Tengrinews.kz — Kazakhstan has encountered a classic “middle-income trap,” where traditional sources of growth such as natural resources and cheap labor are nearing exhaustion, while new drivers have not yet been fully formed or launched, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said at the second meeting of the Council for the Development of Artificial Intelligence, citing Akorda.
The President noted that recent data from leading global laboratories indicate a rapidly widening gap between developed and developing economies.
“Artificial intelligence leads to the concentration of capital and technologies in the hands of global leaders, creating a technological gap that cannot be overcome without timely and decisive regulatory intervention. For Kazakhstan, this is a signal. It is necessary to carefully study the current situation to gain a clear understanding of our capabilities in developing real intelligent solutions. We should agree with experts who believe that Kazakhstan has encountered a classic ‘middle-income trap,’ where traditional sources of growth such as resources and cheap labor are close to being exhausted, while new ones have not yet been fully formed or launched,” the Head of State said.
To prevent economic stagnation, it is necessary to ensure a transition to a digital economy through the creation of large-scale platform solutions, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev stated.
“Without a unified system of state data, artificial intelligence will remain ineffective. In this regard, it is necessary to transform public services into an invisible but highly efficient operating system that eliminates excessive bureaucratic requirements. In the traditional system, the path from receiving a request to making a decision can take several days or even weeks. Ideally, this cycle should be reduced to a matter of seconds, ensuring an explosive acceleration of capital turnover across the entire country,” the President said.
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