“I hope one day I am replaced by AI.” Zhaslan Madiyev has been in his job for less than a year, but if he does it well, his wish may soon come true. As the Minister of Artificial Intelligence in Kazakhstan, he is responsible for integrating AI into every level of society, from schools, to farms, to public services – which could one day include his role.
“I hope that one day it happens,” he says at a meeting at his Astana office. “AI is more efficient, and when they interact with each other, there is no politics when they communicate with each other.”
Kazakhstan may seem like an unlikely place for an AI revolution. The former Soviet republic’s economy is almost entirely built on fossil fuels, minerals and other raw commodities. To move away from this dependence and prepare for the global energy transition to renewable technologies, the government has set aggressive targets to modernise and diversify its economy.
A digital transformation is key to these ambitions, with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev describing artificial intelligence adoption as a “matter of national survival”. In his State of the Nation address in September 2025, he mentioned ‘artificial intelligence’ 31 times.
President Tokayev framed it as not just a tool for economic growth, but a fundamental requirement for the country’s sovereignty and relevance in the “new technological reality”. He claimed the world is experiencing a watershed moment, where some countries will “enter the future” and others will be left behind.
He also referenced the new era of AI-powered weapons, saying the country needed to embrace these controversial tactics to “ensure the stable socio-economic development and security of Kazakhstan”, adding: “We must act decisively – any delay could lead to the most severe consequences.”
Other contentious aspects of the technology are also being welcomed, such as AI’s role in the arts. After screenwriters in Hollywood went on strike to demand protections from AI, Kazakhstan has taken the opposite approach by offering prizes to filmmakers using AI. In October, Astana will host the world’s first AI film festival, showcasing films created using artificial intelligence technologies.
The country has also passed the first comprehensive AI law in Central Asia and rolled out a National AI Platform, having passed a decree in January declaring 2026 as the “Year of Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence”.
Digitalisation has been a project that has been ongoing for the last 10 years in Kazakhstan. The country now ranks 24th of 193 in the UN's e-government development index and is in the top 10 countries globally for online government services, with more than 90 per cent of public services now available online.
There has also been a concerted effort to develop digital platforms and strengthen Kazakhstan’s AI ecosystem through partnerships with both domestic firms and global technology leaders. In November, the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development signed an agreement with tech conglomerate Freedom Holding to develop a $2 billion sovereign AI hub in Kazakhstan.
The project, which will be operated by Almaty-based Freedom Holding in collaboration with Nvidia, is expected to deliver 100 MW of computing capacity. Once completed, Freedom Holding claims the hub will position Kazakhstan as a major player in the global AI race.
“We already have the electricity and infrastructure secured for it, and that will make Kazakhstan a very serious player, definitely at the top in Central Asia for a long period of time, and very visible in the world,” Freedom Holding CEO Timur Turlov tells The Independent.
“So if Kazakhstan is in the top 100 [countries] for supercomputing facilities for AI, this will maybe bring us into the top 20 globally.”
At the heart of Kazakhstan’s ambitious AI adoption strategy is a perfectly spherical building in the heart of Astana. Resembling a giant disco ball, the International Centre for Artificial Intelligence invites children of all ages to come and discover AI on a ground floor that includes an AI kids zone, AI cinema, AI museum and AI cafe.
Each successive floor serves as a progressive pathway for developing AI skills and technologies; from AI education programs on the lower floors, rising up to startup accelerators and research labs for big technology firms like Google and Telegram. On the eighth and final floor is an “AI-driven government office” tasked with embedding the innovations made on the floors below into economic and public sector applications.
“As you can see, it’s a big funnel,” says AI Minister Madiyev, who also serves as Kazakhstan’s Deputy Prime Minister. “Starting with the broader population, going from the kids, to students, to startups, to Big Tech. And then the best solutions will be embedded in the economic sector. We believe it is the first project of its kind in the world.”
Earlier this month, OpenAI backed Kazakhstan’s aggressive AI strategy by announcing that it would be partnering with the government on educational initiatives, having identified the country as the most “AI ready” in the region.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is among those who believe AI could soon perform roles traditionally reserved for humans at the highest level of business and government. A version of “superintelligence” could arrive by 2028 that is capable of performing his role, according to Altman. “Shame on me if OpenAI isn’t the first big company run by an AI CEO,” he said on a podcast last year.
Such proclamations have been met with doubt by some researchers and academic experts, who claim that tech companies have a strong commercial incentive to overstate the capabilities of their products.
In an open letter to the European Commission President in November, a coalition of scientists warned that believing corporate marketing timelines distracts from immediate AI harms like automated discrimination and misinformation, and diverts attention from necessary regulation in the space.
“These tech CEO’s claims concerning ‘superintelligence’ and ‘AGI’ are manifestly bound with their financial imperatives and not rigorous science,” the letter stated. “The scientific development of any potentially useful AI is not served by amplifying the unscientific marketing claims of US tech firms.”
In the same month that Madiyev was appointed the minister of artificial intelligence, another country went even further in its AI ambitions. In a world first, Albania introduced an artificial intelligence avatar named Diella to serve as its AI minister.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said the virtual minister would be “100 per cent free of corruption” and capable of handling millions of interactions with citizens while simultaneously handling market research and public bids for government contracts.
Kazakhstan currently has no plans to replace Madiyev with AI, though it has unveiled an artificial intelligence agent to serve an a board director on the country’s sovereign wealth fund. Given voting rights for the $88 billion fund, it serves as a reminder that Madiyev’s wish to be replaced may soon come true.
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