider), TeamViewer Armenia (also serving as Senior Vice President at TeamViewer GmbH), and the Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises (UATE). He was also a member of the Management Board of Converse Bank Corporation. Previously, Raffi was Vice President and General Manager at Fair Isaac Corporation (NYSE: FICO). Prior to Fair Isaac, he was a Senior Manager with Accenture’s Strategic Services practice.

Raffi is an adjunct lecturer at the American University of Armenia, and founding board member of Repat Armenia Foundation, Impact Hub Yerevan, and EVN Report.

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This week, I taught the first two sessions of a new course developed for Master’s of Engineering students at the American University of Armenia (AUA). The course,“Technology, Ethics and Society in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” has as its central theme a thesis present since humans first began to form tools and technologies to help conquer the world around them: our ability to develop new technologies often outpaces our individual and collective capacities to understand and take into account how these technologies affect the world we live in. The course is intended to equip future technologists with the ethical and societal context in which they and their peers will develop technology, and hopefully imbue a sense of responsibility to take ownership of the potential impact of their inventions, products and services.

The course begins with a discussion of how earlier forms of technology such as the printing press, the steam engine and the atomic bomb, fundamentally changed the structure and development of societies. We then cover how Artificial Intelligence works, and more importantly, how rapidly it’s affecting areas such as education, healthcare, warfare, governance and work in general, especially as more and more tasks and decisions can be executed autonomously by AI algorithms. Another area of interest is the danger of AI-generated content – whether artistic, creative, or “deep fakes” – potentially being used to impact public opinion and mobilize large groups to achieve specific [nefarious] objectives. The ultimate question is whether our steady progress towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will lead to the subservience of humans to entities they created, a subject not easily covered in a monthly column.

While there is a wide, diverse and growing global debate on the merits [and dangers] of AI, what are the implications for Armenia, and Armenian tech? Any discussion of the impact of AI on small but important tech industries such as Armenia’s must necessarily address the danger that AI solutions (in particular models which can write code better and faster than software developers) will have on Armenia’s software tech sector, particularly outsourcing/offshoring firms whose central value proposition is to provide competitive software “labor” for customers around the world. Globally, these types of companies are in the process of redefining their core value propositions against the onslaught of machine-developed code. Similarly, can scrappier AI-focused start-ups compete against massive Large Language Models (LLMs) developed by the global tech giants: Alphabet (Google), Apple, Amazon, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla? Another theme covered in the class is the impact on white-collar jobs, much as automation seriously impacted blue-collar/manufacturing jobs during the last several decades. Finally, there is the issue of “algorithmic bias”, where AI models are trained on data from a particular set of content (geographic, class, race, etc.), to the benefit of certain groups at the expense of others.

Software Development vs. Building Successful Businesses

As always, the likely outcome is more nuanced than the widely diverging scenarios alarmists and optimists paint about an AI and AGI-infused world. Regarding software development, many argue that AI-assisted code generation is the next evolution of innovations such as higher order languages, object libraries and callable services which have all significantly improved the productivity and quality of code written by developers. Indeed, the best software development teams treat AI not as a source of competition or path to extinction, but rather as a super-charged toolset to help accelerate and refine the development of new products and services. In fact, one could argue that the advent of AI-generated code places even more emphasis on the “soft” skills needed to develop successful product and service in areas such as product management, marketing, sales and general management. In other words, even if AI solutions take over the “how” of developing new solutions, decisions such as what to build, where and who to sell it to, and how to deal with market and competitive forces remain clearly in the domain of human experience and judgement. As Marty Cagan, a leading expert on product management, emphasizes, the focus should be on leveraging AI to enhance human creativity and effectiveness, rather than replace it.

Competing with the Global Giants

While the “Magnificent Seven” will continue to lead the development of general-purpose LLMs, as well as highly complex technologies such as self-driving cars, 2025 has been labeled the year of “vertical AI solutions”. In contrast with Chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini or Microsoft’s Co-pilot, which are equipped to handle general questions, vertical AI agents are purpose-built to automate/assist in specific tasks. One example is Armenian tech company Krisp’s AI Meeting Assistant, which helps to transcribe, summarize and even list action items for each meeting participant for meetings using Krisp’s AI-based background noise cancellation solution. Similarly, Armenian unicorn Picsart’s AI Image Generator helps content creators generate images, videos and other content based on specific instructions. In each case, the Armenian company has integrated LLMs developed by larger organizations into the specific workflow and user experience of their core solutions. For a more scientific research-oriented example, the research team at YerevaNN, led by Hrant Khachatrian, fine-tuned LLMs developed for chemical compound analysis to work more effectively with small molecules to impressive results.

Algorithmic Bias: Opportunity for Armenian Tech?

Most research on algorithmic bias focuses on the impact within societies, in particular how they can negatively affect less-represented groups. Another, broader challenge exists, one which could create opportunities for Armenian tech startups: Many products are developed first for large, attractive markets, usually defined as developed countries in Europe and North America. Chinese and Indian unicorns circumvent this challenge by relying on their access to large internal markets (and data). Where does that leave the large number of smaller, developing nations? Could Armenia take the lead in developing AI agents that address customer needs in these markets? One challenge facing producers in developing countries is the significant language/cultural barrier they face when trying to identify, contact and establish commercial relationships with customers in larger markets. What if an Armenian venture created an easy-to-use platform that could help producers in developing countries research and identify target customers in specific markets, and then refine the producer’s initial value proposition by transforming it into a language, style and positioning that best matches their target market’s nuances? While this could first benefit Armenian producers of products as varied as dried fruit, canned goods and wine, it could easily be scaled to meet the needs of customers in similar markets.

Forging a Path Ahead

In the first session of the Ethics and AI course, we discussed two inventions which had consequences unanticipated by their creators. Richard Gatling, a physician who invented the Gatling Gun (the world’s first machine gun) during the American Civil War, had the following objective: “It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine gun which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease would be greatly diminished.” Ironically, in seeking to reduce the amount of death and destruction in war, Gatling inadvertently contributed to the massively augmented capability to kill in World War I and beyond.

The second example was the Global Positioning System (GPS), initially developed by the US Department of Defense to improve the accuracy of navigation for aircraft, ships, and ground forces, missile guidance and precision targeting, and provide global situational awareness for military operations. In other words, the technology was developed to make the business of death and destruction more accurate and effective. Today, GPS is a fundamental technology used by billions of people around the world to make navigation and travel safer and more secure.

As we consider the impact of the coming age of AI on Armenian tech, let’s keep an open mind on how we perceive challenges and opportunities, and understand that where we intend to go isn’t always where we end up going.

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