Government Commissioner for Artificial Intelligence Lukáš Kačena outlines the Czech approach to AI: avoiding unnecessary national bureaucracy, supporting safe testing, and building adequate sovereign infrastructure.
How can we establish guidelines for implementing artificial intelligence in government and large enterprises to enable Czechia to rapidly capitalise on AI’s economic and innovation advantages, while ensuring quantifiable cybersecurity resilience and oversight of supply chain, data, and model-related risks?
This matter is vital to the long-term prosperity of the Czech economy. While it is essential that we do not hinder technological progress, we must remain vigilant regarding cybersecurity. Our strategy is structured around three key pillars.
Firstly, we are strictly adhering to the principle of “no gold-plating” as we transpose the European AI Act into national law. This ensures that no supplementary administrative burdens are imposed beyond the standard European framework. Our objective is to provide the public and private sectors with concise directives that address high-level risks exclusively. Meanwhile, low-risk market segments must remain unencumbered to preserve our competitive edge and facilitate rapid technological deployment.
Secondly, achieving economic growth requires a secure environment for experimentation. To this end, we are establishing a national AI sandbox – a dedicated regulatory testing framework. This initiative will allow innovators, enterprises, and public bodies to pilot new models in real-world scenarios under government oversight. This collaborative approach will enable us to refine cyber resilience and supply chain security protocols prior to widespread implementation.
Thirdly, achieving true strategic autonomy is impossible if we remain solely dependent on opaque, foreign-made “black box” systems. We are, therefore, prioritising technological sovereignty by developing our own AI infrastructure. This strategy includes expanding our domestic computing power – as seen with the AI Factory project in Ostrava – and promoting the use of auditable open-source models.
Our vision for the Czech Republic is straightforward: minimal bureaucracy, safe testing environments, and a strong, self-reliant infrastructure.
