00:01This robotic dog is built to work in hazardous environments.
00:06It's one of the technologies on display at ICT Week in Tashkent,
00:10Uzbekistan's annual technology event, bringing together companies,
00:15startups and policy makers from across the sector.
00:18Artificial intelligence is a major focus this year,
00:21as Uzbekistan tries to turn its AI ambitions into practical projects.
00:26For security, right now the robot dog, he can do some with camera to do some inspection
00:31in some dangerous place.
00:34Right now in Uzbekistan, in Tashkent, the university have also used a unique robot.
00:39But AI applications need something less visible.
00:43The computing power needed to develop and run them.
00:46Uzbekistan already has a government GPU cluster,
00:49while new commercial data center capacity is also being developed.
00:53Digital Technologies Minister Sherzot Shermatv says,
00:57investment commitments for data center projects now exceed $6 billion.
01:02This 12 MW will be ready by the end of this year.
01:06In total project will be 300 MW.
01:09So the next stages will be in the regions of Uzbekistan.
01:12Some projects are also moving into heavy industry.
01:15We are working with the NAWAI and the Almalik Metallurgical Companies.
01:18Together with them we are developing the drone technology and robotic technologies in the mining field.
01:23So they are using the AI technology, they are going and scanning the mining field.
01:27The government says more than 20 AI laboratories are planned at universities by the end of the year.
01:33At ICT Week it's visible how the global AI race is moving from planning toward implementation.
01:40In Uzbekistan that shift is reflected in new computing infrastructure, investment and AI applications developed and tested.
01:48Uzbekistan's startup sector is another area where AI is being put to commercial use.
01:54If you are looking for evidence of Uzbekistan building genuine AI capacity, I would say look beyond the strategies.
02:01Look beyond the documents and the rules and the regulations which are all there and look instead at what is
02:07happening for startups.
02:09There are 180 startups exporting to 80 countries all using AI.
02:14Huge plans for building compute, like AI specific compute and data centers in Uzbekistan.
02:21That's the evidence that I would bring.
02:24The AI department says more than 100 projects are now underway.
02:28One is an Uzbek language corpus designed to improve how large language models handle Uzbek.
