Astana, October 4, 2025. At the Digital Bridge 2025 forum, a high-profile panel titled “Should We Embed the National Code into AI Tools?” brought together experts to discuss how national identity—language, culture, and shared values should inform the design and deployment of AI systems in Kazakhstan. Speakers included Madina Abdrakhmanova, Deputy Director of Product & External Affairs and Senior Data Scientist, ISSAI, Aizhan Uteulina, PhD in Philosophy, Certified Coach, Elena Sedykh (venture investor; founder of Dogovor24 and Bikesh Kurmangaliyeva, Chair of the Board, JSC Center for Digital Economy Development.
Panelists explored how locally relevant datasets, culturally aware evaluation, and education can make AI more useful and trustworthy while preserving international competitiveness. The discussion emphasized identity “pillars”—from language and cultural context to civic values—arguing that systems trained for local realities yield better outcomes for citizens and institutions.
Speaking for the research community, Madina Abdrakhmanova highlighted Kazakhstan’s early efforts to digitize the Kazakh language and the country’s rapid shift from text-only approaches to multimodal models that can see and hear the world—not just read it.
“Kazakh is fundamentally a language of speech—shaped by our nomadic heritage—yet our KazLLM is trained on written text. Finding quality written resources was hard, so we partnered with leading institutes. We moved into a new era of models because our world is multimodal; we need systems that can read, watch and listen. We studied how to create such datasets and how to build the necessary hardware. Everything starts with data—we must collect it. There are three pillars: data and people—yet we still lack hardware.” – Madina Abdrakhmanova remarked.
Madina Abdrakhmanova also presented Oylan, a multimodal, multilingual AI model, and Beynele, a content-generation system aligned with Kazakh cultural identity. Speaking of hardware, Madina mentioned that thanks to national efforts led by the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development and the Presidential Administration, institutes now have access to modern computer infrastructure. She noted that ISSAI not only conducts research but also designs, operates, and scales high-performance computers, including its own purpose-built inference servers like Mangitas 01, which power production demos in speech and language.
Digital Bridge 2025 convened founders, researchers, investors, and policymakers to accelerate AI adoption and digital transformation across the region and the world.