In the early morning of Tashkent, the glass curtain wall of the IT industrial park had just been illuminated by sunlight, and young programmers in the park had started debugging and connecting applications to Chinese servers. Thousands of kilometers away in Shanghai, an agreement on establishing the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization has just been signed, with representatives from 29 countries becoming founding members, including Uzbekistan. It is at this pace that Uzbekistan's Minister of Digital Technology, Sherzod Shermatov, and China's Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Uzbekistan, Yu Jun, held a bilateral meeting to discuss expanding cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence, implementing joint technology projects, and cultivating information technology talents.

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The key topic of the meeting is the interaction between the two sides within the framework of the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization. This organization is the world's first intergovernmental international organization in the field of artificial intelligence, headquartered in Shanghai, aimed at promoting international cooperation and global governance in artificial intelligence, ensuring that technology develops in a beneficial, safe, and fair direction. Uzbekistan became a founding member this year, and both sides discussed ways to expand Uzbekistan's participation in the organization's activities and utilize existing opportunities to implement joint initiatives. The Chairman of the Central Asian Association for Artificial Intelligence, Norov, has pointed out that participating in the organization enables Uzbekistan not only to adapt to new international rules, but also to participate in the formulation of rules. Both sides emphasized the significance of international interaction in the development and deployment of information technology, and paid special attention to the prospects of cooperation in the field of data security - in the current era where algorithms and models accelerate cross-border flows, how data flows safely is becoming a necessary answer for digital cooperation.

AI classes in the classroom

Talent is a longer-term investment in this collaboration. Both sides discussed the possibility of establishing connections with top universities in China, as well as improving the information technology teaching syllabus and textbooks in Uzbekistan's universities. The Ukrainian side has placed education in a prominent position, with over one million young professionals trained under its five million AI leaders project, aiming to build the country into a major IT hub in Central Asia by 2030. Previously, relying on the Xinjiang Branch of the China SCO Big Data Cooperation Center in Karamay, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and other courses have opened multiple sessions of training for multinational officials and enterprise personnel; The digital skill application intelligent teaching platform led by Chinese enterprises has also been launched and operated this year, bringing learning, sharing, and interaction online. A gradual talent cultivation chain is taking shape from textbooks to practical training.

From project to ecology

The ultimate destination of cooperation should return to the industry. Both sides discussed the prospects of expanding interaction between companies from the two countries in the field of artificial intelligence, as well as attracting leading Chinese technology companies to work in Uzbekistan. This kind of interaction has a solid foundation: the modular intelligent computing center built with the participation of Chinese enterprises has started construction in Karakalpakstan, with a planned total scale of 300 megawatts, serving the training and data processing needs of large models in Central Asia and the wider region; IFlytek's open platform, Central Asia Station, has landed and opened hundreds of AI capabilities to local developers; Alibaba Cloud, Huawei and other companies continue to invest in projects such as cloud data centers and smart cities. The foundation of Wufang is also getting thicker - by 2024, the national network coverage rate will exceed 90%, the number of electronic ID card holders will exceed 20 million, and IT exports are expected to achieve several fold growth before 2030. Both sides exchanged views on consolidating Uzbekistan's position as one of the regional centers for technical cooperation. From a round table discussion to the synchronous deployment of computing power, classrooms, and industrial chains, China Ukraine digital economy cooperation is moving from a single project to a complete ecosystem.Editor/Yang Meiling