On July 1–2, 2026, Institute of Smart Systems and Artificial Intelligence (ISSAI) was represented at the iFLYTEK Open Platform Central Asia Launch Event in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where AI researchers, technology companies, and government representatives gathered to discuss the future of artificial intelligence and multilingual language technologies across the region.
Representing ISSAI, Mamyrbek Parakhat, Data Scientist, delivered a keynote presentation titled “A Brief History of AI in Central Asia.” The talk provided an overview of the region’s rapidly evolving AI landscape, highlighting national AI strategies across the five Central Asian countries, the expansion of computing infrastructure, emerging real-world AI applications, and the challenges that remain for sustainable AI development.
The presentation also introduced ISSAI’s research ecosystem at Nazarbayev University, showcasing the institute’s commitment to open-source AI and its growing portfolio of language technologies for Kazakh, including KAZ-LLM, Oylan, MangiSoz, TilSync, and Mangitas.
A key focus of the keynote was ISSAI’s latest multimodal and on-device AI models. Attendees were introduced to Qolda, a compact open-source vision-language model capable of running offline on laptops and mobile devices, as well as Qolda-AVL, the first open-source tri-modal (audio, vision, and language) model for the Kazakh language. Developed with the support of the Committee of Science of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan and partner institutions, Qolda-AVL represents another step toward advancing AI for low-resource languages.
The presentation sparked lively discussions with participants, who expressed strong interest in ISSAI’s open-source approach and its work on sovereign AI technologies for low-resource languages. Conversations following the session explored opportunities for future collaboration on multilingual datasets, evaluation benchmarks, language models, and speech and translation technologies.
Participation in the event strengthened ISSAI’s presence within the regional AI ecosystem and established new connections with partners working to advance multilingual artificial intelligence across Central Asia. The visit also highlighted the potential for future collaboration between ISSAI’s expertise in low-resource language AI and iFLYTEK’s multilingual technology platform.