ASTANA – Kazakhstan has expressed its intention to join the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), as announced by Minister of Digital Development, Innovations, and Aerospace Industry Zhaslan Madiyev at the AI Action Summit in Paris on Feb. 10-11, reported the ministry’s press service.
AI Action Summit in Paris. Photo credit: gov.kz
GPAI is an international initiative that promotes the responsible development of AI in a manner that respects human rights and the shared democratic values of its members. Canada and France proposed the partnership in 2018, and it was launched in 2020. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) hosts the partnership.
At the event, Kazakhstan was among seven countries expressing interest in joining GPAI, alongside Cambodia, Malta, Romania, Croatia, Rwanda, and Morocco. Overall, the summit was attended by representatives of 44 countries.
Madiyev highlighted Kazakhstan’s progress in digital transformation and AI development strategy, introducing the Alem.AI center, which aims to foster innovation, accelerate startup growth, and support AI research.
“We are committed to developing human capital through comprehensive educational programs that will train 200,000 citizens annually in AI skills, from schoolchildren to government officials,” he said.
During the event, Madiyev met with Fei-Fei Li, a global AI expert and creator of ImageNet, a foundational dataset for computer vision, and shared Kazakhstan’s AI initiatives and startup successes. Li’s research underpinned advances in medical diagnostics, autonomous systems, and robotics.
In a meeting with the Chief AI Scientist at Meta Yann LeCun, Madiyev explored large language models and KazLLM, Kazakhstan’s adaptation of LLaMA (Large Language Model Meta AI). LeCun praised KazLLM for its development.
The minister also met with Quentin Adam, the founder of Clever Cloud, to discuss potential collaboration, including establishing a Clever Cloud R&D lab focused on cloud computing in Kazakhstan.
Alem.AI’s activities and AI education programs were discussed with Serbian Minister of Science, Technological Development, and Innovation Jelena Begović. Begović expressed interest in Kazakhstan’s experience and plans to visit Astana for further discussions.
Madiyev also held a key meeting with OpenAI’s top management, who were impressed by Kazakhstan’s AI progress and suggested organizing a technical session with OpenAI developers.
