Doha, Qatar: Qatar’s substantial investments in innovation, digitisation, and AI are a strategic move and these initiatives cultivate a thriving tech ecosystem in the country.

Speaking to The Peninsula, Dr. Mohamed Y Eltabakh, Principal Scientist at Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) highlighted Qatar’s ambitious aspirations which lies at the core of Qatar National Vision 2030 that aims to transform the country into an advanced society capable of achieving sustainable development.

Eltabakh discussed how Qatar is advancing towards innovative technologies. He said, the technology is changing and it’s changing quickly. Large language model is one example of the technology that will be source of knowledge for next generation, so being part of this technology, owning the technology is something that is in the vision of Qatar. The country is putting huge effort and investment when it comes to infrastructure, he added.

Qatar stands at a significant juncture, proactively expediting the transition towards a diversified and knowledge-based economy. This strategic shift is encapsulated in the Third Qatar National Development Strategy (NDS3) 2024-2030, serving as a roadmap guiding the nation towards realising Qatar National Vision 2030.

Commenting about the Arabic Artificial Intelligence Large Language Model (LLM), he said Fanar is the collection of Arabic centric large language models that mimic the general capabilities of ChatGPT but with specific goals and targets.

These goals include preserving the Arabic language in the era of AI. The content of the Arabic language on the Internet is very tiny and it needs a special handling in large language models which is one of the goals of Fanar.

The second goal is preserving the Arabic culture and the Islamic values within this era of large language models which may not be well represented in the other large language models and it is very critical to all this technology.

This is very well aligned with the AI vision for 2030 which is moving forward for the AI technology and infrastructure. Fanar will be one of the cornerstones in this vision and the plan is to build use cases and adoption of Fanar by different ministries and entities within Qatar and hopefully beyond the Middle East and the Arab countries, he further said.

Qatar can leverage the AI revolution to realise its vision of transforming into a knowledge based economy by investing in strategically important AI technologies.

Eltabakh noted, AI is growing significantly worldwide and it will play an important role in various fields such as education, health and even the different government entities will use AI in one way or another.

He pointed out one of the challenges associated with AI is cost. “Building a model like Fanar requires special infrastructure. Attracting talent and expertise from all over the world is part of the country’s vision. Qatar is investing in AI and attracting such talent to stay here and contribute to the technology.”