Photo: Press service of the Ministry of Digital Technologies
First deputy minister of digital technologies Oleg Pekos spoke about the formation of the Uzbek language model of AI and development of infrastructure for its training. According to him, Uzbekistan is expected to adopt a national code of ethics in the AI sphere by the end of the year.
First deputy minister of digital technologies Oleg Pekos, in an interview with Gazeta on the sidelines of the fourth Tashkent International Investment Forum this week, spoke about the creation on a national AI language model and commented the issues related to personal data storage.
Green data centers
At the forum, Saudi company DataVolt presented a project to build 20 data centers in Uzbekistan with a total capacity of 520 MW. As one of the largest players in the industry, the company plans to invest $6.5 billion by 2030. Uzbekistan was chosen as its key infrastructure hub in Central Asia.
The first phase of the project is already underway within the IT Park in Tashkent, with the second phase planned for the city of Bukhara.
All data centers will operate on green energy and are set to receive international green certification — a critical factor for hyperscalers looking to reduce their environmental footprint, the first deputy minister said.
National AI language model
The project to develop a national artificial intelligence language model is already in progress, Oleg Pekos said. Text corpus collection began to train a large language model (LLM). Fintech companies, including TBC Bank and Uzum, also joined the initiative.
He cited president Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who emphasized that the importance of developing a local LLM lies in making Uzbekistan’s historical and cultural values widely accessible to all. The national language model is expected to be open-source and available for integration into existing AI systems.
Uzbekistan is also projected to adopt a national AI ethics code this year. A preliminary version of the document has already been published.
Another challenge is the lengthy process of obtaining licenses for GPU cluster imports. However, with government support, a small test cluster (a so-called “sandbox” for AI projects) is set to arrive this week, while a full-scale cluster based on NVIDIA’s new Blackwell (B200) processors is expected by the end of the year.
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