On July 18, 2024, the Institute of Smart Systems and Artificial Intelligence (ISSAI) organized a briefing to major media outlets of Kazakhstan including Khabar TV, 24KZ, Qazaqstan, Jibek Joly, Atameken Business channel, and the Kazpravda newspaper. General director of ISSAI, Prof. Atakan Varol, Deputy director of operations Yerbol Absalyamov, and Deputy director of external affairs Madina Abdrakhmanova participated in this briefing.
The briefing was opened with a welcome speech from ISSAI Deputy director Yerbol Absalyamov, who thanked the journalists for their visit and their high interest in ISSAI’s activities. Madina Abdrakhmanova presented the current progress and key benefits of developing an in-house LLM for the Kazakh language (KazLLM) for the country and society.
The speakers acknowledged the financial support of Astana Hub and the Endowment Fund of Nazarbayev University. They thanked the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation, and Aerospace Industry of Kazakhstan, the National Information Technologies company (JSC NIT), and Maqsut Narikbayev University for their contributions to the project.
ISSAI is progressing steadily with the KazLLM project and will launch the model as a playground and application programmer interface in December 2024. The model weights will also be shared open-source.