Tajikistan debates AI

Dushanbe is also gearing up to promote the widespread use of AI systems. To demonstrate its benefits, the Minister of Industry cites the answers provided on the Avesta, the collection of sacred texts of the Zoroastrians written in a language known today only to a few scholars around the world.

AsiaNews (Dushanbe) - Tajikistan's Minister of Industry and New Technologies, Sherali Kabir, urged people not to fear artificial intelligence at a press conference, describing it as “a lively horse that must be tamed and ridden” in order to actively use it to improve quality of life.

He stressed that “AI is not the future, but already the present, and it depends only on us, on how we are able to exploit it.” The technology has already been fully integrated into the ministry's work, and Kabir himself personally checked that all employees were able to use it.

Given the good results, the ministry has proposed to the state services agency that AI modules be applied in all state institutions in Tajikistan, which is leading to “a clear improvement in document production.”

The minister also recounted how AI read him the entire book Avesta, the collection of sacred texts of the Zoroastrians, an ancient monument of 13th-century Iranian literature written in a unique language, known as Avestan, which is a classic example of the difficulty of comprehension, especially for Tajiks of Persian descent.

“In Tajikistan, there is only one scholar who can speak Avestan, there are three in St. Petersburg and a few in France... can you see how technology is changing the world for the better?” Kabir observes.

Responding to questions from journalists about the possible negative consequences of the systematic use of artificial intelligence, Šerali Kabir insisted that there are no real threats: “They say that AI can get out of human control and become a danger, but that's not the case. It depends entirely on electricity and servers, which remain in human hands.”

Tajikistan is actively working to prepare a new generation of specialists in the digital economy, hoping that new approaches will quickly make up for the endemic delays of Kyrgyz society. All schools are introducing programs that help students familiarize themselves with the basics of statistics and AI from the early grades of elementary school.

The creation of the first data center, Daryo, which serves commercial development and patriotic start-ups was an notable step.

The importance of AI was also emphasized by the chairman of Tajikistan's Higher Attestation Commission, Sajfiddin Davlatzoda, who reported that throughout 2025, there was not a single case of plagiarism in over 600 scientific research projects for academic degrees in which artificial intelligence was applied.

He then called on the entire Tajik academic world to ‘learn the culture of using these new technologies’. This has led to the approval of 78 doctorates in scientific subjects, 406 candidates for licentiateships, and 84 doctorates in philosophy, with 34 new professors appointed. On the other hand, 46 texts submitted were rejected in advance because they exceeded 15% data error and were not published in any scientific journal.

On the other hand, many scientific texts have abused AI, whose use has grown sixfold since 2024, but there are also programs that can determine which parts of a dissertation were composed by AI and which are definitely the work of the author.

Davlatzoda notes that “it is essential to use AI as an aid, but it is not appropriate to ask it to do the work for you; it is not capable of performing this task, it is still a robot.

” The great contribution that AI can offer is to “keep up with the global information space” by processing the data at its disposal, which must then be analyzed and verified by those who wish to present themselves as specialists and authors.