Features - The Times Of Central Asia

Viewing results 37 - 42 of 2712

Assistive Technology

Teen in Kazakhstan Develops AI Sign Language Translator

Fifteen-year-old Sanzhar Yerezhepov is developing an artificial intelligence (AI) translator to make online information more accessible to deaf people in Kazakhstan. Called Tusin (“Understand”), the platform converts speech and text into lifelike sign language videos that reproduce facial expressions as well as hand movements. Yerezhepov attends Daryn, a specialized school for gifted children in Kokshetau, northern Kazakhstan. A boarding school for children with hearing and speech impairments is located nearby. Watching its students communicate in sign language made him wonder how easily they could access information online, giving him the idea for Tusin. Yerezhepov is from Shiyeli, a small village in Kazakhstan’s Burabay district. Neither of his parents works in science or IT. He is now working with the Kazakhstan Society of the Deaf to test an early version of Tusin and says five organizations have expressed willingness to work with him. The project reached the semifinals of an IT competition at Astana Hub, Kazakhstan’s international technology park for startups. In an interview with The Times of Central Asia, Yerezhepov explains why translating into sign language is more complicated than adding subtitles. He discusses the medical startup he put on hold and what he hopes to change in Kazakhstan’s education system. TCA: Tusin translates online content into sign language, but many videos already have subtitles. Why are those sometimes not enough for deaf viewers? Yerezhepov: For some deaf people, especially those whose primary language is sign language, understanding written text can be difficult. First, subtitles are not always available in a language they are comfortable with. They are often automatically generated and do not convey information accurately. Second, sign language has its own grammar and structure. So even someone living in Kazakhstan may have difficulty understanding subtitles in Kazakh or Russian. Many deaf people can read subtitles fluently, but others need sign language translation. TCA: Isn’t sign language the same around the world? Yerezhepov: No. Different countries use different sign languages. There is no single universal sign language that everyone on Earth understands. TCA: So which sign language is used in Kazakhstan? Yerezhepov: Kazakhstan, like some other former Soviet countries, uses Russian Sign Language. We do not have a separate Kazakh Sign Language, although some signs have been adapted. TCA: How do you teach artificial intelligence to understand and reproduce signs? Who checks its work? Yerezhepov: We work with representatives of the Akmola branch of the Kazakhstan Society of the Deaf and with sign language interpreters. Together, we examine each sign, check how accurately it is reproduced, and analyze the results. We have already demonstrated our technology to deaf and hard-of-hearing people, and they understand what the platform communicates. TCA: A sign can change meaning depending on the situation. How does Tusin handle that? Yerezhepov: Quite well, although we are still working on it. The same sign can have different meanings depending on the context. That is exactly the problem we are addressing with artificial intelligence, which can take context into account and determine what is being communicated. Our platform...

AI in Journalism

Astana Media Week: AI’s Opportunities and Risks for Journalism

The tenth edition of Astana Media Week is taking place in Kazakhstan's capital from October 14 to 16, with media professionals from Central Asia and other regions discussing how artificial intelligence (AI) is changing journalism. Dzhanibek Suleyev, a veteran Kazakh web publisher, and Alexander Smolin, former editor of Orda.kz, once one of the country's most popular online news outlets, spoke to The Times of Central Asia about how to take advantage of this technological leap while minimizing its risks. A New Revolution in Information Production AI can generate large volumes of content in seconds, but Suleyev argues that the technology cannot replicate a journalist's judgment: finding an original angle, choosing the right person to interview, or persuading them to speak candidly. “I can't say definitively whether the invention of AI is a blessing or a threat. That's a question for philosophers,” he said. Suleyev sees parallels with the advent of online journalism. The media, he noted, have repeatedly adapted to new technology. What once seemed radical – reading news on a computer or phone rather than in a newspaper – quickly became routine. In the process, new professions emerged, including search engine optimization editors, audience analytics specialists, multimedia journalists, and social media editors, while demand for printing and newspaper distribution declined. Online publishing also dramatically lowered the cost of launching a news outlet. “Just as the media's move online in the 2000s did, AI is now reducing the cost of producing information. But there is a fundamental difference between these two revolutions,” Suleyev said. “The first changed how information was produced, distributed, and consumed. The second is also affecting the very process of creating journalistic content.” The Right to Fair Compensation That transformation raises an immediate financial problem: search engines can deliver AI-generated answers without users visiting the websites that originally reported the information. Suleyev says this is costing publishers traffic and advertising revenue. Evidence of declining traffic is already mounting. Google search referrals to more than 2,500 news websites worldwide fell by 33% between November 2024 and November 2025, according to a report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Researchers cautioned, however, that it remains unclear how much of this decline can be attributed directly to AI-generated summaries. On October 12, major publishers, including The New York Times and The Economist, joined a coalition seeking greater control over how AI companies use their content and fair compensation for that use. Suleyev believes such issues must be discussed by the media community and addressed through legislation. Relying on AI Alone Is a Losing Strategy Smolin is more optimistic about AI's practical benefits. Tasks that once took a journalist two hours of searching can now, he said, be completed in minutes. Generating illustrations has also become easier, reducing the need for some in-house design work. “There's a saying I really like: to use artificial intelligence, you need to develop your own intelligence,” Smolin said. “I'm fully in favor of developing AI in the industry, but only in combination...

Oil Licenses

Uzbekistan Confirms Cancellation of Saneg Oil Licenses

Uzbekistan has revoked some oil-field licenses held by Sanoat Energetika Guruhi (Saneg), a major Uzbek private oil and gas producer, after the company failed to develop deposits and meet licensing conditions. The move is another setback for the company, formerly known as Jizzakh Petroleum, following the collapse of its $100 million agreement to purchase the Fergana Oil Refinery. When the refinery sale was announced in 2022, Saneg was reported to account for approximately 80% of Uzbekistan's oil production and hold development rights to 103 oil and gas fields. Officials have not said how many licenses have been canceled, which fields are affected, or what impact the decision will have on the company's operations. Speaking at an October 8 press conference, Sohibjon Murodov, director of the State Assets Management Agency, said the affected deposits had not been developed and licensing conditions had not been met. He did not disclose when the licenses were canceled. The Ministry of Mining Industry and Geology is now preparing measures for the affected fields. Asked why Saneg had originally received development rights without competitive auctions, Murodov explained that under the previous system, the first applicant could obtain a license after paying the prescribed fees. Auctions for hydrocarbon licenses were introduced in 2023–2024. He stressed that the deposits themselves had remained state property. A Privatization Reversed The government transferred management of the Fergana refinery to Saneg, then operating as Jizzakh Petroleum, in 2020. In May 2022, it announced the $100 million sale, accompanied by a separate commitment to invest $380 million in modernization. The transaction was intended to address longstanding problems. Reporting at the time described shortages of raw materials and said the refinery had not undergone major modernization or reconstruction for two decades. Saneg's investment commitments covered improvements to fuel production and processing facilities. Despite the announced sale, the state still held 58.5% of the refinery in May 2026, while Saneg owned 41.5%. By June, the State Assets Management Agency was its sole owner, according to registry information reported by Interfax. Explaining the termination in October, Murodov said financial difficulties in the investor's other projects had prevented it from making purchase payments on time. The contract allowed termination if payments were three months overdue, he said. The agency consulted international legal advisers and notified Saneg before ending the agreement. Saneg had previously maintained that it had fulfilled its payment and investment obligations, according to Interfax's June report. However, the amount of the overdue payments remains unclear, as does how earlier payments and investments will be treated and how much modernization work was completed. State-Directed Debt Recovery The state had already intervened in January to address financial problems at Saneg, oilfield services company Eriell, and engineering contractor Enter Engineering. Uzbek reporting has linked all three businesses to businessman Bakhtiyor Fozilov. A January 22 government resolution recorded combined unpaid wages of approximately $131 million owed to 38,700 employees across the three companies, according to reporting by Spot in March. The government ordered the sale of non-core assets to...

Trans-Caspian Cable

Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan Launch Trans-Caspian Fiber-Optic Cable

Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have launched the first fiber-optic communications link across the Caspian seabed. The approximately 380-kilometer cable connects Aktau and Sumgait, with Presidents Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Ilham Aliyev inaugurating the line in Baku on October 15. Russian operators have long dominated Kazakhstan’s international connectivity. A 2025 Internet Society report identified them as the country's principal suppliers of international bandwidth. The new route will give operators the option of directing data through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey toward Europe, providing redundancy independent of existing routes through Russia. This is particularly important during outages or congestion on existing connections. Part of the broader Digital Silk Way initiative, the cable could also benefit Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, both of which rely on Kazakhstan for international internet connectivity. The cable, supplied by a Chinese manufacturer, uses optical fiber made in Japan and terminal equipment from Western suppliers, according to the Caspian Policy Center. It has a design capacity of at least 400 terabits per second and was developed through CaspiLink, a joint venture between Kazakhstan’s Kazakhtelecom and Azerbaijan’s AzerTelecom. The project had been under discussion since 2019. In 2024, planned investment was estimated at more than 23 billion tenge (approximately $50 million). Marine surveys began in August 2025. Underwater cable laying began in July 2026 and was completed on August 5, with the line inaugurated on October 15. Kazakhstan also hopes to use the new connection to attract technology companies. Bagdat Mussin, chairman of Kazakhtelecom’s management board, said the cable could support Kazakhstan’s Data Center Valley, a complex under development in Ekibastuz for cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Mussin also told reporters that adjustments to the line would continue through the end of 2026, with the benefits expected to be felt no earlier than early 2027, according to Tengrinews. As The Times of Central Asia previously reported, Kazakhstan must also secure reliable electricity supplies and sufficient demand for its planned data center capacity. Kazakhstan's Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development estimates that the new route could help more than double the country's international data transit to 21.6 Tbps in the coming years. How much traffic will initially use the cable, including traffic redirected from existing routes through Russia, remains unclear.

Migrant School Fees

Russian Lawmakers Propose School Fees for Central Asian Migrants’ Children

Russia relies on millions of workers from Central Asia, but lawmakers want to charge some of their children, typically aged 15–17, for the final two years of public schooling. The move comes after tougher enrollment rules that have left thousands of migrant children struggling to attend Russian schools. The proposal, submitted to the government by deputies from the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) on October 14, would require foreign citizens and stateless people to pay for education in grades 10 and 11. LDPR leader Leonid Slutsky argued that migrant families should bear the costs of educating their children in Russian upper-secondary schools, allowing public funds to be redirected toward Russian students. The party claimed that more than 130,000 foreign children attend grades 10–11, costing the state over 37 billion rubles (about $440 million) annually. However, these figures contradict data from Russia's Ministry of Education analyzed by the data project Tochno, which found approximately 130,000 foreign pupils and another 3,000 stateless pupils enrolled across all school grades in 2025–26, with only 4% of foreign pupils attending grades 10–11. That would put the number of foreign pupils in the final two grades at roughly 5,200, casting doubt on the LDPR's estimated savings. Growing Pressure on Migrant Families The proposed fees follow a series of Russian restrictions that have already made it more difficult for Central Asian families to educate their children in Russia. Since April 2025, foreign children seeking admission to Russian schools have been required to demonstrate sufficient Russian-language proficiency and provide documentation establishing their legal residence. Enrollment among children from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan fell by 27% in the 2025–26 school year, from approximately 122,000 to 89,000. In January 2026, Tajikistan's Minister of Education and Science Rahim Saidzoda reported that approximately 9,000 Tajik children had returned from Russia during 2025 following difficulties continuing their education there. Kyrgyzstan's membership in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) raises a separate legal question. The EAEU treaty recognizes the right of migrant workers' children to receive education in the country where their parents work, subject to that country's legislation. However, it does not explicitly guarantee free tuition, leaving unclear whether children of workers from EAEU member states would qualify for exemptions. For migrant families, the immediate consequences would depend on the eventual tuition charges and exemptions. Some parents might choose vocational education for their children after grade nine, while others could leave them with relatives in their home countries rather than incur additional schooling expenses in Russia. Additional education costs could discourage migrant workers from bringing their families to Russia, even as the country continues to rely on Central Asian labor. Central Asia's Dependence on Remittances The proposed fees would affect families whose earnings are often vital to their home countries' economies. Tajikistan is the most dependent on remittances relative to the size of its economy, Kyrgyzstan relies particularly heavily on earnings from Russia, and Uzbekistan receives the largest remittance inflows in absolute terms. According to The Times of Central Asia's Central Asia Balance...

Cyber Espionage

Silent Lynx Hackers Leave Their Central Asian Spy Campaign Exposed

New findings published on October 14 suggest that hackers spying on Central Asian governments have been operating from Kazakhstan. The group, named Silent Lynx by researchers, used hijacked official email accounts to break into government computers. The hackers left some of their own working files unprotected online, allowing researchers to examine how they prepared and adapted their attacks. Their targets included agencies holding information about regional diplomacy and natural resources. The investigation was conducted by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future and Talos, a security research group at computer networking company Cisco. The two companies, both based in the United States, have not established whether the hackers were working for a government. Hijacked Official Email Accounts Seqrite, an Indian cybersecurity provider, gave the hackers the name Silent Lynx in January 2025. Its investigation found that they had sent malicious emails from an employee’s hijacked account at Kyrgyzstan’s central bank. A message from a real official’s address could make a dangerous attachment look like routine business. One message claimed that correspondence intended for Kyrgyzstan’s Finance Ministry had been sent to the central bank by mistake. Attached was what appeared to be a United Nations meeting invitation, packaged with a malicious program. Running it would allow the hackers to issue instructions to the recipient’s computer and send files through a chat they controlled on Telegram, the messaging app. In related attacks, investigators saw the hackers copying documents and collecting passwords saved in web browsers. One victim had left a file called passwords.txt on the desktop, which the attackers stole and could use to access other accounts. German cybersecurity company VMRay and independent researcher Pol Thill documented these thefts in February 2026. The Files That Gave Them Away Researchers Ashley Shen and Julian-Ferdinand Vögele, from Talos and Recorded Future, respectively, found three online folders where the hackers had left attack software and other tools publicly accessible. A program in one folder led them to an account on GitHub, a website where programmers store and share code. GitHub preserves earlier versions of files, so the researchers could see how the hackers had revised their software and changed the internet addresses used to control infected computers. Moving to a new address did not erase the record, allowing investigators to continue tracking the operation. An attack file identified in April exploited a weakness in WinRAR, a program for unpacking compressed files. It was designed to install software that would start when the user next signed in, allowing the hackers to send instructions to the computer. A July 2025 update had fixed the weakness in WinRAR, but the attack could still work on computers where users had not updated the program. VMRay’s earlier investigation found that some operators had infected their own computers, exposing their browsing histories to the researchers. What Were They Looking For? The victims of those earlier attacks included water and hydropower institutions in Kyrgyzstan and water-related bodies in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Access to water records could be valuable in a region where decisions upstream affect...