On August 13, 2026, Amina Baikenova, Acting Deputy Director of Product and External Affairs at the Institute of Smart Systems and Artificial Intelligence (ISSAI) at Nazarbayev University, delivered a lecture titled “Sovereign AI in Computational Social Science: Navigating ISSAI’s Ecosystem for Advanced Methodologies” as part of the Young Scholar Conference & Research School “AI & Methods in Computational Communication” (AIM-CC 2026).
The conference is jointly organized by the Kazakhstan Sociology Lab and the School of Sciences and Humanities at Nazarbayev University, with the support of the International Communication Association (ICA).
During her lecture, Ms. Baikenova presented ISSAI’s journey in building sovereign AI technologies by bridging state-of-the-art computational capacity with local linguistic, cultural, and socio-economic realities. She highlighted how ISSAI’s foundational models, advanced hardware systems, and broader AI ecosystem contribute to transforming computational resources into practical tools and methodologies for researchers.
Ms. Baikenova also introduced several of ISSAI’s flagship products, including MangiSoz, Oylan, TilSync, and ISSAI Voice Studio, and demonstrated their capabilities to the audience.
The presentation sparked an active discussion among participants. Attendees showed particular interest in the challenges ISSAI has faced in developing foundational AI models, the importance of creating AI systems that understand and support the Kazakh language, and the broader role of sovereign AI in computational social science.
The session provided an opportunity to showcase ISSAI’s ongoing work in developing AI technologies tailored to Kazakhstan’s linguistic and socio-cultural context and to explore how these technologies can support new approaches to social science research.
ISSAI’s AI products can be explored and tested at: https://issai.kz/