When Qatar’s leaders unveiled the National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy in October 2019, they articulated two overarching goals: enabling organisations to use these new technologies and protecting Qataris from potential misuses. Those twin priorities continue to guide the deployment of AI throughout the strategy’s six pillars. The government has continued to create new bodies and policies, demonstrating its commitment to ensuring that AI becomes a catalyst for positive change. In September 2021 it created an AI Committee within the Ministry of Communications and IT (MCIT), and tasked it with monitoring progress and tracking global advancements. In February 2024, the National Cyber Security Agency in Qatar published its Guidelines for Secure Adoption of AI.
AI Week
Recent developments in the sector include an Arabic-language large-language model (LLM); a partnership with U.S.-based Scale AI to develop more than 50 AI-powered applications to apply predictive analytics and automation to government services; and the inaugural AI Week, a first-of-its-kind conference hosted by the Qatar Science and Technology Park. The event was held in November 2024 to convene experts, share innovative ideas and raise awareness amongst locals and domestic businesses.
At the conference, Reem Mohammed Al Mansouri, assistant undersecretary for digital industry affairs at the MCIT, demonstrated how Qatar is integrating AI into critical services such as traffic management, energy optimisation and public safety, creating smarter, more liveable and sustainable cities. Attendees also included major global technology thought leaders such as Google and Shell, with the former holding a DevFest during AI Week. Organised by local Google Developer Groups to ensure relevance in their communities, these events include talks and seminars as well as networking. Dan Jeavons, vice president of digital innovation and computational science at Shell, spoke on the potential of AI helping Qatar with its ambitions as a regional leader in a range of sectors. The business case for AI was further outlined through a presentation by EMMA Systems’ founder and CEO Wisam Constandi. EMMA focuses on aviation-sector services, and Costandi presented on how AI can improve operations at airports.
Arabic LLM
Arabic is spoken by over 500m people and is the national language of 27 countries, but Arabic content on the Internet comprises just 0.5% of the total. In the field of AI training, a larger pool of Arabic language data is required to help support AI-related initiatives in the language. Ultimately, efforts in promoting Arabic through the fields of science and engineering are set to propel more innovation in AI in the MENA region.
One new LLM, Fanar, is Qatar’s first Arabic-language LLM. It was developed in 2024 by the Qatar Computing Research Institute at Hamad bin Khalifa University, with sponsorship from the MCIT. Its creators assembled a database of more than 300bn Arabic words and 1trn syllables to train the LLM, with the goal of creating a tool that would address the needs of Arabic-speaking users and organisations.
The ability to leverage AI in local languages enhances an LLM’s capacity to understand the nuances and cultural context of its users. That leads to better translations and query results, as well as supporting a greater number of users. Fanar’s creators also developed a handful of specified tools – displayed on the website – to illustrate how the LLM can be used. One such tool, Taleem, is a teaching aid that can support educators in creating lesson plans, test questions and multimedia presentations. Akhbar AI is a newsroom assistant for editors to use in creating content. Lastly, Allama is a chatbot envisioned as an e-government gateway that allows users to ask questions about government processes.
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